The End of Mass Media—and What Comes Next

21:30Peter Kafka:Axios is really, really gnarly about you click basically any link. It's a free site and they won't let you proceed unless you've given them your email. Right. And so that is a reaction to this renting the audience. So you're going to have smaller audiences, but ideally they're going to be more durable. Email is hardly assured. Like a lot of the compression that is happening in other distribution channels will inevitably come to email. It's obviously a very crowded space. And I think everyone deals with email overload. Yep. So. That's if you even get the email in your inbox, right? Right. After Google sorted it.

22:14Because, again, you're downstream. I mean, you can pretend that's a direct connection, but it's intermediated by massive technology company. So not really. We'll be right back with Brian Morrissey, but first a word from a sponsor.

22:32Peter Kafka:Is Donald Trump still cool? Well, at first here's what he was promising to America. He was promising change. Yeah, promising a big change. Has he lived up to that? No. No, I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't say so at all. I'm disappointed. We're in Washington, D.C. for one of the events that Donald Trump is throwing for America's 250th anniversary, and it's UFC night. Proud to be American. We got free tickets. It's just going to be a great time. That's about it. It's an opportunity to talk to a group that was central in the 2024 election, young men. Why do we think Trump and men seem to have a connection?

23:04Peter Kafka:I feel like he just knows how to advertise himself to the younger proud. It aligns with masculinity, I feel like, to a certain extent. But if they don't like Donald Trump, what do they prefer politically otherwise? I care about my family. I care about my country. I want people to be safe and happy where they live. I care about my wallet too, man. I'm Estet Herndon, and this is America Actually. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

23:32I'm Seth Matlins. My new show, Create or Destroy Reimagining Marketing, explores how every decision a company makes, Not just the marketing ones, but the HR, IR, pricing, org design, and planning ones. The ones most don't consider marketing at all contribute to either creating value or destroying it. Each week, I sit down with CMOs, CEOs, founders, cultural thinkers, the people building, breaking, and reimagining how businesses grow or don't for conversations about what creates value and what destroys it. It's a business show. It's a marketing show. The creator destroys the show that argues. They've always been the same thing.

24:05from the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Wisdomist Company. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

24:19Peter Kafka:And we're back. Back to the platforms. A ton of energy and discussion about chat GPT, AI, open AI, and what that is going to mean for the media industry. that's sort of a thing you read about and hear about if you talk to the people who are running businesses they're all consumed with google i find for the most part sure because i think they're still running on google and that the chat gpt open ai effect has yet to hit them is that a fair analysis i mean because google is the nerve center of the internet like i mean if google for instance There's, you know, Google Discover is a feature in which Google sends a lot of traffic to publishers.

25:04Peter Kafka:OK, so if you don't, it's funny if you're in media, you hear about Google Discover all the time. I don't hear any normal person ever talk about Google Discover. So let's just explain what literally what Google Discover is, how you might get to it. Yeah. I mean, like particularly on mobile, you know, when you open like Chrome, like you land in Google Discover. Google features publishers. They're there by default. You're not going to Google Discover. You go to Google and you're in Google Discover. Yeah, this is just how Google introduces. And in some ways, I almost feel like this is a subsidy program, a welfare program for publishers, particularly news publishers, because, look, Google.

25:41If I were on video, you'd see them furiously nodding. Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, if Google cut off Discover, it would wipe away giant swaths of the professional media industry.

25:54Peter Kafka:Just stop there. Yeah. Stop there. Just let that sink in because it's 100 % true. I don't think people really sort of fully process that. And why does, like, that just seems so obvious that that will go away one day. Either something will happen to Google, Google will change its mind, there'll be a user shift. It's great leverage. This thing that sustains a big swath of digital media can go away with basically a flick of the switch. Yeah. So, I mean, it's great leverage over the media industry, I guess. So it's like complain, but don't complain too much because they haven't played every single card.

26:31So, you know, I think in many ways Google gets too much grief because it's in a really impossible position as the arbiter of where traffic goes on the Internet. And so while they have responded to look, they had the best business model ever created. So the idea that they wanted to like overturn like the table is kind of ridiculous. Why would you do that if you have the best business model ever created? They saw a threat in ChatGPT and have responded with AI overviews. But that is only an acceleration. The fact is Google was so powerful as a distribution force that it was gamed. The story of the internet is gaming.

