Transition or rupture?

The Canadian prime minister was describing a structural change in the old-world order: a break that was embodied in and largely driven by the Trump administration.

The Carney analysis was that power was now shifting abruptly, not gradually. Economic interdependence had become a tool of leverage and coercion. Middle-ranking powers were exposed to an unprecedented surge of disruption, emanating from the warring superpowers. The rules of the game no longer applied. The old order had gone and chaos now reigned, unless radical new structures and alliances were created. The political and economic events since then seem to have confirmed his gloomy and scary analysis.

Now, some commentators have seen some spooky parallels of this global analysis in the media business. For years, analysts have been describing the industry as “transitioning”: from print to digital, from broadcast to streaming, from advertising to subscriptions. Yet it feels like something fundamental has changed. Are we actually reshaping or just falling apart? Are we transitioning or rupturing?

At the macro level, it looks like the media ecosystem has ruptured: distribution, advertising, regulation and platform power have all undergone discontinuous change. Yet at the micro level, the story is more nuanced and positive. The industry still holds durable assets that are becoming more valuable in a chaotic environment: trust, brand, community, editorial judgement and first-party relationships.

Looking from the top down

The “media rupture” narrative runs like this:

• Print advertising is not migrating to digital: it has collapsed into near-zero value;
• Classifieds did not shift platforms: they just vanished;
• Local news has not declined: it has fallen off a cliff;
• Magazines are not consolidating: they are seeping away;
• Broadcasters did not gradually lose share: streaming blew apart their economics;
• And so on…

The superpowers are the platforms, weaponising supply chains, financial systems and infrastructure, while stealing media-owner content:

• Google and Meta control the advertising pipes;
• TikTok controls youth attention;
• Amazon controls cloud infrastructure, content pipelines, and a growing share of advertising;
• Apple controls privacy rules that are reshaping the entire ad economy.

They are destructive forces in the attention economy, shaping the rules of engagement for publishers, broadcasters, creators, and advertisers. Their decisions can erase entire business models overnight. The replacement of a stable, rules-based media ecosystem with one governed by platform power. Essentially, this is a white-knuckle ride into oblivion.

Looking from the bottom up

The “media transition” story is both more positive and more nuanced. While there are massive forces at work that no one on their own can influence or resist, there are also ways to survive and surf the wave of chaos. There are common threads running through every media segment. These include:

• Constant revenue diversification and test-and-tweak;
• Trusted brands being cherished as premium assets;
• Communities and memberships driving everything;
• Human editorial judgement in the middle of AI slop;
• First-party data and relationships;
• Live events;
• Smarter e-commerce activity;
• Extending the life of print and shoring up the retail channel;
• Hyper-activity in the “middle powers”: the SMEs below the media giants. Yet collaboration is urgently needed to provide scale;
• And always focusing on what can be changed rather than obsessing about the uncontrollable chaos.

Looking laterally across the segments

Yet the picture from the mediafutures project is also very varied from segment to segment in terms of (1) the level of threat and (2) the strength of the response.

• National news: Serious levels of threat, but a strong industry response, built around subscriptions, newsletters, podcasts.
• Regional news: Highest threat with a nascent response, founded on hyperlocal newsletters, community funding, more flexible revenue models and more digital-only operations.
• Lifestyle consumer media: Moderate threat with a moderate response, with diversification into influencer partnerships, events and e-commerce.
• Specialist consumer: Lower threat with a strong response, using the same diversification tools as their larger lifestyle companions, but built around smaller, more engaged communities.
• B2B media: Lower threat with by far the strongest response, with events, data products, research & insight and consultancy.

All this mad activity can be seen in more granular detail in the most recent mediafutures poll. This showed that 27% of respondents were investing in their operations (“we are investing more money than the costs we are taking out”), as opposed to 22% cost-cutting (“our cost savings outweigh our investments”).

Respondents were then asked to look out into the future to take a view as to whether they were likely to change their current approach over the coming year. The largest group (59%), said that they were “Steady State” and would hold to their current strategy. This figure is strongly up on past years when it stood at 46%: a growing number are sticking to the plan. The remaining 41% are “flippers”:

• Positive flippers (22%) are ready to move into their investment stage, but this number is well down on the previous year’s 33%.
• Negative flippers (19%) are prepared to make further and deeper cuts than to date.

The overview

So, the picture is fragmentary, varying from brand to brand. The overall macro system has indeed ruptured. Platform power, advertising economics and distribution infrastructure are all being reshaped. At a micro level, some brands are certainly facing imminent death in a Carney-style apocalypse. Yet many others are responding strongly and are successfully transitioning to a new, reshaped future, built on trust, brand, editorial authority and community.

The media world has changed for good. That means a mix of fast-transitioning winners and slow-moving losers in a rupturing environment.

This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.