<\/p>\n
\n\tA barrage of seemingly unrelated headlines suggest that Hollywood and Big Tech are on a collision course, and that the next few years will reshape how the world spends its free time and which platforms will dominate. <\/p>\n
\n\tAs tech and AI companies push further into entertainment and media, their stewardship of that content (or lack thereof) is becoming a story into itself.<\/p>\n
\n\tAt the same time, strategic maneuvers by Amazon, YouTube and Meta appear designed to take over the biggest screen in the home: The TV set, ultimately stealing time from legacy studios in what is effectively a zero sum game.<\/p>\n
\n\tSo how are traditional media companies trying to fight back? By pursuing megadeals of their own to give them the scale or leverage they need to even have a shot at competing.<\/p>\n
\n\tThat is the context for Fox<\/a>\u2018s $22 billion deal for Roku<\/a>: The streaming platform fundamentally changes the relationship Fox has with other players in the ecosystem. Despite intense competition from the likes of Google, Amazon and Apple, Roku has asserted itself as the dominant streaming platform, effectively the gateway to TV.<\/p>\n \n\tWith Roku in its arsenal, suddenly streaming giants like YouTube, Netflix and Amazon (not to mention traditional media competitors like Disney and Paramount-Warners) need<\/em> Fox as a partner. Just as Comcast defined the platform-content rollup for the cable TV era, Fox is trying to define it for the streaming era, combining a relatively small amount of original content with vast advertising scale and platform dominance that could lead to intriguing and unexpected places, should the Murdochs press that leverage.<\/p>\n \n\tThat is also the premise for David Ellison\u2019s $111 billion deal to combine Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, which would create an entertainment company on a scale similar to Netflix and The Walt Disney Company, effectively cementing it as one of the leading players in the entertainment industry (it is not lost on many observers that the deal is being financed, in part, by the tech giant Oracle, with Larry Ellison pledging his Oracle shares as a backstop on the deal).<\/p>\n \n\tEven Netflix has been eyeing deals, as multiple reports have indicated. <\/p>\n \n\tThe state of play sees YouTube dominating TV watch time, according to Nielsen\u2019s Gauge, with Netflix stagnating and other streaming players fighting for scraps. While YouTube\u2019s growth on TV sets keeps accelerating, most other streamers are flat, down, or up only slightly, with YouTube also rolling out new features meant to grow that share further.<\/p>\n \n\tYouTube is now the world\u2019s largest media company<\/a>, generating more than $60 billion in revenue last year. Notably, this week Instagram told The Hollywood Reporter <\/em>that it would begin testing<\/a> episodic, longform horizontal video content on its TV app as it pushes further into the space.<\/p>\n \n\tMeta, which owns Instagram, says that its Reels video product (Reels are on both Instagram and Facebook) now generates more than $50 billion in advertising revenue yearly, more than Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal combined, and that was without the premium CPMs that TV offers. Now it is changing that strategy, betting that creators (including many YouTubers) will cross-post their content in pursuit of revenue. A deal with Samsung to bake the app into all their TVs underscores the platform\u2019s push onto the biggest screens in the house.<\/p>\n \n\tThe push matters because of the zero sum nature of TV. Entertainment companies like Disney and Paramount have already lost the battle for attention on smartphones (though they are trying in little ways, like vertical video feeds, etc), but they can\u2019t afford to lose the battle for the TV screen. Every minute someone is watching a creator on TV via YouTube or Instagram is a minute they are not watching a premium streaming service, and if Instagram and YouTube grow to become a plurality of TV watchtime the industry could fall to a place where it simply never recovers.<\/p>\n \n\tWhich is why it is all the more troubling that Big Tech\u2019s record on supporting creatives is far more mixed than at legacy media institutions.<\/p>\n \n\tIn the trailer for Sony\u2019s upcoming film The Social Reckoning<\/em>, Jeremy Strong\u2019s uncanny Mark Zuckerberg declares \u201cI am a free speech absolutist.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s a familiar refrain among the tech set: Elon Musk has made it the centerpiece of his X platform, and Jeff Bezos refocused his Washington Post<\/em>\u2018s opinion section to be about \u201cpersonal liberties and free markets.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAnd yet one can\u2019t help but notice that the Big Tech companies that are so aggressively pushing into entertainment have made some eyebrow-raising decisions about content.<\/p>\n \n\tThis week it was revealed that Amazon MGM Studios dropped Luca Guadagnino\u2019s upcoming film<\/a>\u00a0about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Artificial<\/em>, even though it was most of the way through production. Netflix, A24 and NBCUniversal\u2019s Focus Features weren\u2019t interested either, leaving the film without a home for now. Amazon recently signed a multi-billion dollar deal with OpenAI.<\/p>\n \n\tA24, the same day, announced an AI deal with Google<\/a>, which will see the tech giant pour $75 million into the company to research AI tools.<\/p>\n \n\tApple, meanwhile, dropped a project about Gawker, and famously parted ways with Jon Stewart over differences of opinion in content on his show there. <\/p>\n