27:12You know, right when, you know, when email became -

27:14Peter Kafka:Here's a set of incentives. Yeah. We're going to respond to those by building our business, by making products for those incentives. and that's why you inevitably end up with reading stuff on the internet that doesn't really read like it was meant for a human to consume, it's meant for a robot. The famous one was, you know, going back to like, what time does the Super Bowl start? Now, why did what time is the Super Bowl start? You know, which is that every, not every, but a lot of publishers created web pages that would keep repeating about what time the Super Bowl started because a lot of people didn't know what time the Super Bowl started.

27:49So they went to Google and searched it, right? Times that by everything, you know? And so Google had a problem of its core product was becoming less useful. And they saw people, instead of just doing their search terms, putting Reddit on the end of it. And that, if you're sitting at Google, is a signal that your core product is broken. Okay, so they've been trying to fix that product, which has hurt a lot of publishers. Now, they're not like innocent victims in lots of cases, right? Because again, I mean, I guess it's like hate the game, not the player. But they were responding to incentives, particularly in a traffic-based system, to do whatever you can to get clicks from Google.

28:32Peter Kafka:So this is one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on for some fact checking. So I had Vivek Shah, a very smart operator at Zip Davis. and he is suing OpenAI. He's one of only two publishers to do it. He's not suing Google. There's very few people who are suing Google so far. And when I ask him, I say, you know, you've got this collection of websites that seems like it's 100 % dependent on Google traffic. What happens as that goes away for all the reasons we were discussing? Well, it's not going away. It's been, you know, there's a reduction of X percent, but our business is still going fine.

29:03Peter Kafka:What am I missing here? is that really, assuming he's, I mean, he's running a public company. There's only a limit to how much he can fib. So assuming that that's all true, if you're a Ziff Davis investor, should you go, yeah, that's fine. Their business is in good shape. The Google erosion is minor and we can deal with it. Or is that existential for someone like Vivek Shah and everyone else who's built this business? I mean, I don't know what Vivek is saying internally, But I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, internally they're planning for Google Zero. You know, that is the sort of term of art, I guess, for worst case scenario planning for having no search traffic.

29:46Peter Kafka:So you're writing down the decline. Yeah, that is not going to be the case. But if you look at the few publicly traded companies, whether it's, I guess, the newly rechristened People Inc. and Ziff Davis, you know, the market is not assigning much value to these businesses. And it's hard to escape that. And that is because they do not control their distribution. So while it's not going to go to zero, they need to greatly remake their businesses. And it is true that, for instance, like AI overviews is a big topic, right? And this is what Google is putting on the top of a search results page in which it's like a chat CPT-like answer to queries.

30:27And they've been slowly introducing it to the search experience, but not uniformly. There are certain categories that are much more impacted. For instance, if you're in the news category, they're weirdly not really doing AI overviews with news that much. So far. So far. If you're in, and this is surprising to me, health, for instance, like Vivek has like a lot of health sites because they're very valuable, right? I mean, having like a health site that appears in search results is incredibly valuable. You create that content once, those people are incredibly valuable to pharmaceutical companies and all kinds of others.

31:07Okay, so that business is really impacted by this. But it's not uniform. That is true. And a lot of the evidence right now is that AI is expanding the search market in many ways. How so? In that the actual volume of traditional searches is still continuing. That this is more rather than just a replacement.

31:37Peter Kafka:I wonder if that's just an artifact of there's a lot of people who are just doing search the way they always have. And there's people like me now who've gotten really into ChatGPT or Picker Engine and are using it a lot, but still Google. So, yes, it seems like an expansion, but it seems like over time, like I use Google less, the more I use ChatGPT and that more people will follow that path. A hundred percent. It's about timing, right? We always think everything is going to change immediately, particularly with something like AI that is being hyped beyond belief for a bunch of different reasons.

32:13But it takes time, right? And habits take time to change. And so you'll see a lot of charts about chat GBT adoption and whatnot. But the reality is search, traditional search is still around.

32:26Peter Kafka:So if you're running a media business right now, you are worried about ChatGPT in the distance, not that far off, but it's in the distance. And right now you have to worry about Google. All right. So you've explained that. And then on the chat. One interesting thing, I would say this was that's come up a few times is that ChatGPT sends far less traffic to to publishers. But what it does stays around longer and is way more likely to take out a subscription. like seven to eight times more likely to pay. And again, it sort of makes sense. If you're using ChatGPT, you're probably at the end of the bell curve that's much more interested in getting information.

