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IS 2026 MEDIA'S DARK AGES? · The Media Odyssey

• Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] Welcome to a very special episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast. We're here at CES. Marion was supposed to be here, but her flight got canceled and so she is relaxing at home in Amsterdam, and I'm here with our very special guest, Alan Wolk, and I think this turnabout is fair play because you did an episode alone with Marion. Alan Wolk: That's right. Evan Shapiro: Which made me incredibly jealous. Thank you very much for agreeing to do this. I know you're incredibly busy here. Alan Wolk: Oh, it's my pleasure. Evan Shapiro: What's your what's your take on CES so far? It's only day two, but what's your read on the mood? What's your read on the themes? Do, I know it's all AI all the time, but what are you hearing? What do you sense? Alan Wolk: One thing that's really stood out is people seem more optimistic than last year. I [00:01:00] think last year there was this sense of high freak out, oh my God, Trump's gonna be president. What's gonna go, what's gonna happen? Is there gonna be recession and all that? I think people just seem okay, whatever happened. And now it's like we're feeling good about the way things are going. Evan Shapiro: That's interesting. And so in the face of that, this is the time of year that at CES, I don't know why we do this to ourselves. The first workday back after the holiday is right flying to Las Vegas to be in this shit show. Yeah. But. This is the time of year the industry looks out ahead and projects where it's going. CES is a good venue for that. I put out a list of predictions. Last week, Marion and I went through our mutual predictions on the pod. You put out a really interesting set of predictions and counter to what you just said about the mood here, my predictions that I put out this week on my Substack Media War and Peace, which you can subscribe to right now, were pretty dark. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: I think we're gonna, I don't know that we'll go into full-blown recession, but I think we're gonna hit a deep period of [00:02:00] stagflation. High unemployment, high interest rates. I think some of these mergers and acquisitions are cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. You wrote a really provocative piece with your predictions. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: And I wanna go through that. Alan Wolk: Sure. Evan Shapiro: Here today. You called it a descent into feudal media. The ecosystem, the industry is going to descend into feudal media. First of all, that sounds horrible. It scared the fuck outta me when I read it first. But what do you mean by that? What is, okay, so is that kind of like the end of all things? It sounds like a dark period. Alan Wolk: It's the dark, I call it the dark ages of media. So basically we had, Evan Shapiro: So it is dark. Alan Wolk: Yeah. So we had but there's a light at the end of the tunnel 'cause, I'm the glass half full guy. Always. So we had the, if you look at the monoculture is in very many ways reminiscent of the Roman Empire. If you what was the Roman Empire? It was this very standardized system. Everybody spoke Latin. There were roads, there was science, there was one source of truth. Everybody read, whether it was through Evan Shapiro: Parliamentary governing system. Alan Wolk: Right, which developed into an empire. But it [00:03:00] was still like, it was organized. There was an a level of organization and whether you were in London, Londinium or Aleppo, you were all on the same page. Then, the Vandals sack Rome, everything fell apart and you wound up in the dark ages of, in the period just before Charlemagne, where there were all these little entities where they were dukedom, kingdoms, earldoms, whatever. Evan Shapiro: They were all warring with each other. Alan Wolk: Warring with each other and not talking to each other. So one of the big things was knowledge just got completely erased. I can actually tell you, I was in Bologna last summer and there was an exhibit at the university there about how one of the Popes, Pope Leo, in the 15th century had said, okay, we haven't done this thing where we take specimens of, what does a cow fetus look like? What does a fig tree look like? All of these things, like they haven't done that since Rome. We don't know what these things look like anymore, so let's do this. It was like a rebirth of science and I was like, so that's, Evan Shapiro: He rebooted the culture at which a pope has the power [00:04:00] to do at least back then and reinvigorated interest in science and nature and learning and intellectual. Alan Wolk: But what hit me was like that there was this 1500 year period where that didn't happen. Where knowledge was really in the monasteries and like most people didn't know how to read and write and everybody, and it was so the Evan Shapiro: culture didn't advance because there was no knowledge. Alan Wolk: There was a lot of, Greece and Rome obviously had, their share of myths and whatever, but it wasn't this sort of thing where they thought like a wood sprite was why the sun came up in the morning. We like, yeah, there was, it was superstition. Evan Shapiro: So now turn that home. So how is the monoculture, first of all, describe what the monoculture is. Alan Wolk: Okay, so the monoculture, because Evan Shapiro: You write about the monoculture a lot. Alan Wolk: Right. Evan Shapiro: It is something that really bothers me. Not that you're writing about it, but it, the whole concept of the monoculture really nags on me. I don't write about it as much as you do. You really focus on it, right? So what do you mean by the monoculture itself and how does that compare to Rome as a power? Alan Wolk: Yeah. So in the monoculture, it was country by country, [00:05:00] but there was one, there