Happy Monday War & Peaceniks - and hullo from London!
London is colder than it should be for June – otherwise known as “normal for London.” But regardless of their wonky weather and awful traffic, there’s no place on earth with the magic of this city.
With two thousand years of history and architecture crammed into cobblestone streets alongside cutting-edge steel and glass art-piece buildings, and a population that is, all at once, beautifully diverse (≈ 50% PoC, and more than 300 languages) and frustratingly complicated, simultaneously progressive (60% voted no on Brexit) and reactionary (40% of London voted yes), concurrently cosmopolitan (amazingly global food and fashion) and simple (pub crawls and Sunday Roast), London is truly a world-class international capital, full of craziness, wonder, and contradiction - offering a panoramic view of our past and future with one scan of its cityscape.
I was invited over the pond by egta, an international trade body of television and Media enterprises with 180 members in 40 countries, to open their 50th Anniversary member conference. When egta Director General Katty Roberfroid asked me to speak, she said “you are an expert in our industry’s chaos, but in addition to pointing out the problems, to kick off the day, might you also offer us some inspiration?”
This may seem like a difficult and contradictory assignment. One cannot and should not ignore the Media Apocalypse crashing down around us. If you read me regularly, you’ll know that aggressively not ignoring the Media Apocalypse is kind of my thing. However, I also try to use my research and writing to simultaneously point out the issues our industry faces, and chart a path towards a better, more sustainable future for the Media and our audiences. It is not easy to do both at once.
Many of our peers and leaders in Media willfully ignore the data staring them in the face, telling them that the past is over. So much of our time is spent trying only to fix what’s broken, rather than attempting to invent something new to take us forward. So often, our community dances around our big issues, as an iceberg tears away at our hull, the band plays on, and the ship goes down. Our audiences and our economics are screaming at us that what we’re doing right now is not working, bigly. We should be listening. Yet we seem to have gone collectively deaf.
So, for this speech to these industry leaders, on the 50th Anniversary of their esteemed international cooperative, I decided to pull inspiration from the wondrous city around us. After all, this metropolis - simultaneously ancient and modern - is the physical manifestation of concurrently holding many contradictory thoughts in one’s head, of looking to the past for history, while continually moving ahead towards the future.
As you maybe can tell, I love London. This is my third journey to “The Old Smoke” this year. So, when invited, especially by Katty and egta, I jumped at the chance and took the opportunity to extend the trip into a vacation with my spouse. It’s been more than a minute since we had a vacation, and we’ve had a long, complicated, busy past year. Our daughter got married last weekend. That was right on the heels of Streaming Media NYC, the conference we produced for the first time. That came immediately off adopting a brand new, enormous dog (Nate). And that had quickly followed my double bowel resection surgery to deal with the follicular lymphoma that had decimated my intestines. If anyone deserved a vacation, we did.
While I come here often for business, my partner hadn’t been to London since 2007. Immediately, she remarked just how dramatically the city had changed. Whole new areas of the city’s skyscape had appeared, neighborhoods had been transformed, an entirely new public transport trail line running under the center of the city had been started and completed. Having lived through a very similar modernization and gentrification in New York City, I imagine to most Londoners, these massive changes to their city had taken place rather gradually. It’s like the height of our kids: We don’t always notice how much they’ve grown, but when someone visits, all they can see is how big they’ve gotten.
My traveling companion also remarked at the wild and grand architectural jigsaw puzzle London had become - juxtaposing brand new, radically designed modern structures with some of the oldest most significant buildings in world history.
That is the remarkable thing about big, modern cities like London and New York. They have a metabolism all their own. Despite wars, attacks, recessions, politics and the enormous number of complicated, diverse, wonderful, emotional people who live there, these megapolises continually move ahead - evolving, shapeshifting, adding layers and nuance, while also holding onto their pasts, remembering their histories, keeping what must be kept, and honoring cherished ghosts.
But forward they move - always forward.
That London built an entirely new train line - The Elizabeth Line, a new train named for an historic and deceased monarch - in the face of the collective bullshit that a city its size can produce, is remarkable. That NYC could turn an old train track in an all-but abandoned area of town, into a public park - The Highline - which in turn generated five billion dollars of new development and investment along with tens of thousands of jobs, is astonishing. In spite of myriad challenges in these cities - incompetent politicians, impossible regulation, topsy-turvy finances, the oft schizophrenic personality of their populaces - new architectural marvels still rise, forgotten neighborhoods still transform, defunct buildings are reborn… progress continues to progress.
Of course, this is an oversimplification - there have been decades where London and NYC fell into deep disrepair. And not all the progress made in these cities is evenly distributed to those who need it most.
Yet, for most of the last 35 years, the reinventions of both London and NYC have been nothing short of spectacular. Which is why people keep moving to these cities. This continuous cycle of revitalization is - in my modestly humble opinion - entirely due to these cities’ and populations’ abilities to keep more than one thought in their heads at one time - to walk and chew gum, while cursing out the cab/uber drivers.
In improv, which city living very much emulates, this is called the power of Yes, And.
Yes, Londoners argue - about almost anything. And each day, they invade each other’s personal spaces, crushed like anchovies on the tube. Yes, London has a split political personality. (London didn’t even have a Mayor prior to 200 - true story). And London has nearly doubled the number of jobs in the city since 2000. Yes, London is expensive, difficult and cold. And 2.6 million people have moved there just this century, an increase of 35%. London has issues. Many of them. And yet London is always moving ahead, evolving, reinventing itself in the image of the people who live there. The city may now have a Mayor, but it’s the people of London who really run London. And Londoners are masters of Yes, And.