33:06Peter Kafka:Certainly, if you're clicking through a ChatGPT link to an original site, right, you're a motivated information seeker. But play out this, let's just say that is like, you know, and this mostly shifts into that kind of behavior. I think that's probably a positive because let's be real here. A lot of that previous business was built on creating very thin value and creating content for algorithms and for bots, not for like real humans. And so you could make the argument that, look, that business was always to support, like not always, but a lot of times it was support like original reporting. Or other stuff, right?

33:46Peter Kafka:Other stuff. We make, you know, it wasn't just garbage websites making what time it was Super Bowl, right? You'd see the LA Times or CBS or, you know, So real, august media publications were doing that. And the explanation was, well, that just generates X amount of revenue, and then that can help support something else. I mean, everyone had an SEO chop shop sort of in the back, right? And it might not, you know, these were not stories that they would feature on their homepage or, you know, tout. But they had, a lot of times, separate teams that were creating. And they still have some of that? Like, there's a commerce team in a lot of places that are just sort of making how to get the best VPN to steal this Premier League game.

34:22You know, that's a great example, commerce, which is really like, to me, it's like affiliate, like, and, you know, affiliate links are basically shopping links that people click on and you get a cut if they buy the product. And what a lot of publishers found is that the search authority that they built up for something totally different could be used for this kind of catalog. So it's almost like, you know, stuffing a catalog in with a magazine or with a newspaper. It's like polybagging, I guess, on the Internet.

34:54Peter Kafka:Only an old is going to know what a polybag is. But yes, the idea of shoving something else into your New York Times or local newspaper that you didn't ask for has some value. Yeah, but it's a racket. Right. I mean, like that's the media is filled with rackets and like, you know, Google shut down that racket for the most part of saying you don't have authority to like be doing all of this, like this shopping, these shopping guides. And so we're going to send less traffic to you. We're going to send by the way, our interests are to send it directly ourselves to the brands. So you're almost in competition with us.

35:29And so Google's going to act in Google's interest. But at the same time, it's hard to like mourn. Nobody is going to be protesting out front that there aren't enough SEO optimized affiliate pages on the Internet.

35:43Peter Kafka:Like we can't escape that. Except for the SEO people. But yes. Yes. So what is the bigger existential? I'm focused on this idea of like, what's the bigger threat? Is it AI or is it Google just sort of eventually saying this thing that, you know, these various things that we have used to send you traffic that don't really generate a lot of value for us, we're going to stop doing them almost altogether. And Google Discover we no longer need or whatever it is. And so all that's just going to go away. And we don't even get to the point where your business is decimated by AI because it stopped working beforehand.

36:17Peter Kafka:Or is there something that AI will do that will just make it even more difficult? It seems to me that if ChatGPT, OpenAI is successful, they essentially become the browser for the internet. Like you just get everything through them. Well, they've seen it. They want to be the new interface. They want to be the new Google. Right. Yeah. So they want to be. I think the same browser sort of, maybe because I'm old, like drives it home, right? It's not just you're using it for search. You're just using it as the starting point for the internet. Right. Your assistant, I've been using the Chachapiti Pulse, which is their sort of daily digest.

36:54How is it? I mean, it's interesting because news is a feature, not a product of that. So they'll summarize what you need to think about, like with your upcoming meetings and whatnot. And news is like a smaller part of that. And I think that is kind of how it mimics in everyday life. You know, outside of people like us, you know, most people, news is just a small part of what, you know, their daily lives are.

37:20Peter Kafka:I don't know why it occurred to me to not do this until just now, but I just the other day said, oh, just start making me a daily news digest, ChatGPT. Yeah. It's not good right now. I'm assuming it will get better the more I push it is sort of the thing I'm learning about all this stuff, the more I tell it and refine it. But also, I still can't fully trust it, all that. Sure. But it's inevitable that it is going to assemble news, among other things. Yeah. There is like an irony that, you know, we always like hear about trust in media being at some new low. At some point it will bottom out. Right.

37:53And it'll start to normalize. But then at the same time, like all these AI answer bots are known for their hallucinations and just making stuff up. But like the trust, the trust issues seem to fall toward to to mainstream media, which.

38:12Peter Kafka:Well, Donald Trump now has has squared the circle is like, oh, I've already I've already made you distrust media for for years and years. And now he just the other day in a press conference like, oh, maybe you can't even trust that image because maybe it's a I. You can just say that now. Right. I mean, that could be like an opportunity. And I think, again, the pendulum always swings too far. And to me, the biggest opportunity for institutional media, you talk about the biggest threat. To me, the biggest threat is irrelevance, right? It's not, these distribution challenges can be managed. You're going to have to refactor the businesses, which is like a nice code word for like layoffs.