was this mass media that everybody watched all at the same time. And so you had these common cultural touchpoints, right? If I say to you, Dinomight, you immediately think of Jimmy JJ Walker. If I say Full Evan Shapiro: Which was a, which was from a television show called Good Times. In the seventies that many people here will remember and many won't. Half our audience will have no idea. Alan Wolk: But, and if I go like this, you know that it's ET phone home, right? So there was a whole, everybody of a certain age of a Evan Shapiro: Shared cultural reference points. Alan Wolk: Right. And everybody watched the same thing on TV every night. Obviously there were three or four networks and so you, it was spread out some, but still it was that sense of we're all on the same page. And part of that too was news. Like even if you didn't watch the news, you saw as you were watching primetime, president takes trip to France this week, and so you had a vague sense of what was going on in the world. Now and then, so the first crack in the, so that, that's the monoculture is that, and it was through television, radio, [00:06:00] print, there were only a, there was a small number and it had its fault. There were gatekeepers who didn't let a lot of people in, and if you didn't know the right people, you couldn't get past the gatekeepers. The gatekeepers generally did a fairly good job of kind of keeping things on keel. And so the first crack was streaming, right? Because streaming took time out of the equation. So suddenly we weren't all watch, may have been watching the same thing, we weren't watching it at the same time. And that really opened the gates and then social media came in and suddenly people started watching their own thing. They were cutting the cord, they were losing it. And mass media just disappeared and very quickly, like in a period of five to seven years or so, where you have, especially the, you talk about this a lot, the younger generations consume media completely differently. They get their news from TikTok, they watch things on Instagram and all of these sort of social media have formed these little bubbles. And it can be around a political idea. It can be around Taylor Swift, it can be around the Buffalo Bills, whatever it is. But they're these little content bubbles and [00:07:00] people only hear what they hear in that bubble. And that's very sort of feudal. And they all have their own celebrities. So in the good sense, they all have their own celebrities, their own, your royalty, their own memes, their own in jokes. Evan Shapiro: But this has been happening now for, as you've been saying. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: For some time, why is 2026, and I agree with you. And I just wrote about this today on LinkedIn, but why is 2026 an inflection point for a dissent? And why are we not already in feudal? Alan Wolk: Oh, we are. I don't think this is a particular, I think it's just like it's getting it, it's getting worse. Evan Shapiro: So you're prediction is around something that's already occurring, but this is the year it splinters into unrecognizable fragments, Alan Wolk: Right? Or no? It's just, I think what we need to look, this is gonna be the next several, next bunch of years and we need to accept Evan Shapiro: Through the end of the decade at least. Alan Wolk: And we need to accept it that it happened. 'cause there's a lot of, people really haven't wrapped their heads around. And the way it plays out, say you're an advertiser, like in very alt terms, if you're an advertiser, you wanna get your message across. Evan Shapiro: It's really hard. Alan Wolk: Yeah. You can't who are you reaching? 'cause people don't see the same thing. One of the things [00:08:00] people, and people have these very specialized sort of pools of knowledge of what they know about the world, like news. And I've talked about this, like news just got lost. Like you, like I was saying, you used to see president goes to France and if that's all you saw, at least you knew that. Evan Shapiro: That day he was in France. Alan Wolk: But you, now, it's very easy to ignore the news. And that's the thing people forget. Evan Shapiro: I don't know about that. We have a president who has put the news on steroids, so he is a conversation that everyone is constantly having that we can't ignore. Alan Wolk: My son works in politics. He said you'd be surprised at the number of people who would not know that the whole thing about Maduro. Really have no idea that it happened. Evan Shapiro: Invade Venezuela. Alan Wolk: Yeah. They have no idea that this happened. Evan Shapiro: Right now? Alan Wolk: Yeah, 'cause they don't like, they don't watch the new like news to them is, there's a new album out by my favorite band or the, Kansas City Chiefs won a game. Like they can ignore. Evan Shapiro: There is also a retreat from, I watch way less news than I did before the election. I just I basically had to cut it off [00:09:00] to keep myself from being depressed, although it's, yeah, again, it invades my world every day. Okay. So this feudal nature of media kind of solidifies its itself. I think you're really right about the concept of trad media finally grappling with this. Coming to terms with the fragmentation. You were about to make a point about advertisers, it's really difficult to, back in the day when half a billion people watched the top 10 television shows in one week, you could take one ad, put 'em in the top 10 television shows, have a drink, have a smoke, go home, and that's the end of the day. Right now, you have to worry about micro influencers and nano influencers and all this hyper fragmented attention. How do they come to terms with it? What is the answer? Do they, is there an embrace of this radical fragmentation that advertisers are finally gonna get their heads around, or? Alan Wolk: I think the smarter ones will start to, but I think