Feb 16, 2024 · 39m · another-podcast
Breaking and remaking media
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Benedict Evans and Toni Cowan-Brown examine the structural economics of the media landscape, analyzing how digital disruption, subscription models, sports rights fragmentation, and emerging hardware platforms impact television, music, and publishing.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 7.7 Guest teaching 0.2 Guest disagreement 0.2 The hosts pushing back 0.3
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 14:38 Dismissing newspaper antitrust arguments
Benedict mocks the conventional media argument that breaking up big tech ad platforms would redirect digital ad dollars back into traditional local newspapers.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 14:45 Refusal of ad tech antitrust narrativeBenedict directly rejects the premise that YouTube or Google display unbundling would solve legacy newspaper publishing economics.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 34:36 Attention bandwidth and media consumption limitsToni educates the discussion on why music streaming scales uniquely because audio allows passive multitasking, whereas video and text demand finite active attention.
The host holds their own ▶ 29:47 Telecom pricing arbitrage analysisBenedict clearly demonstrates analytical mastery by distinguishing between real economic disruption and temporary pricing scheme hacks using Skype and WhatsApp telecom case studies.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opening Banter and Streaming Media Headlines | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Benedict establishes a clear analytical framework comparing digital disruption across books, music, newspapers, and TV. He contrasts the pricing elasticity of unbundled music with the collapsing economics of US cable TV unbundling, with Toni collaborating seamlessly. | |
| Sports Rights Fragmentation and Bundling Lessons | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Benedict uses historical UK sports rights regulation (Sky, Setanta, British Telecom) to illustrate how breaking up rights created consumer friction and unbundled value. | |
| Atomic Units of Consumption and Digital Rights | 8 | 0 | 1 | 2 | Benedict breaks down atomic units of consumption between single tracks and whole libraries, while pushing back forcefully on the flawed thesis that antitrust action against Google/YouTube would restore newspaper ad revenue. | |
| Global Television Markets, Churn, and Live Content | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Benedict cites Ofcom data and European content budgets compared to Netflix, outlining geographic windowing collapse and TV subscriber churn dynamics while Toni provides industry examples like Suits and live sport demand. | |
| Pricing Arbitrage, The Helium Suitcase, and Capping Whales | 8 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Benedict uses the helium suitcase allegory and Skype/WhatsApp telco economics to explain pricing arbitrage and capping whale spend under subscriptions. Toni adds nuance regarding human attention limits for video vs background music. | |
| The Apple Vision Pro and Savior Device Illusions | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Benedict explains why media companies are not treating the Apple Vision Pro as a savior device the way print media mistakenly treated the original iPad. The co-hosts wrap up collaboratively. |
Statements from this episode (13)
Evans: Direct-to-consumer streaming was a terrible model for US media companies
“The other big story of course is ESPN, Fox Warner, which has three American media companies doing a bundled sports swimming platform this year as part of the sort of great Crash in American TV streaming after they spent all of the last five years spending huge…”
Benedict Evans: Tech has not fundamentally disrupted the book publishing industry
“Tech has basically not been a problem for the book industry. You know, obviously lots has changed, and they've got Amazon as this one giant customer, but we did not move to a model in which everybody gets all the books they want, and all the books are digital,…”
Benedict Evans: Newspapers uniquely relied on unrelated classified ads for revenue
“Newspapers uniquely, I think, you had this revenue model that was completely unrelated, bolted onto the news, which is classified ads, which people think means like individual consumers, but it actually means like car dealerships and real estate agents and so …”
Benedict Evans: US consumers will likely never return to $150/month TV spend
“It seems very unlikely that you're going to get everybody in America to go back to paying 150 dollars a month for television.”
Evans: Netflix Replicated Sky's Playbook of Outspending on Content to Drive Subscriptions
“Sky realized that they could pay massively more than anyone had ever thought reasonable to pay for football, and put that on a, this new channel, which is a subscription satellite channel, also subscription cable, but pay free, premium subscription TV service,…”
Evans: Universal library access holds huge value for music, none for books
“So that, that random access, the ability to access anything that's ever been created instantly has huge value for music. Almost zero value, effectively zero value for books.”
Evans: Breaking up Google Display will not return ad spend to newspapers
“If you made Google display a separate business, all the people buying ads on Google display are not going to shift Those adds to newspapers, and that's not going to become like a bigger business.”
Evans: Newspapers' core crisis is losing their former distribution monopolies
“The problem, newspapers problem is not that Google and Facebook have a monopoly. The newspaper's problem is that the newspapers used to have a monopoly and they don't anymore.”
Evans: Netflix outspends all broadcasters in top five European markets combined
“Netflix's content budget, which is what's the number? 15,000,000,016 billion dollars a year. Last time I looked, that was more than all broadcasters spent in the top five European markets combined.”
Evans: UK 16-to-34s watch more streaming video than all legacy TV combined
“And so you look at the stats from Ofcom, the UK regulator and UK, 16 to 24 watch more subscription video than everything from the PSB and some public service broadcasters, which is the traditional analog broadcasters. More 16 to 34 watch more stuff from basica…”
Evans: Marvel superhero movies are overblown spectacles like mid-century musicals
“Marvel superhero movies are the new musicals in that they're these kind of fast overblown spectacles. And to begin with, they're quite good, but now there's just way too many of them, and they're all crap, and everybody in the movie industry desperately wants …”
Evans: Flat-rate subscriptions cap high-spending whales, failing in books
“With all of these subscription models, you're capping your whales. So with music, you had a small number of people who were paying a hundred dollars a month or more, whatever it was, and now they can only, for CDs, now they can get everything for 10 dollars a …”