People still want the TV and movie experience offered by traditional studios, but social platforms are becoming competitive for their entertainment time—and even more competitive for the business models that studios have relied on. Social video platforms offer a seemingly endless variety of free content, algorithmically optimized for engagement and advertising. They wield advanced ad tech and AI to match advertisers with global audiences, now drawing over half of US ad spending. As the largest among them move into the living room, will they be held to higher standards of quality?
At the same time, the streaming on-demand video (SVOD) revolution has fragmented pay TV audiences, imposed higher costs on studios now operating direct-to-consumer services, and delivered thinner margins for their efforts. It can be a tougher business, yet the premium video experience offered by streamers often sets the bar for quality storytelling, acting, and world-building. How can studios control costs, attract advertisers, and compete for attention? Are there stronger points of collaboration that can benefit both streamers looking to reach global audiences and social platforms that lack high-quality franchises?
This year’s Digital Media Trends lends data to the argument that video entertainment has been disrupted by social platforms, creators, user-generated content (UGC), and advanced modeling for content recommendations and advertising. Such platforms may be establishing the new center of gravity for media and entertainment, drawing more of the time people spend on entertainment and the money that brands spend to reach them.
Our survey of US consumers reveals that media and entertainment companies—including advertisers—are competing for an average of six hours of daily media and entertainment time per person (figure 1). And this number doesn’t seem to be growing.2 Not only is it unlikely that any one form of media will command all six hours, but each user likely has a different mix of SVOD, UGC, social, gaming, music, podcasts, and potentially other forms of digital media that make up these entertainment hours.
HEY IT’S FREEEEED!!!
Guys. Remember that? Remember Fred? That’s how we’re going to look back on todays social media content. It will be cringeworthy embarrassments. Meanwhile go watch Fraiser. Go watch Friends. Go watch The Office. Hindsight is 20/20, but those shows hold up decades later. Do you think “Dance hype craze” video 574 is going to be something we remember fondly in 2040?
Holy shit. 2040. I’m going to be so old. My knees are going to hurt.
I would argue that Friends does not hold up so well. It still has funny bits, but it’s also quite sexist and is homophobic and transphobic (while also being one of the few big shows to even talk about gay and trans topics at the time).
The outdated social stuff comes up occasionally but like maybe there’s an issue once a season or so, it’s not going to be distracting episode to episode.
The bigger problem with Friends imho, is the laugh track. It’s just weird watching a show with a laugh track these days, especially when modern comedies have learned to use that time to cram in way more jokes. It just makes friends feel somewhat archaic and out of time, even compared to Seinfeld which objectively looks much older from a cinematography standpoint.
We must see things wildly differently. I remember Ross having a lesbian wife, and she had a lesbian partner, and they were always written as strong characters. The closest thing to homophobic is they’d make little jokes among the men about how they appear to others. And then they’d say something like “Oh, don’t do it THAT way!” And then the 3 guys would go “HEY! WHOA! OK!” as if to say that the way they were doing it looked gay, and they didn’t want to appear gay.
Which I don’t find homophobic so much as it is insecure, which was the whole joke. Their insecurities in themself is the joke. Not a hatred of gay people.
I don’t remember any mentions at all about trans on the show. I’m not even sure the word “trans” existed at the time.
The only sexism I remember is the football thanksgiving episode, and the poker episode. But the sexism itself was the joke. And I think they played both sides fairly.
Chandler’s “dad” was trans, but they didn’t use that word. I don’t remember if they ever put a hard label on that character, but his dad wasn’t just a drag queen. Chandler’s growing acceptance over the course of the show was a positive, but the jokes made were not.
Not sure why you used airquotes on dad, but yeah. I totally forgot about that character. I see your point now.
Well, I know I remember the Hamster dance website fondly, does that count as a dance hype craze?
I also remember many Youtube videos from many years ago with some amount of nostalgia, e.g. Chocolate Rain or Mocha in “His First Broccoli” or the Yogscast series Shadow of Israphel.
I know some old shows and movies hold up well but others are pretty bad too. And the newer ones have an even worse ratio there.
As far as cringe goes, I think some of the series you mentioned, like Friends, has a good percentage of that too.
Yeah whatever brings positive nostalgia to people will be looked at fondly. I remember early internet fads and viral websites in a positive light that are just as dumb and transient as whatever viral content is being pushed out today. People view things in a different light and some kids in 15 years time will get nostalgic about Skibidi Toilet and talk about how “Dance Hype Craze” fell off after video 983.
I have fond memories of Weebl and Bob and Charlie the Unicorn…
Ooooh that’s dirty
Do ya think so?
No but GMM had been producing content for over 10 years and they are still looked at fondly.
If you don’t like that example I won’t say they are the greatest works ever made but their are so many indie animators that are making whole shows and uploading them for free on YouTube that many people will remember fondly.
Go look at James Lee’s channel. He would never be given the freedom to do the weird style he has on tv.
“Badger, Mushroom, Snaaaaake” on the other hand ages like fine whiskey.
Dropout, New Smosh and even most of the video essay YouTubers that are on Nebula would like to have a word with you