38:46Like I don't care, you know, what is going to happen at Paramount or massive layoffs. It doesn't really matter if, you know, the union doesn't want the workers to reply to Barry Weiss's, you know, what did you get done last week email. Now, there's going to be massive layoffs. That's the reality. These businesses don't work at the scale that they are right now, and they're going to have to get more efficient. And that's going to lead to fewer people because anyone can compete these days and they're losing relevance in the marketplace. And that is the biggest challenge. I believe that the media brands that are completely relevant to and felt like they are essential to specific audiences will be completely fine.

39:33They'll be fine. They'll figure it out.

39:35Peter Kafka:How many of those are there? I mean, I don't know. I mean, do you think there's 10 of those or do you think there's three of those in every category and there's an infinite number of categories? No, I think that there's like an incredibly large amount of those, right? They might be different. they might be smaller right and that's where we talk about like niche and that's because like you can be really relevant to a defined group of people whether it's people in like a business category that's always important or whether it's in a lifestyle category particularly a lifestyle that a category that attracts rich people that is going to always be a very vibrant area um And for non-rich people, then you need more scale, right?

40:22Yeah. That's the biggest, you know, the biggest challenge ends up coming to news and particularly to news that is general and is not for elite audiences.

40:35Peter Kafka:But that has always been the case. There's been pressure on that forever. And the idea that people, the truth is most of those people aren't consuming, don't want to consume news. Yeah. If you give them a choice, their choice is to not consume it. I mean, that's the market, you know, I mean, the market for the like we do a lot of hand wringing and I think it's it's right because the news industry has the civic mission, which is unusual for a business. Right. And it makes it a really difficult business to to operate. But a lot of this is is the market speaking like if the market doesn't want a product, then the product is not going to do well in the market.

41:10Peter Kafka:We'll be right back with Brian Morrissey. But first, a word from a sponsor. Uncovered windows can make your home feel up to 20 degrees hotter. Stay cool and save up to 50 % off custom window treatments during the 4th of July mega sale at blinds.com. From outdoor shades to room darkening blinds, finding the perfect fit is easy. Get free samples, expert design help, and professional measure and install services. Or DIY with confidence and support every step of the way. Shop up to 50 % off site-wide, plus huge savings on doorbusters, right now during the 4th of July mega sale at Blinds.com. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify.

41:51They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer.

42:20Peter Kafka:And we're back. As I mentioned before, you write about media, but you also have been an hour and operator. You ran Digiday, and now you're an owner-operator, run your one-man business. What is running those businesses taught you about media that wouldn't be evident to someone who was just covering it?

42:41I think a lot of it comes down to responding to what the market values is so important. And sometimes it's different than what you think it should value. And that is.

42:58Peter Kafka:Marlo Stanfield wire speech. You want it to be this way, but it's another way. I don't know. I mean, like that's like when you get into the market, I always say if you listen to the market, it will tell you what it wants. It might just not be what you you want to hear. Right. I mean, I think a lot of people want to hear that the market wants you like your your thinking or even if you're reporting and stuff. And a lot of times, you know, that's why we see a lot of these companies get into like events and whatnot, because what the market really wants is for you to use your brand to get a bunch of people in a room to interact with each other.

43:35And that's a different function, right? That is a lot of times these businesses, it's almost like operating multiple businesses because it's not in what is theoretically their core product, which is a journalism product, something else. and so that I think being responsive to that is has been a big lesson still in 2025 I'm astonished

43:59Peter Kafka:by a lot of people who do what I do make content for publishers and don't understand how the revenue gets generated and who brings it in so given that you are literally selling your own stuff What do you think that has taught you? I've got a sales meeting after this. You have to put yourself in. And to me, I think reporting is actually a good. And reporting and sales are kind of similar in that way. And that like the best reporters are listeners, not talkers. And the best sellers, which is extremely rare, are listeners and not talkers. Because the clients will tell you what they need. And a lot of it is just literally how you can help them get more customers.

44:46I think a lot of times, and this is a challenge throughout the media industry, right, is a lot of digital media. And when the Internet came on, it went more towards direct marketing versus brand. You know, so there was always this kind of split between brand, which is like you want to create an image or you want people to be aware of a product or service. And then direct marketing, which is like we're going to deliver you a customer. And the Internet is all about direct marketing. And it has and as the Internet has become all of media, almost all of media has moved to direct marketing. So no matter where you are, you're in this media ecosystem, you need to speak to a direct marketing mindset because that has, in fact, now I think it's gone too far.

