Finding Half-Full Glasses For Media In 2023

On second thought, the “half-empty” column might have been easier.

As much of the media business descends on Las Vegas for CES, there’s no lack of source material for those expecting 2023 to be a difficult year for the media business, from suddenly scrambling streaming platforms to boundless box office flops to discouraging declines in linear TV ratings to Elon Musk. If you want the Debbie Downer take, you’ll find it just about anywhere.

Yet for long-time media connoisseurs, as Hyman Roth noted so eloquently in The Godfather II, “this is the business we’ve chosen.” Given this, it turns out that if you choose to look hard enough, there are plenty of reasons for finding silver linings even in media’s darkest clouds.

A sober(er) approach to social media

In 2023 we can expect to see some of the fruits of a global rethink about social media, which could be a not-insignificant boost the rest of the media ecosystem.

Tom Wolfe famously coined the term “Masters of the Universe” for the insufferable Wall Street bankers in Bonfire of the Vanities, but those Masters had nothing on the social media world. Consumers have raced to whatever the buzziest social media platform they could find, from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram to Snapchat to TikTok. In 2005 only 5% of U.S. adults used one of these platforms, which grew to half of all U.S. adults by 2011, and 72% today. Marketers unsurprisingly followed these audiences, with Facebook advertising alone growing annually at over 36% between 2015 and 2021. And the financial markets couldn’t throw money fast enough at social media, with Facebook valued at $24 billion in 2012 and over $900 billion by 2021.

And yet, we now see something of a right sizing – or at least right thinking. After years of government indifference to social media mergers – it took about 20 minutes for Facebook to buy Instagram – we have more vigilant oversight from antitrust regulators and the casting of a skeptical eye towards the influence of the Chinese-owned TikTok. Some marketers are giving second thoughts to the heretofore automatic “I’ve gotta be on Facebook” approach of the last decade. Rigorous scientific research is demonstrating a virtual consensus about the links between social media and youth anxiety, depression and suicide. The financial markets have lost their disproportionate “trust but no need to verify” approach to social media. While the Elon Musk/Twitter fiasco probably has yet to hit rock bottom, an increasing segment of the company’s business partners and users have already said “No mas.”

So you’re saying there’s a chance for the rest of the media world here? Let’s see what ya got.

TV news can still be a powerful information tool

Who doesn’t have a complaint about TV news in the age of polarization, cost-cutting layoffs, declining ratings and flight to common denominator news online? But the work of the House of Representatives’ January 6^th Committee showed that even in the face of the tumultuous blows to the news business in the last 20 years, the platform of live TV still has a major role to play when played well.

The January 6^th Committee notably used the lessons of high-end TV news production in doing its work. They hired James Goldston, a documentary filmmaker and former ABC news president, as a key adviser. They blended scripted questioning with high-impact video recordings in telling an extraordinarily complicated story. Even the unique power of live and unscripted testimony was the product of hundreds of preparatory interviews and hundreds of thousands of document reviews.

In eight days of hearings spread out over six summer weeks in an age of infinite viewing choices, audiences for the first hearing topped 20 million and concluded with nearly 18 million for the finale. These are numbers rarely rivaled by anything other than the National Football League. As for what it all meant politically, we don’t know precisely but it’s hard to imagine that the cumulative effect of this much collective audience exposure didn’t have some impact on the historically stunning mid-term election that followed a few months later.

The bottom line here is that if as hide-bound an institution as Congress can figure out how to reinvent the way it tells complex stories through the medium of live TV, maybe live TV itself has a chance for reinvention and re-engagement with a public that has demonstrated a hunger for some creative news storytelling.

Maybe Peak TV has peaked, but we still have Aubrey Plaza

Yeah, 2022 was a sobering time for the streaming world and a major media companies. NetflixNFLX
got a cold slap in the face from the financial markets and pivoted to adding advertising. Enormous losses from Disney+ led to a wholesale corporate makeover with the return of former CEO Bob Iger. Warner Bros. Discovery’sWBD
dream of a Disney-like bundle remains a work in progress with its abandonment of CNN+ and a still undefined blending of HBO Max, Discovery+ and an unlaunched free advertiser-supported service. After years of hockey-stick like growth in production of new U.S. TV series, U.S.-focused TV production actually fell 24% in 2022.

I’m hardly ignorant of all of these buffeting business trends. But for those of us who grew up in the cable business, the sooner the streaming world recognizes that its future success depends upon – wait for it – a blend of both subscription and advertiser revenue, the better off it will ultimately be. And maybe a production rethinking isn’t just a complete negative if it results in fewer ten-episode series that should really be six and fewer individual episodes that are an hour and half when they should be 45 minutes long. Fewer less-than-epic films that clock in over three hours might also enhance the “user experience” just a bit.

Just please don’t cut back on the deployment of Aubrey Plaza. For those not already on the bandwagon, Plaza has long been an honorary member of the family from her comedic work on NBC’s Parks and Recreation. In 2022 alone, she became the emotional heart of the complex dramatic limited series White Lotus from HBO and plunged into the heart of darkness in Netflix’s Emily the Criminal. As long as our production universe recognizes the value of unconventional and multi-layered performers like Plaza, put me down as a half-full guy for the future of great TV.