THE END OF TRADITIONAL MEDIA

Which of The Big Media Five Will Survive?

Happy Monday Peaceniks. Ready to play Survivor?

Despite the constant chaos of the Media Universe, as I wrote recently, I believe our ecosystem is finding its new equilibrium — its new, complicated, difficult normal.

Fortunately, or not, depending on your outlook, some of the biggest, key components of Media’s new normal rest in the final fates of America’s Big Media conglomerates. In the very near future, some of entertainment’s most important and indelible brands will either transform into the next iteration of themselves for the next generation of audiences, or dissipate into nostalgic splinters within the massive empires of big tech or big finance.

Each of the Big Media Five have specific and quite different strategies for survival. Some actually have strategies. Others, not so much. Which is why some will survive, while others… not so much. After decades of shadowing each other quite closely on business model evolution, the Hollywood herd is finally veering off in different directions.

Fox was the first to sell off a big chunk of their Traditional Empire. Disney was the buyer and continues to be the most stalwart resistor of the spin-off-split-up-sell-it-off mindset. Comcast started the spin-off fire, with Versant, and now WBD aka Disco Bros are dancing toward divorce behind them. Paramount was the first to sell the whole ranch — to Skydance — only to find out that they needed to complete the White House blackmail portion of the transaction to get the deal officially approved.

Which of the Big Media Five will survive? Which will succumb to the undertow of big tech? Below are a dozen-and-a-half infographics comparing and contrasting the current states and strategies of FOX, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast, and Disney, with my assessment of their statuses and stratagems.

Let’s start with first player in the spin cycle, Comcast. While we look at the entire company’s health, it’s important at this moment to pay even closer attention to the individual components that comprise Comcast KeepCo and the Versant spin-machine.