Media Shapers – the results are in

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Jim Bilton about this year’s Media Shapers survey and you can hear what he had to say on our recent podcast.

The survey asked two questions: “Which individual do you think is currently having the biggest impact on the shape of the media business — for good or ill” and “Which companies are leading the industry at the moment?”.

Jim told me which individuals and companies made the list and what survey respondents had to say about them and also picked out some important themes running through the media sector at the moment.

Here are some of them:

• AI remains the key issue for the media industry in 2024; the issues from 2023 have not been fully resolved but we’re a step further down the road with publishers looking to do deals — the aim is, hopefully, to make some money but not get railroaded.
• There are two noteworthy content consumption trends: firstly, the shift from reading to watching and, secondly, the shift from long form to short.
• Due to the fragmentation of the media industry, there is an absence of old-style media barons and big C-suite personalities, with the exception of nonagenarian Rupert Murdoch.
• Gen Z has moved away from “media companies” to news personalities who present, analyse and interpret, often in short form on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
• Some influencers have now grown so substantial that they are well placed to become the media business leaders of the future — witness the success of Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger Podcasts business.
• B2B and consumer media companies are monitoring the impressive marketing work being done by news brands in the subscriptions / membership area and are looking to see what they can copy and test in their own markets.
• Collaboration is a big theme — collaboration to face up to big tech, to deal with the retail supply chain and the resourcing challenges faced by hyperlocals, amongst other things.

Despite these and other challenges, Jim detected a sense of optimism as publishers were getting their houses in order ready to ride the big wave coming in 2025.