Why Aren’t FX Shows on FX? Basic Cable Is Dying, But Here’s a Fix for Its Branding Conundrum to Inject Some Personality in These Waning Days

For context, the cable networks business is one of the most profitable industries in the U.S.; it represents the vast majority of major media companies’ profits; traditional TV networks revenue growth is, for the first time, stagnating; and traditional TV is far larger than the streaming market — roughly $100 billion in TV network affiliate fees an... See more

So, if the Internet has effectively become cable TV, what is the new information frontier?

Until recently, the relative resiliency of traditional pay TV and the rapid growth of streaming have obscured the inevitability that TV will go through a similar transition. But we’re on the cusp of it now. Traditional TV is, finally, rolling over, and streaming profits won’t likely be big enough to make up the difference. Many of the downstream ef... See more

Thus, as the cable-tv-dominated status quo crumbles, pro sports will develop a new playbook, centered around better telling player stories. Players will also have more opportunity to tell and sell these stories themselves, direct-to-consumer:

taste hierarchies like these stink. And they stink because they stand in the way of actually seeing the work on its own terms. Often, what this looks like is an artist or a viewer insisting on describing TV series by way of other media, praising a good show by calling it “cinematic” or “novelistic.” It’s a cliché by this point, but the early-aughts... See more

The significance of the shift from “generalized media” to “personalized media” cannot be overstated. Our digital worlds will soon be tailored to our interests in unfathomable ways. On the one hand, personalized experiences are likely to make marketing more effective. Brands have a precious opportunity to make us all feel “known” in our every intera... See more