most of them won't. They'll still, keep pumping reach. Without realizing like [00:10:00] that you're not, these different little bubbles all have their own truths in their own sort of way of looking at the world. One of the things I talked about is mega brands are done in other words, or like the existing mega brands will live on. But you can't launch a new mega brand the way you could launch a mega brandand. There's really a post World War II phenomenon. Was just what you were saying. I could reach everyone in the United States pretty much by advertising on 10 shows if I was gonna grow McDonald's. It wasn't that hard. Evan Shapiro: And we're all watching at the same time. So like that, not only were you reaching everyone, but they were actually being reached in parallel. So they would turn to each other and say, Hey, I just saw that ad. Alan Wolk: And people would talk about ads, like people knew as like Evan Shapiro: Pop, pop, fizz, fizz. Alan Wolk: Yes. And I always say Saturday Night Live used to be able to do, one of their mainstays was commercial parodies. And they can't do that anymore 'cause no one knows the commercial, the same commercials. Evan Shapiro: So so, so what effect does this have? Is it gonna have, do you feel like we're entering a dark age where shared knowledge and progress become limited because of these bubbles and these [00:11:00] silos? Alan Wolk: Yes. Oh, very much. Very much. And I think, so one of the things I think about is the, the loss of any single source of truth, right? So one of the very fascinating things to me is it used to be like, you would say, you'd read the New York Times or, and you would say, okay, either, most people would say this is the truth. Some people would say, I don't think this is true, or I think there's something wrong. But now you have people who say something completely different is true, right? Not this, but they believe not like a space alien captured Maduro. Evan Shapiro: They believe that. Alan Wolk: Yes. And and like they all believe it. And then there's these. And then, or it's the Jews 'cause like we, everything is, oh, I, oh, sorry. I thought we were on Young Turks or Tucker Carlson. They all kind of blend in. But anyway, the point being that's, Evan Shapiro: but they're point. Young Turks and Tucker Carlson are great examples of what you're talking about. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: If you watch the Young Turks or you watch Tucker Carlson. Those are two different realities. Alan Wolk: Very much. Evan Shapiro: Yes, you could, they could be different planets. Alan Wolk: And those are like bigger, like there's all these small ones, Evan Shapiro: like then there's, Alan Wolk: And they, and then what's even scarier to me, there's this whole Evan Shapiro: Matt Berry. Alan Wolk: Yes. There's this whole [00:12:00] thing, I don't even know who the people, but I had researched this. There's these three different buckets where they believe that the United States is the greatest source of evil in the world, and they have this theory, it's called sheep dogging, where progressive politicians like AOC and Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, they call them sheep dogs 'cause they feel that they take the voters and herd them back into the tent of the, of the Democrats and Republicans who are all the same. And that is their job. And they, that they're all in collusion with each other. Evan Shapiro: They're there on the edge and their job is to push people back towards the mainstream. Alan Wolk: Yes. So they don't get red pilled or whatever and, and see the world. So they feel that they're all just as evil. Evan Shapiro: The two parties are identical and they're all. Alan Wolk: And they believe colluding, right? Colluding together. And there's three separate groups and some of the bigger people have, a million followers, maybe half of them are boss, but it's still like something. And then what's even crazier is that now we're gonna have AI come in, right? The way the, these bubbles are all set up, like there's the angry one, [00:13:00] there's the funny one, the calm one. And but you suddenly think like everybody thinks this. 'cause if you are somewhat naive, Evan Shapiro: You don't know. You live in this and you live in this bubble and you hear it everywhere. Alan Wolk: Yeah. You don't know that there's another point of view. And now that AI can come in and create fake influencers and and whatnot. So suddenly you're getting it Evan Shapiro: and comments and all this other kind of stuff. Alan Wolk: Exactly. So now that's its most extreme, but you can also see like with a brand, say, I, I wanna make everybody believe that Coke is better than Pepsi. And I can have Coke influencers and Pepsi causes cancer and whatever it is. Like it's, and there's nobody to go know this is true. No, there's, people don't, these people don't know to go to look at there's not a newspaper. Evan Shapiro: There is no place that they go to, there's no main hearth of news the way that there was when Walter Cronkite used to command. Walter Cronkite was one end of the evening and Johnny Carson was the other end of the evening, and they, a third to half of the country watched the two of them and they were sharing the same pool of truth. And so the next morning everybody talked about the same things, even if they disagreed on issues. They were still starting from the same [00:14:00] framework as opposed to, I believe in space aliens and I believe in red rubber bouncing balls. And we are not even talking to each other. Alan Wolk: Exactly. That's a hundred percent. A hundred percent. Evan Shapiro: So as this, as we lose this con common source of truth, and I think you, again you're designating something that's already happened. Alan Wolk: Yes. Evan Shapiro: Trump has become president because there is no common source of truth. The truth is not truth. As Rudy Giuliani once famously