A barrage of seemingly unrelated headlines suggests 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.
As technology and AI companies move towards entertainment and media, their management of this content (or lack thereof) has become a story in itself.
At the same time, strategic maneuvers by Amazon, YouTube, and Meta appear designed to seize the biggest screen in the home: the TV, ultimately stealing time from legacy studios in a zero-sum game.
So, how are traditional media companies trying to fight back? By going after their mega deals to give them the scale or leverage they need to be able to compete.
That’s the context of Fox’s $22 billion deal for Roku: The streaming platform fundamentally changes the relationship Fox has with other players in the ecosystem. Despite stiff competition from companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple, Roku has asserted itself as the dominant streaming platform, and effectively the gateway to TV.
With Roku in its arsenal, suddenly there were streaming giants like YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon (not to mention traditional media competitors like Disney and Paramount-Warners). needs Fox as partner. Just as Comcast defined the platform’s content lineup for the cable TV era, Fox is trying to define it for the streaming era, by combining a relatively small amount of original content with broad advertising reach and platform dominance that could lead to interesting and unexpected places, if the Murdochs exert that influence.
This is also the rationale for David Ellison’s $111 billion deal to combine Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, which would create an entertainment company on a similar scale to Netflix and Walt Disney, effectively cementing them as one of the leading players in the entertainment industry (it will not escape many observers that the deal is partly financed by the tech giant Oracle, with Larry Ellison pledging Oracle stock as backing for the deal).
Even Netflix has been eyeing deals, as multiple reports have indicated.
The state of play sees YouTube dominate TV viewing time, as measured by Nielsen, with Netflix stagnating and other streaming players competing for scraps. While YouTube’s growth on TVs continues to accelerate, most other streaming devices are flat, down, or only slightly up, with YouTube also rolling out new features aimed at increasing that share even further.
YouTube is now the world’s largest media company, generating more than $60 billion in revenue last year. Notably, Instagram said this week Hollywood Reporter It will begin testing horizontal and long-form video content on its TV app as it moves forward in the space.
Meta, which owns Instagram, says its Reels video product (Reels is on both Instagram and Facebook) now generates more than $50 billion in ad revenue annually, more than Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Television. Discovery and NBCUniversal combined, and that was without the premium CPMs that TV offers. Now it’s changing that strategy, betting that creators (including many YouTubers) will post their content more frequently in pursuit of revenue. The deal with Samsung to integrate the app into all of its TVs underscores the platform’s push to the biggest screens in the home.
Pay is important because of the zero-sum nature of television. Entertainment companies like Disney and Paramount have already lost the battle for attention on smartphones (although they are trying in a few ways, such as vertical video channels, etc.), but they cannot afford to lose the battle for the TV screen. Every minute someone is a creator watching on TV via YouTube or Instagram is a minute they’re not watching a premium streaming service, and if Instagram and YouTube evolve into more than TV viewing time, the industry may fall to a place where it never recovers.
That’s why it’s troubling that Big Tech’s track record on supporting creators is much more mixed than that of legacy media organizations.
In the trailer for Sony’s upcoming film Social accountJeremy Strong’s Mark Zuckerberg bizarrely declares, “I’m a supporter of absolute freedom of speech.”
It’s a familiar refrain among the tech set: Elon Musk has made it the centerpiece of his X platform, and Jeff Bezos has refocused his attention The Washington PostThe opinion section will be on “Personal Liberties and Free Markets.”
However, one can’t help but notice that the big tech companies that are aggressively moving into the entertainment space have made some surprising decisions regarding content.
It was revealed this week that Amazon MGM Studios has dropped Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming film about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. industrialalthough it was in most stages of production. Netflix, A24 and NBCUniversal’s Focus Features weren’t interested either, leaving the film without a home for the time being. Amazon recently signed a multi-billion dollar deal with OpenAI.
On the same day, A24 announced an AI deal with Google, which will see the tech giant pump $75 million into the company to research AI tools.
Meanwhile, Apple dropped a project about Gawker, and parted ways with Jon Stewart over differences of opinion in the content of his show there.
With Bezos, Musk, Altman and other tech giants trying to get closer to the current political administration (THR As we saw Mark Zuckerberg talking to Trump on his 80th birthday in the White House fight (UFC), and AI-led deals forcing partnerships between many companies, conflicts are sure to arise between corporate interests and creative ideas, especially as AI spreads, with many creatives expressing concern about their businesses being overrun due to failure.
The next few years are shaping up to be a battle between big tech and Hollywood, with screens, platforms and every minute of people’s attention captured.
This future will include tech giants whose flywheels are moving faster than ever before, media companies like Fox, Disney, and Warner-Paramount stepping up to the fight, and other players like NBCUniversal discovering their place in this new world.
