MEDIA: WHERE ARE WE?

A New Media Map & A Whole New World

Happy Monday Peaceniks! Ready for adventure? Here’s the (really, really) new map…

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This is my latest Media Universe Map — there is a LOT of new territory to cover. We’ve added 40 companies and entirely new categories for The Creator Economy, AI, Measurement, Global platforms, and (after much mathematical debate) the Public Service Media sector. UPDATE: Warner Bros. Discovery announced their split, the day I dropped this new map — this has been updated to include for the first time, the envisioned split, with my projected valuations for COMCAST/KEEPCO and VERSANT as well as WARNER MAX and DISCO NETS.

[NOTE: THIS ☝️ MAP HAS BEEN UPDATED AS OF JUNE 30, 2025. I HAVE ADDED ESTIMATED VALUATIONS FOR COMCAST/KEEPCO AND VERSANT. OTHER ADDITIONS AND RESHAPING REMAIN THE SAME AS THE JUNE 2 MAP, WITH UPDATED VALUATIONS. DATA IN CHARTS BELOW ARE FROM THE JUNE 2 MAP. THE LATEST UPDATED MEDIA UNIVERSE MAP IS ALWAYS HERE.]

Over the years, I’ve revised the map over one hundred times — by hand in PowerPoint. But this is, by far, the most substantive redrawing in years. Before I break all that down, some brief context for the major renovation.

Eight years ago, I got fired on my fiftieth birthday. Since, I’ve completely transformed into a full-time Creator. (And love it.) Simultaneous to my personal metamorphosis, the whole Media Universe also transformed. Some companies and people have evolved more successfully than others. But whether or not you wanted change, nearly everything — and everyone — in media, tech, and entertainment has morphed, dramatically, since my first map hit a half-decade ago.

The company that fired me eight years ago is splitting apart. Netflix is now worth more than Comcast, Disney, Paramount, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery — combined. Today, YouTube is the biggest channel on television. Meta will sell more advertising this year than all the world’s traditional TV. Podcasters decided the last US presidential election. The planet’s most popular stars are now Creators. This year, Millennials are turning 45 and Gen Z turns 30. In short:

SHIT HAS CHANGED.

This time last year, I wrote about how I use the summer to make change. In 2025, I prepped for that change early — studying new trends, deep-diving into new data, and issuing two new reports: Media’s Generation Gap and YouTube: A Landscape Analysis. Now that summer’s officially here, I am shipping change — hard and fast. So, we ripped apart and reassembled the Media Universe Map to better represent the actual change that’s taken place, happening now and coming soon to the Media business.

ALL THE CHANGE THAT’S FIT TO MAP

One major reason I leave companies off my map is that they lack reliable or verifiable valuations. To include many of the map’s new additions, I had to relax this edict a bit. With all that said, here are the major alterations we’ve made to the Media Universe Map…