said. The other, the follow up prediction that you made of this is the end of expertise. Alan Wolk: Right. Evan Shapiro: The loss of expertise. What do you mean by that? Alan Wolk: So it's two things. It's one is the fact that there is no, nobody's calling the shots and like everybody goes, yeah, okay, that's what it is. So there's none of that. But at another level, which is the positive spin on it, it allows somebody like Jimmy Donaldson, Mr. Beast, to start off his own media empire even though he knows nothing about it and everything. So the gatekeepers are gone basically. So all of the people who used to sort of say, this is what goes on tv. Evan Shapiro: There's an upside to this. Alan Wolk: Yes. And some ways I was saying it's almost similar to the rise of democracy where the people were initially [00:15:00] scared, right? Oh my God, we're letting these people who, who don't have classical educations, who've never run anything and we're gonna let them decide who runs us. We put in this whole system of checks and balances and whatnot. But it was a similar feeling, there was a lot of upside to it. So one of the problems with the monoculture was that it was very restricted and only certain people. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it's very diverse. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Thought, appearance, background, race. Alan Wolk: Or even that you couldn't if unless you like, really worked the system if you will. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. You couldn't break in. Alan Wolk: So now it's democratizing everything. And some of it, most of it'll be crap, but there'll be some really great stuff that breaks through. So in that sense, it's good. The downside is we're throwing out all the experts. So you don't wanna do that. And I, I was saying is I think there will still be a call for somebody like people who can make HBO series, like things like White Lotus, Succession, where it's okay, this is something that requires a lot of skill and craft. And those people may have come from outside. Evan Shapiro: They're gonna be, don't you do feel, or I feel, I should [00:16:00] say that there'll be fewer of those and that more of it will go towards a lower cost. I mean Netflix is putting podcasts on the platform at zero cost. Obviously there's a licensing fee, but there's, it costs nothing to produce a podcast. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Oh Evan Shapiro: Yeah. It's now the new talk show. Alan Wolk: And that, but that's always been the case. In other words, like in any art form, like the sort of more middle highbrow stuff has always been a much smaller piece of what. Evan Shapiro: But we focus much more on these big, these big bonfires, these huge, massive series that cost a lot of money and everyone's talking about them and you're we're breathlessly, but I feel like there's gonna be fewer and fewer of those in favor of less expensive things on one end and then sports on the other. Alan Wolk: It's 'cause it's. Let's define, everyone is talking about that everyone is just a certain percentage, pretty much everyone who voted for Elizabeth Warren, right? It's a small percentage of the upper middle class who are in media. And that's important 'cause it does get it out there, but it's always been the case, right? Like I remember back in the nineties, and you will remember this too, 'cause you were working in [00:17:00] the industry at the time. That people were really like, all the people who were working on Roseanne and Home Improvement, were like, why is everyone talking about Friends in Seinfeld? We have more viewers, right? As many viewers, we're even more popular, and you are all focused on Friends. What the hell? And I was like because Friends, that appeals to the sort of people who write for the New York Times and whatnot. Evan Shapiro: Live in a New York apartment. Alan Wolk: Yeah. And that's the thing. And so that's, and, but that's always been the case that certain types of art have, have more influence on the culture. But to your point, most of it is gonna be podcasts and whatnot. Evan Shapiro: But fascinating about that. You're absolutely right. Like the Office, to me personifies it was a, it was never a, it was a big hit ish. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: But it was never as large as Seinfeld or even Friends. Alan Wolk: Three and a Half Men is the one that they always compared to. Two and a Half Men, Two and a Half Men. Because that would, they ran simultaneously. Three and a Half Men always had more. Evan Shapiro: Had four times the audience as The Pffice. And yet The Office was, for a long time, the most streamed television show on the planet Earth. Alan Wolk: Yes. Evan Shapiro: And now [00:18:00] Friends winds up being that kind of default, binge that everybody, young people. Alan Wolk: Yes. Evan Shapiro: So it, they wind up having long lives in the long tail of it all. So it's just an interesting side note to that. But, your larger point around the fragmentation of this is also goes to another prediction you made, which is the decentralization, decentralization of power. So not only aren't these gatekeepers here, keeping the smaller creators out of the culture, the power center is no longer Hollywood. Alan Wolk: Or it's becoming less Hollywood than it used to be. Because what, so what kept Hollywood in power was one, it was experience and people have done this. Two is access to capital. And as the cost of producing all these things goes way down, then you don't need that sort of capital. So you can be somebody smaller, somebody in another country. Evan Shapiro: Mr. Beast I think is a really good example. Yeah. You talk about him as a case study, but Sean Evans, yeah. And Hot Ones is another really good example. Dude [00:19:00] Perfect is another good one. Dhar Mann is another good one. So these new age studios are being created. And frankly, they're are attracting experts. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: From the Hollywood economy. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Sean Atkins. Evan Shapiro: Sean Atkins. Yeah. Mr. Beast is hiring a bunch of pros from the traditional trad media world, as I like to call it. But it's not centralized. It's not Hollywood, it's Texas, it's San Francisco. It's Ohio, it's wherever they are. Alan Wolk: and that they are, we're gonna start seeing it go beyond the borders of the United States. Hundred percent. There's, there's film industries and, big Nollywood, Nigeria, Bollywood, and India and all. Evan Shapiro: Brazil is really changing the game with regards to the melding of creator culture and mainstream media. The largest sports YouTuber in Brazil has more matches from the World Cup, has every match in the World Cup, than Globo, the national broadcaster does. Alan Wolk: Oh, that's, Evan Shapiro: So there to me is, it's CazéTV versus basically the the only major broadcaster in the market. So it's, I think that, to [00:20:00] me, again, there's bad things about that. It's harder. Alan Wolk: Yes. Evan Shapiro: It's more complicated. It's more difficult to do the things that like advertise and build audience than it ever used to be. But it is to a certain extent more interesting because now more voices are getting parts of the culture to Alan Wolk: Yeah, very much. It's, like democracy. Yes, you, some, there's a lot of mess to it, but it works better than having hereditary monarchs. Evan Shapiro: But the downside of this, and this is another prediction that you made, is the end of serendipity, the end that there's discovery mess that we've created for ourselves. We've gotten to a point where it's almost impossible to find something to if it isn't in your feed, you are not gonna happen upon something new to watch. Alan Wolk: And the problem is that the algorithms are optimized to show you things like you've already watched. Things very similar. And so the dopamines don't, they don't go, they don't bing, bing. The fourth time you see something similar, like it's, there's you diminishing returns. And if you look at the music [00:21:00] industry now, right? You've got these sort of big group of frothy pop hits that are doing better than anybody ever did. But they all kind of sound, they're all interchangeable and a bunch of sort of bands that nobody ever hears. And you don't have like new movements. Like you don't have like new wave or grunge or things bubbling up. You have smaller ones, Evan Shapiro: but no, but you, but the comfort food. Music and old music too. Alan Wolk: Yes. Evan Shapiro: You look at TikTok and these old songs are making comebacks like they're monster hits from 20 years ago that are now reemerging, as opposed to, there's the Chapel Roans and there's there are there carpenter, but they are the exceptions to the rule as opposed to the rule themselves. Alan Wolk: And AI slop is getting high play. So it shows that yes, you can replicate this and you lose what I call the nineties record store experience where you used to wander through and you'd see some album cover. It was you cool looking, you like, oh, what's this? And oh, this is a genre I'd never listen to. And you listen, you're like, this is really good. I would never have known this. I always use Game of Thrones is my example. Think of it in 2026. If you came to me and said, Hey, I wanna make a TV [00:22:00] series about, off of this series of books, that sort of dungeon and dragons guys is a fantasy thing. They're into it. And I'm gonna cast a bunch of unknown European actors in it, and I'm gonna spend 10 million in episodes, which we have these fantastic sets all around the world. What do you think? And what are you nuts? And then if you did make it, what algorithm would recommend it? Evan Shapiro: So because it doesn't fit into anybody's preconceived Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Playlist. Alan Wolk: Exactly. Evan Shapiro: Yeah I found this, I took two weeks off and we binged movies, the entire time we went out to the movies, we saw Marty Supreme, a bunch of other stuff. Yeah. But then we also binge a lot of movies. Finding them was really hard. Alan Wolk: Yes. Evan Shapiro: It was super difficult. I had to do a lot of searching through lists of the best movies in the last couple years. We landed on a movie called Eden. I dunno if you've seen it. Jude Law. Really, Sidney Sweeney, about the founding of a resort on the Galapagos Islands in the 1920s. Very strange movie. Really [00:23:00] good, but had never, like if I, what if I didn't go coal mining? Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: For movies. Like with a hat and a pitch fork, or a pick. I would not have found this movie, like I mentioned it to people and nobody knows about it. So how do we fix that serendipity problem? How do we fix the, is there a fix for it? We're at the CES, the greatest minds in our industry are here. We have AI at our disposal. Can't we fix this discovery problem? Alan Wolk: I think honestly, it will not be a tick discovery thing. I think what'll happen is people just get bored with what's out there and there will be people who do what you do, who mine stuff or who do stuff by hand, if you will. Like curators out this curator and say, here's what's cool, and then. The, New York magazine will have a cover story. Yo, the cool movie kids are all watching you, like going to movie night here and watching this. And they'll percolate up that way. 'cause that's, culture always works that way. Evan Shapiro: 'cause movie theaters, Marty Supreme is really the anomaly here. Movie theaters are basically saved for superheroes, sequels, and franchise [00:24:00] IP that Yeah. They don't make space for independent film on a usual basis. A 24 stuff is an exception. Alan Wolk: Right. Evan Shapiro: It is an exception. It is not the rule. Alan Wolk: very much, and like you, let's give Timothee Chalamet, quit it for almost single handedly making that movie happen by showing up all around the world in orange clothing. Evan Shapiro: Greatest marketing campaign by one actor ever. The Zoom call. Have you seen the zoom call? Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: You have? Alan Wolk: No. Wait. Evan Shapiro: So there's this great, I'm taking a beat here. There is this zoom call that Timothee Chalamet did with the marketing team at A24, oh, it's the greatest piece of performance art probably this century, and it's him basically yelling at the A24 team about how to market Marty Supreme. And he's out of his fucking mind. It posed as a leaked video that someone recorded and then put out to basically undercut to Timothee Chalamet. But it was the opposite of that. It was the beginning of the Marty Supreme rollout. It's how he launched the Marty Supreme rollout. Take a moment. Hit pause on this podcast. Go look at that video. Alan Wolk: Yes. Evan Shapiro: Timothy [00:25:00] Chalamet Zoom Call A24. But so you think the answer to the serendipity problem, you think the answer to the discovery problem is a bunch of bloggers and podcasters telling us what to listen to. Alan Wolk: Or somebody. In other words, there'll be an alternative. The same way there's always an alternative scene when things get boring the same way the beatniks happen, in response to the fifties, right? There will be some sort of underground scene of people who are. Young people who are like, Evan Shapiro: You need to be watching this. You need to be listening to this. Alan Wolk: Yeah like the crap that they're putting out is just boring me. I wanna find something new and different and be cool. Evan Shapiro: I think two things there. I don't think you're wrong. 'cause you're right, the technology will be, it's difficult for the technology to solve it because of the wall of gardens. You can't share the algorithm between Netflix and Disney Plus. I, but I think more importantly here, you've identified a huge white space. Alan Wolk: Yes. Oh, I agree. Evan Shapiro: If you wanna start a podcast. That weekly just tells people what the fuck to watch and listen to because we don't know. Alan Wolk: Exactly. Exactly. Evan Shapiro: We can't find the shit we wanna watch and listen. Alan Wolk: And the problem with the, with tweaking an algorithm is that most people [00:26:00] reject it. In other words, if somebody showed you like a lot of things, like All In the Family is another great example. Yeah. All In The Family was a popular show in the 1970s was very breakthrough and it had terrible ratings the first year, but CBS said, okay, we're gonna stick with this. Things gonna catch on, make, and slowly through word of mouth, it took a while to catch on. And I think that, and that's the only reason a lot of people gave it a chance. So I think if the algorithm showed something to you in a vacuum, you'd be like, no, I wanna watch something tried and true. Evan Shapiro: It doesn't get a second chance. It doesn't, the algorithm doesn't allow for second airings, right? The algorithm doesn't allow you to necessarily discover things. Okay, so I think there's a huge white space here. You, someone out there should start a podcast. Alan Wolk: I a hundred percent agree. Evan Shapiro: Just tell me what to watch and listen to. But there, I think there's also a need for a Zagat, it's guide of TV and film. Just rank them. Tell, put the genre against it. Tell me where to watch it. Yeah. Alan Wolk: Zagat guide was what people did before Yelp or TripAdvisor. Evan Shapiro: Exactly. Or Eater or GrubHub. Or Eater, [00:27:00] not GrubHub. Okay. You have this. You have this new. Futile media. You have these, I, we hit a couple of your predictions in there. The rise of niche. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: And smaller audiences. Alan Wolk: If you have a right, if you have a very passionate audience on a niche product, like it's a, it's gold for advertisers. A lot of times in these bubbles, they're like. I'm a easy, we all drink Pepsi, we all drink Coke, whatever it is. They tend to have, there tend to be, mores within the group of what everybody believes. We think these ele these singers are bad. We think these ones are good, whatever it is. Evan Shapiro: But there's this, there's, there are these micro community. Alan Wolk: Yes. Evan Shapiro: My listenership. My readership is a classic example. I think yours is as well. Yeah. Which is we don't have a million followers. Yeah. We just have a hundred percent share of voice of a certain click. Alan Wolk: Yes. Evan Shapiro: And and we've built businesses around this. Yeah. And so I think that's something that our industry can't seem to wrap its heads around is mass is not the answer. Yeah, it's an answer. Yes, but it's not the only answer. You can build [00:28:00] very sound businesses, and by the way, there's never gonna be another Mr. Beast. Starman is one of one. We're not gonna find new versions of them. What's gonna rise is the power of basically niche audiences and you can build a really good business around that. Mainstream media can't seem to get its heads around it. Alan Wolk: No, they can't. They can't. They still, they haven't accepted that there's no more mega stars. That you're not gonna have a Tom Cruise or Marilyn Monroe anymore. Evan Shapiro: He's last of that. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Yeah. That people are famous within their bubbles, but not outside of them. Evan Shapiro: But go mine the bubbles. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: So Sydney Sweeney is a really good example of this. Like she, she will always, she's got this new movie called The Housemaid out, which is a horror ish movie, right? She tends to do really well in horror. Horror itself is a niche, right? Yes. Very much. It is not a mass necessarily audience. So the concept of building enterprises and businesses around niche stars and niche genres and niche programming is, you're not gonna have a choice. You [00:29:00] can do the Disney stuff, you can do the superhero stuff, but you should also be investing in niche programming and niche stars as well. Alan Wolk: Yeah, very much. And that's something that the industry hasn't fully wrapped its head around 'cause they still live in that world where there's, superstars and mega hits and they just don't, and they keep thinking if they tweak one more thing, it'll come back. Evan Shapiro: This time. Alan Wolk: It'll come back. Evan Shapiro: And then you have Sinners which kind of crossed so many different lines. But that was a real risk. That was one of the most interesting deals of the last couple years. But where one of your biggest predictions. And your last prediction was the rise or the increasing or continued rise of importance of sports. So how does sports play into this? Alongside the nitrification and bubble publicization of culture. Alan Wolk: For now anyway, sports is outside of the bubbles. 'cause sports draws people from every bubble. It's it's, it's almost like a religion, right? It's outside of all this. Evan Shapiro: And as an Eagles fan, I can tell you it is a religion. Alan Wolk: For Eagles fans, it most definitely is. And I think [00:30:00] what happens is that, you get people, this is the only place now where you can really get that monoculture sense of everybody watching the same thing at the same time. What that is, the Super Bowl, right? Everybody sees that. Evan Shapiro: Christmas Day Netflix had the biggest streaming, single streaming audience in the history of television with their, not a great football game. But everybody was home. They had nothing to do. Alan Wolk: Yeah. And people still want that connection at some level. And I think, so that's it. The other thing you get is these, there's a group of people, we call 'em 15 Million Merits after there's an episode of Black Mirror, where there's a world where every service becomes an ad, and the only way you turn it off is paying currency of this in this fictional realm is called the merit. And the deal is you have all these people, say this, 10, 15% of America who's, generally well-educated, affluent, and they pay to not have ads on any of their streaming services. They probably have ad blockers on their browsers and they really don't see ads. And the only way you will reach them is with sports. And so that's that. Now, I [00:31:00] say for now because I think there is a distinct possibility that, especially with younger generation, that they grow tired of the big four sports. They don't have the time to put in to watch 182 baseball games every year. Even football starts to seem like a lot. And they start gravitating to these niche sports. There's suddenly things, whether it's lacrosse or pickle ball or Evan Shapiro: Rugby. Alan Wolk: Yeah. All these things suddenly get more popular Evan Shapiro: With world world Cup being in the US this year. Yeah. Not that's a niche sport anywhere else other than the United States. Alan Wolk: But yes. Evan Shapiro: But in the US it's still a niche. It's still very much a niche sport. Much with messy coming over and now FIFA being here this year, I think this could be a critical moment for that sport. Alan Wolk: Very much. Evan Shapiro: The cool kids' new sport. Alan Wolk: Very much. But then you guys in free live sports that has, hundreds of different sports and things you never knew that people competed in. Foosball championships and stuff. So I can see how that. Evan Shapiro: Air guitar. Alan Wolk: Become more bubble, more sports can become more bubbles, but I think it would be, it will, if it does happen, it'll be a very decades long process rather than [00:32:00] overnight. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. So the big four will slowly Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Disintegrate. They're not gonna, it's not gonna be a Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Snap and everything. It's over. But where do you feel like the Masked Singer and shows like Dancing with the Stars and. They seem to be behaving like Love Island had its best year ever. Yeah. I don't know, A decade into its run. They're behaving a little like sports themselves, don't you think? Alan Wolk: Yeah, I, yes. And of course people who don't like sports, it's the competition. That's their sports. It's a competition show. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Big Brotherm Survivor, like my daughters both are in a pool for Survivor. I'm like, what now? You're doing what? Yes. And they they have viewing parties with this, everybody who's in the pool. And by the way, Survivor is in its what, 67 season? Alan Wolk: Yeah. My son is 27 and it was on when he was a baby. So yeah, something like that. Evan Shapiro: And also what I'm finding is someone told me to the told me this yesterday that on Paramount Plus, the most watched content is Old seasons of Survivor. Most watched [00:33:00] reality content is old seasons of Survivor, like why would you watch an old season of Survivor? But if you didn't watch it, it's new to you. Alan Wolk: Like my daughter and her friends are all into Real Housewives now, and like she knows the difference between the different franchises. I'm like, wait, there's different franchises? Evan Shapiro: Real Housewives is a really, 'cause yeah, the honest people, super like John Oliver is obsessed. Alan Wolk: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: With those two things don't seem to go together and yet he's obsessive about it. And again, it fe I think these shows are behave, are ticking boxes a little bit like sports are as well. All right, so let's bring this home. We're at CES. Again, I don't know why we make the first work week of the year in Las Vegas, but here we are. Alan Wolk: Yes. Evan