45:42I think people are going to rediscover that the power of that kind of image advertising that isn't easily quantified on a spreadsheet, but the incentives are completely to be as close to a sales policy.

45:57Peter Kafka:One thing I've been asking people on the buying side is in this world where the platforms are getting more and more power, right? And more of it is going through Google and we're imagining a world where more of it is going through ChatGPT or someone else probably ChatGPT. Where are those advertisements going to run in the future? if you're if you're if you're still in the business of of selling uh toyota ads or whatever it is where do you find the people to where are you going to find the surface to reach your audience i have every faith in the world that we will uh have advertising with us until we go into the ground yes okay so this is not an interesting idea i'm not i'm not i ask them they give they look at me like i have horns just the way you're looking at me now i mean i'm not worried i mean my money is always on advertising.

46:49As long as, as long as we have capitalism, we are going to have advertising.

46:53Peter Kafka:No matter who owns that internet experience, they are going to find a way to say, Oh, you'd like to advertise a Toyota to Peter. Great. Yeah. But I do think that there is, there is a revival of analog advertising. I mean, you look at like, I'm sure like on the subway here, you cannot, you cannot avoid those like friend subway ads, right? And this is an AI pin companion. It's a harebrained scheme that seems like it's almost like performance art. It does seem very meta, yes. Like, and they're all - Because the guy is doing interviews about his subway campaign, which is being defaced and everyone hates it because it's great.

47:31Peter Kafka:You're talking to me right now. Yeah, it's definitely, I don't know the like five signs that you're in a bubble, but that's one of them. But, you know, to me, it's just interesting that this futuristic AI companion, you know, the growth hack now is subway ads that people are defacing. By the way, OpenAI is now doing TV ads. Right. And so there is a revival of analog, and that is really brand advertising at the end of the day, because everything swings too far. We're in this atomized culture where I always say it's like never in the history of humanity have so many people been famous that nobody has heard of.

48:11Like because we're all in our little bubbles that are created by algorithms and increasingly by AI that I don't know if you feel this way. Like I run across like things that are like supposed like phenomenons that I have never heard of and come in contact with like ever.

48:28Peter Kafka:All the time, although that has been happening to me, honestly, since like the 90s. Like I'm like, what? The achy breaky heart is the number one hit? I've never heard of it. I think it is way more common today than it ever was. And there still is a power in being attached to a broader cultural moments and whatnot. So this is beyond, to me, the Super Bowl. This is why out-of-home advertising is popular. This is why we're seeing a mini revival of print. There is a reaction, I believe, that is brewing to this synthetic media environment that simply feels fake. Like, everything feels fake, I feel like, now in the internet.

49:23Like, the fights are fake, the personalities in many times are optimized to be fake.

49:29Peter Kafka:I do worry, wonder if the younger folks are like, so? Who cares? It's all just stuff for me to consume. Yeah. I mean, however, if you see like, you know, there's like a revival of like retro tech and stuff. You know, there's like I saw there was a bar that opened in Washington, D.C. that like confiscates your phones. And I think that one of the things with technology is it's become it's become so dominant in our lives that to me. Getting a break from it's a little luxury. Yeah, but it's also like counterculture. Yeah. You know, it's like, it's not cool. I do not believe I'm not, I'm a 52 year old man.

50:10I should not talk about young people, but that's what we do. It's hard for me to see how it's cool to be extremely online.

50:18Peter Kafka:Right. But many people are anyway. How do you use, you, Brian Morrissey, do you use AI in your work life right now or in AI in your life period? Are you using it much? yeah i mean i use it all the time for research for for things within the business of like you know spreadsheet stuff of like trying to make sense of like data um are you more likely to go retrieve information or to help you sort of analyze stuff that you've already put together both yeah it's funny i've been like using i've been like experimenting with it with like editing and whatnot because i think one of the one of the challenges of being you know going like solo is you don't have an editor and so i've been like experimenting with it and i don't i kind of don't like it like i feel like it um it kind of it it makes things technically correct but they also i feel like there's so much um upside to having a relatability in the content where personality kind of comes through and i feel like it sands off the smooths out that stuff and it kind of reads like generic internet yeah but that kind of makes sense that's what you'd want and like i'll it'll tell me it's doing something in a peter kofka voice i'm like well maybe not really the flip side is like all right give me 20 headlines for this story and 17 of them just are not usable and another two aren't great and one's okay but i can iterate on it like right as a thought starter or i even though i know it's not really giving me thoughts it's just spitting out mad libs at me like i still find some of that feedback right slash better than none yeah but it's like you put that up against like reopening three mile island and you're like really like i'm not really certain because i mean like words are like the easiest thing for the for for these machines now we're talking about the overall value yeah well what I'm saying it's like there's there's this dichotomy of you hear how we're not going to have, you know, doctors in like five years, 10 years, whatever it is.