That’s the inspiration I wanted to bring to egta members - from media companies around the world - this last week. Yes, we have issues, and we must move on. Yes, there are many things about the Media that still work. And the Media, right now, is nearly, entirely broken. Yes, we must make money. And we need to remember why our Media exists - to educate, entertain, and inform the people we serve.
For much of their history Media Moguls acted with near impunity, while consumers had little choice and no power (just as Londoners did not choose their own Chief Executive before 2000.) In both the Media and London, that has all changed rather dramatically in the last quarter century. Londoners now elect their Mayor, as they did again just a month ago, re-electing the city’s first Muslim and non-white mayor for an historic third term. Similarly, consumers now control their Media, not the Moguls. Despite the outrageous pay of our entertainment CEOs, the Media ecosystem left its top-down era years ago and has since been squarely rooted in its new User-Centric Era.
This shift has left Media companies at a total loss for words and ideas. Think hard: Try to name the last truly great innovation the mainstream Media has offered audiences. The answer: Streaming. In 2007. Seventeen years ago. That’s when Netflix disrupted Hollywood. And Hollywood never recovered. Or maybe the launch of Spotify. In 2006. Or when they launched a free tier in 2009.
It used to be that Media companies solved real problems. That time has ended. It's been a decade and a half since the Media industry introduced new, legitimate innovation.
Meanwhile, consumers now have more Media choice than at any point in history, and they use that new-found power to burn and churn through content like a hot knife through butter, with zero concern for what it does to our business models. It’s only fair, since the Media screwed consumers for decades with bloated cable bundles, overpriced music CDs, skyrocketing prices for movie tickets – without any concern for our audiences’ finances. It’s funny to see the ganders react when suddenly faced with what’s been done to the geese.
Innovation stagnation is Media’s biggest problem. But it does not need to be.
In March, right after my bowel resection surgery, I gave a speech at SXSW. Then, I compared my battle with lymphoma to the cancer inside the Media industry. That day, I posted a piece in this space outlining my tumorous metaphor. In the essay, I recounted a call with my oncologist who told me, post-surgery, that there were no longer signs of cancer present in my body. It was a surprising victory after a tough struggle. And it wasn’t the end either.
After getting out of hospital, I never really felt right. Eating was difficult and pain was ever-present. The docs told me this was normal recovery, and not to worry. They were incorrect. A scan last month showed that the lymphoma (a recurring cancer that is never truly cured) had returned and again needed treatment. I start up again when I get back from Europe. Yes, the surgery worked. And the cancer returned. Yes, I will need treatment off and on for the rest of my life. And I will gladly live with it – because, let’s face it, I literally don’t have a choice. And, in the grand scheme of things, follicular lymphoma is a walk in the park compared to what so many people on this planet face every single day. Yes, it’s a traumatic pain in the ass. And I will learn from it. I already have.
Last month, after my telling scan, but just before our Streaming Media conference, I wrote a piece offering a cure for what ails Media: Radical Collaboration.
For much of Media’s past, the business has been a zero-sum game: “It’s not enough that WE win! All others must LOSE.” And for the most part, this is how the Media behaves even now – as if the people still don’t elect their own mayor. Most Media C-Suites have no idea who their users are, and even less about what they want. The result? A truly shitty user experience for audiences everywhere – a cacophonous, unnavigable tower of content babel.
[Above: Babel - 2001, by Cildo Meireles, at the Tate Modern.]
Users log-in, search for something to watch, fail, and leave. They logon to a new platform, search again, fail again, and leave. Rinse, repeat. Hit the like button now if this ever happens to you.
Yes, despite all the technology at our fingertips, even with the massive amounts of data in our clean rooms, the Media has totally failed to create simple, really personalized experiences for our audiences, to ease their journeys, to bring them joy, without friction. And we can fix this. If we work together, as one. If we collaborate radically. If we take down the walls around our fading gardens. If we put our users, not our quarterly earnings, at the center of our models and our cultures. If we behave more like London.
The mayor of London might think he runs the city. But those of us who know the city know the truth: The people run this town. Despite the crowded subways, terrible traffic patterns, crazy politics, and often shitty leaders, Londoners make it all work, they evolve, they always move towards progress, day by day, inch by inch, until, to those who visit anew feel and see the change literally everywhere.
I am honored that egta chose me to open their 50th Anniversary event. I am thrilled that it was in London. Yes, because it’s my second favorite place on earth. And because it’s a perfect case study for how the Yes, And mindset can help us fix the Media that we broke. If we do this, yes, we can survive Media’s new era. And we can thrive as well.
Enjoy your week!
ESHAP
Evan - thank you for this juxtaposition of holding multiple thoughts in one heads while trying to make sense of things. I am heading to London/UK next week - part biz, part explorer and part meet my Cornish ancestors. You have set the stage for my trip. I wish you the best on your C journey. Your attitude is amazing and a lesson onto itself.
Mazel Tov Evan on your daughter's wedding. Your message here is on point, as usual. Evolution is necessary and fundamental to growth and success. So is understanding your audience, consumer, customer and so many assume they know who they are, but don't know what makes them tick. Wishing you strength and resilience ahead.