Shapiro: What should people do about all these prognostications you just made? Give people a vision of how they can operate their businesses, or, I think more importantly for a lot of our mutual fan base, how they should be running their careers at this point, given everything that you just said. Alan Wolk: Realize that this is the world [00:34:00] that we're in and we're gonna be in this world for a while. Understand that it's not all bad, that you know that there are, these passionate niche audiences. Evan Shapiro: Don't get afraid of it. Alan Wolk: Exactly. Embrace it and under, and don't pretend that it's gonna come back like it's not. The clock's not rolling back there. So here we are now. I don't think it's gonna happen in the next five, 10, even 15 years. But I do think that AI is gonna function almost the way the printing press did. It can function the way the printing press did. So the printing press, nobody had any knowledge. The printing press started spreading knowledge and information. Evan Shapiro: Monetized information, Alan Wolk: To people. In other words, people like, people learned to read, right? And then suddenly they had something to read. They didn't read 'cause it, what were they gonna read? There was, there was nothing. So suddenly you had idea spreading and that actually gave birth to democracy and the rise of science, the Renaissance. Evan Shapiro: How does AI compare to that? Alan Wolk: So AI can possibly start spreading between, create communications between the bubbles, get people outside of it, create this sense of here is a single source of truth. And it won't be identical to [00:35:00] what came before, but it can be something where people are more aware of each other. 'cause I think people do want to be part of a greater whole. I don't think people like being in all these bubbles. Evan Shapiro: There's this isolation that I think a lot of people in this world are now grappling with. Younger generations are really depressive as a result of being isolated in front of a screen in a dark room for hours at a time. And so I think you're right. There is this clamor for co-mingling. Alan Wolk: Right. Evan Shapiro: This clamor for a community that, that has been lost in this fragmentation. Alan Wolk: And I don't, if I knew how it was gonna do it, I'd be, a trillionaire, but there's gotta be some way that it can say to people, okay you here in Mexico like this, you here in Bali, like this. And like you may actually have something to say to each other, or you may both like watching the same thing and suddenly bring people out of their bubbles and into something that's more of a shared reality. Evan Shapiro: Fascinating. That's a, again, you it's weird when you read your article it's, there is a dark, you call, we're [00:36:00] in the dark ages. And yet you are such an optimistic person, you can spin kind of dark aspects of our reality into hopefulness. So I appreciate that about you. Alan Wolk: Thank you. Yeah. And I look at it this way, like there was the Dark Ages and then there was a renaissance and Evan Shapiro: How far off is the renaissance? Alan Wolk: Not in the next five, 10, years, not the next 20 years. But it's coming. It's coming. Evan Shapiro: If you had one piece of advice for somebody, 'cause one of the things that happened last year is 18,000 people lost their jobs in our industry. I think, given the mergers and acquisitions that are flying around, and I think the economy's gonna hit some bumps this year, it's likely that 2026 more, 20,000 people lose their jobs. Just at Omnicom alone. Yeah. Look how many people are gonna lose their jobs because of the merger with IPG. What should people, where should people be looking if they find themselves now, shit canned or on the outside looking in, where should they be looking for new opportunities, do you think? Alan Wolk: I think they should, look within the creator economy, look within some of the fields that [00:37:00] are growing and also you have to be your own brand. It's funny, I saw some goofy video the other day, but what the guy said was a hundred percent spot on. He is like don't be afraid of what your friends and family are gonna think when you put yourself out there, think about what your audience is gonna think because you like, 'cause you think about oh, you know what your friends will think, you'll never do the things you need to do. So you need to step outside your comfort zone a lot. And you have to look at where things are going and try and get into something new. Especially if you're starting out. Look at where things are. Or are not. Set where you can actually have an impact, not where things were. And there should, laying out Evan Shapiro: Where it is not only dry, but it hasn't even been poured yet. You can get in at the foundation. Alan Wolk: Exactly. And help shape it versus something else where everybody's seeing who can push each other off the lifeboat last. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. That's where a lot of tribe media is right now. I, I could. We will continue this conversation off this pod here at CES, but I really appreciate you Oh, as always, so much for doing this. Alan Wolk: And thank you for getting what I'm writing, I appreciate it. Evan Shapiro: I love your writing. Thank you. Everyone should read TV Rev [00:38:00]. Alan's stuff is must read for everyone in the industry. I am imagining that most of the people who listen to this podcast already read your stuff. But read it harder. Okay? Thanks again. Marion, we missed you. We love you. We wish you were here, but enjoy the snow in Amsterdam. Fuck you. Like you not only come on my podcast, but you show that I don't speak any other language other than my bad English. So you'll never be invited back out. You will be, but right now I'm ending pissed off. Thank you so much for coming to this episode of the Odyssey podcast. We will see you in this space next week.