52:25And then we're doing some fairly. I was doing interview. I take it very seriously. We're not curing cancer.

52:32Peter Kafka:I was doing interview prep this morning, Brian, with AI. And I find it least useful often for like interview prep because it's not one. It can't read. It can't read anything behind a paywall. So it's not getting me your beehive stuff. It doesn't listen to podcasts. It's sort of. So if it's something hasn't been summarized somewhere else, it can't do it for me. To me, it's like it's it's improved things, but almost not as much as I would think. Right. Like, I mean, it's not like to me, like this massive game changer yet. I'm either doing it wrong or to me, it's like a 10 to 15 percent thing. Have you tried the I'm going to ramble into the microphone and give it some ideas and then ask it to structure something for me?

53:17Yeah. I mean, I've tried, I've tried using - I kind of like that. Yeah. I like it. Right. But like - Solves a black page problem. It has so many annoying tics that I find it difficult. Like it's not this, it's that, that, that kind of stuff that just drives me nuts. It always wants to put things in notions. I don't know what that is about. Like I'm not a notion person. Like -

53:37Peter Kafka:Which is always wants to make another thing for it. It doesn't want you to - Right. The engagement thing. Don't go, I could turn this into a PDF. I could turn this into a one pager. I can do this. Yes. I keep asking it to stop with the sort of engagement questions, which is another sign that, you know, I think the big question with AI is which direction it goes. and, you know, with Sora and Veo and this AI sort of create your own social media content stuff. Like, again, it's hard to like see them doing this stuff and then to also hear about how it's going to cure cancer. And it's like, what's going on here?

54:17We're not hearing as much about the AGI. And so I think we're in this point where there are a lot of questions about how much of a bubble this is, because this would take down the economy, because it's like if it succeeds, a bunch of us have our jobs evaporated. and if it fails, a bunch of us have our jobs evaporated because the economy is going to lose what, like, the economists did something like$30 trillion, like, you know, could be evaporated in wealth. Like, that doesn't seem like a good scenario. I could end the podcast right there,

54:56Peter Kafka:but I want to end it on an up note. I did a stunt podcast with you and Ben Smith earlier this year. We were looking for optimism. I don't know if I'm sure we found it. But you have to be an optimist because you're running your own business. What are you excited about? I mean, I'm excited because it's interesting to me because like you can I really do think that it's like a sort of the tale of two cities kind of thing. Best of times, worst of times, because I do not feel underserved for media options right now. There's a lot of garbage you got to wade through because like I still use X and I can't stop using it.

55:31Right. But overall, there's a lot of new entrants that are interesting and that are different. And, you know, I mean, I don't know if you've had like the TBPN guys on.

55:48Peter Kafka:Yes, we have. I don't know. Like, you know, there's something there that's interesting. You know, I think Silicon Valley is creating its own media ecosystem. Right. And it's just like, OK, they're going to support them existing. OK, fine. You know, they just happen to line up with having a tech optimist view. I think those things are going to happen all over the place. And I think people are building new media brands that, you know, are, yeah, they might be smaller. I mean, look at like golf. Like golf media is exploding on YouTube, you know, and these are really interesting businesses. they're way more interesting businesses than like golf week or whatever came before it um so i don't think it's all doom and gloom out there i think it i think it's challenging for a lot of people with old business models but that's always the case whenever there is a shift in in in platforms that counts as optimism thank you brian morrissey all right thanks peter you can catch brian on the internet the internet yeah absolutely go to the rebooting.com I have a podcast called The Rebooting Show and I also do another one called People vs.

57:01Algorithms Consume them all Thanks Brian Thanks again to Brian Morrissey

57:07Peter Kafka:Great to talk to Brian Thanks to our sponsors We'll let you listen to this show for free Thanks to Charlotte Silver, my producer who makes this show much better Thanks to you guys for listening and writing See you soon

57:39Peter Kafka:Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. It was a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it! Tonight, we feast! An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.