Hot List: Is TV Learning To Ride Again?
"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any." - Alice Walker
In 2004, I was a guest host on C-SPAN and bombed. CEO Susan Swain, told me “Don’t just get back up when you fall off the horse. Success comes from being determined to spend time in the saddle learning to ride.”
In many ways, pay TV, which once enjoyed recurring subscriber fees, has been knocked off the horse. But with a little time and determination in the saddle, some are figuring out how to ride again.
Peacock almost made $5B in 2024. HBO/MAX is now over 100 million subs. Roku has clawed itself back into the favor with Wall Street. VIZIO, the #1 selling TV in America in the teens, has found a home in Walmart, currently the #1 seller of TVs in America— and operating systems are the unrivaled gatekeepers of the TV experience.
Maybe, as Swain suggested to me years ago, simply getting back on the horse wasn’t enough to do the trick, but surviving time in the saddle is making all the difference.
The problem for everyone is, just when you learn to ride one horse, another bigger, more disruptive one comes along (AI, social video).
This week on TVREV, we look at how movies, sports, broadcasting and more are fighting their way back on to a horse, or learning to ride another.
“International Women’s Day felt like 23 hours. Is it ironic the day was so close to turning the clocks back?” - ANON friend of TVREV who watches a lot of news.
