“In a world where consumers have more content choices than ever, discovery becomes just as important as the content itself.” — VIZIO’s Ashley Hovey

Sunday morning thought: what big transformations are we all missing here?

It’s easy to overlook some macro trends because it’s so hard to keep up in a fragmented world. Sometimes the play by play of the horse race for media attention that we fail to talk about the horses or the gambling infrastructure that sits on top of this. Until one moment, BAM!, gambling is a runaway train.

This happened with AI, when 10 years ago we couldn’t get much attention to the promise of machine learning for our clients and now it drives the American economy. It happened with video gaming when everyone knew there was a lot of time being spent and all of the sudden there was an ecosystem bigger than TV and watching people play video games became a huge pillar inside of YouTube. And it happened in streaming when Roku boxes and dongles went from being cute “over the top” supplements to forcing the entire TV industry to map out how they drive attention at the mercy of a TV OS.

Well, I could be wrong but I think it’s happening again with the re-bundling of entertainment writ large and a new media oligopoly emerging. Not one that solves fragmentation for us normies, but one that changes what we see and feel all the same.

Retail giants now reach living room screens with better offers. Social platforms now control a huge share of monetizable attention. The legacy media companies are folding into each other to compete. But few in entertainment are talking about how agentic platforms are sucking time and attention with better responsive experiences and purer signals on consumer intent than anyone (ever). Where does that go?

In TV, everyone is focused on Paramount; its debt, its new leaders, the economic impact on studios— but so few are including the fact that the Ellisons together now have a solid footing in TikTok and enough IP under management that they have a chance to completely re-design a new form of cross platform entertainment. One that suppresses competition, while supercharging preferred content. Given TikTok isn’t just one of the biggest time sucks among young people, it’s also one of the fastest e-commerce platforms in history, there is a non-zero chance that Ellisons’ Larry+David utilize their raw materials and infrastructure to give YouTube a run for its money.

But what do I know? Maybe I’m focused on the wrong horse.

This week’s originals below. As always, thanks for being here.

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