At Production.ink, we follow Evan Shapiro and his Media War & Peace musings closely. Evan is the industry’s officially unofficial media universe "cartographer," so we were excited to talk to him to map the current media environment, chart where it will go, and translate what that means for Production.ink’s subscribers.
It was a wakeup call.
We’ll run key takeaways from our conversation with Evan over Production.ink’s next two issues. First, we’ll talk about how audiences are moving and what it means for the production industry (read: our jobs); next time we’ll talk about what our next moves (read: again, jobs) should be.
Here’s what we learned.
Audiences are permanently shifting.
We’ve spent a lot of time in this newsletter speculating whether Hollywood production levels will bounce back, and where that is most likely to happen. Evan talked us through his most recent Media Map, where one thing is clear: Social media dominates what Evan calls the “Attention Ecosystem.” The audience shifts are undeniable and tangible:
"Look at what you do on a daily basis. Look at what you read, look at what you watch. Look at how you spend your time on your phone, and then on your tablet, then do the same thing for anyone in your ecosystem under the age of 30. And then ask your friends, what do you listen to? What do you watch? What do you do? How much time did you spend on Tik Tok? You'll see how much of the attention economy is moving to the things I'm talking about."
YouTube dominates streaming viewership; YouTube products and Spotify are far and away the “must-have” media. And while traditional media—the Media Industrial Complex, as Evan calls it—has put its head in the sand, you can’t afford to. Because that’s where the money is going.
Hollywood will keep shrinking.
Evan pointed out that with the exception of Netflix, streamers aren’t profitable; their parent companies’ other lines of business bankroll them. But as audiences and market share shift elsewhere faster, streamers will bundle, consolidate, or die.
Audiences won’t magically return to feature films, either. That’s not where the attention is shifting, so it’s not where the money will return to. We’ll see budgets continue to shrink and even fewer big, traditional productions. And Evan echoes something we wrote about during union negotiations: more of those studio production jobs will shift overseas for budgetary reasons.
The magical rebound we’re hoping for is unlikely.
The Creator Economy should be your next move.
Independent creators will fill the void. You’ve already seen it. Mr. Beast. All Things Comedy. Dude Perfect. Savvy creators will continue to grow their productions into brands and brands into enterprises that expand revenue streams across mediums. They’ll multiply and grow market share, and/or they’ll get bought out by the major platforms like Spotify or Amazon. And either way, their productions will need editors, marketers, lawyers, and advertising professionals.
"For rest of your life, work is going to come from the creator or community platforms we’re talking about…. On Amazon Prime Day, more than 100 million people came to their live shopping channel, and those shows get produced. Martha Stewart doesn’t just show up on Amazon live; she has a team doing that production. So there's a replacement of the ecosystem happening. It's large, it's active, and it’s going to generate middle class livings the same way the traditional ecosystem does."
So how do production folks put Evan’s cartography into action? In our next issue, we’ll share Evan’s insights into where the new production jobs will be, how to get up to speed with the creator economy, and what else we should be ready for.
Talk to you then. In the meantime, keep up with Evan.
Evan Shapīro
