Welcome to 2024! The Addition is back and I’m ready and raring to go – I have big plans for the next 12 months. Continuing building and giving readers more of what you want does though require more people to take out a paid subscription. Doing so gives you access to all the paid newsletters and the full archive – every post goes behind a paywall after a month. It also means you can comment on the newsletter. More and more newsletter content is going to go behind the paywall, with the free offering continuing via the blog/podcast.
However, it’s January, and that means sales! This month, you can get 20% off an annual subscription, making it £40 per year instead of £50. Thanks in advance for your support.
The start of a new year always leads to people making predictions. The media industry has been particularly chaotic and difficult to predict in recent times. That’s why reporting on it is both fun and important. My predictions tend to miss the target spectacularly, but I thought I’d have a go to kick off the year!
At Least Two Streaming Services Will Merge.
I do not think we can expect The Great Rebundling to take place this year. However, it is pretty clear that the number of streaming services available is simply not sustainable. The big streamers like Netflix will continue to dominate, but we may well see some of the others package themselves together. We know that Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount have already held talks.
Blogging is Back
More and more publishers and creators are realising the importance of owning your platform and content. Remember when we nearly lost TikTok last year?! With Twitter an increasingly unusable mess, and Thread good but far from dominant, I think there will be an increasing return to blogging as a way of producing short(er)-form original content. Video will still be massive, but for those who want to type, blogging could prove to be powerful once again. (It’s why I have a blog to accompany this newsletter!)
Elon Musk Will Sell Twitter
Children grow out of their toys. Musk bought Twitter as a troll, broke it and is undoubtedly going to get bored. This prediction could go wrong as he may wish to hold onto it during the US presidential election in November, but the pressure may well have built up by then or the company may simply collapse, Either way, I don’t think Linda Yaccarino makes it to the end of 2024 as CEO either.
There Will be an AI Backlash
Some publishers have started experimenting with AI-generated content. Most of the time it goes horribly. Remember what happened at Sports Illustrated? As the power and prominence of AI tools increases, so will the backlash. Writers and artists will demand an end to their work feeding these models for free. Consumers will get fed up with reading and watching generic content created by a robot. We are a long way past the point at which we can put the Genie back in the bottle but expect to see serious attempts to limit the scope of AI in the world of media.
Apple TV+ Will Buy More Sports Rights
I’m pretty confident about being right about this one! Apple has swooped into MLB and MLS already. This year, the NBA rights are up to grabs and many expect a streamer to get at least some of the games. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Apple stumped up the cash. There is also talk of them getting into Formula 1. I don’t expect much movement in this space from Netflix, though.
