“Has streaming made it impossible to create a true breakout hit or are we just doing it wrong?”
— Head of Originals, Streaming Service
Feudal Media is our current media landscape where the monoculture that once held our society together has fallen and split into thousands of small bubbles of content across dozens of platforms and media types.
Each of these bubbles has its own stars, its own lingo, its own in-jokes and references. And more importantly, they are rarely aware of each other’s existence.
On a practical level, this makes it all but impossible to reach a mass audience anymore.
Which is a problem for everyone from advertisers to politicians to content companies.
It means, for example, that shows rise and become popular within certain segments of the media universe while others are completely unaware of their existence.
Take K-Pop Demon Hunters, which is now the most-watched movie on Netflix. It is huge with certain audiences—younger audiences in particular—but completely unknown to an equally sizable population.
As in they have never heard of it, assume that K-Pop is some sort of soda and it is completely off their radar.
Compare that to a movie like E.T. where the name and plot are instantly recognizable across all ages and demographics, where phrases like “phone home” or references to Reese’s Pieces get a knowing nod. Where everyone from late night hosts to politicians could reference the movie, knowing the entire audience would nod along.
What’s notable about the rise of feudal media is how quickly it happened.
It seemed like just the other day that we were all talking about “Barbenheimer”. And yet now that seems like it took place in another era.
The victors in this era are brands and media properties that manage to attract a passionate following rather than a broad one.
Meaning that it’s better to have a certain bubble decide that “we all use Acme widgets” or “The Acme Twins” is the show we all watch religiously”, than to have a less passionate audience spread across multiple bubbles without any real passion.
Take, for example, the case of The Office versus Two And A Half Men.
While they were both still on air, Two And A Half Men routinely won the ratings battle against The Office, racking up double the number of viewers.
But now that both shows have been off the air for more than a decade, Peacock is finding that The Office is crushing it, that it is one of their biggest draws for new subscribers and routinely beats its old rival in terms of viewership.
Why the reversal in fortune?
Fans of The Office were passionate fans. They knew the show inside and out, all the in-jokes and trivia. And they encouraged a new generation of fans, thus keeping the show going.
Two And A Half Men, OTOH, did not have that sort of passionate fan base. Plenty of people liked it and watched it, but it never connected with most of them the way The Office did.
To use a food analogy, The Office is that dessert you keep returning to the same restaurant for because it’s so good. Two And A Half Men is a big bag of chips. Great while you’re eating it, but no one is fantasizing about it once the bag is done.
This is not to say the mass media monoculture is completely dead and buried.
It lives on in live sporting events and tentpole events: the Super Bowl. The Oscars.
Which is why live events will continue to be so important, as it is the one genre that brings together people from across the bubble-verse, becoming the one thing that everyone—or almost everyone—knows about, one of our dwindling cultural touchpoints.
The loss of a shared culture is not a positive development. It keeps us ensconced in our bubbles, unaware of what the rest of the world is up to.
In medieval times those bubbles may have been limited to the five square miles around the village where you were born.
Today, it’s limited to the five platforms you engage with most often.
But the result is the same—a calcification of culture, of ideas and understanding.
Alan Says
The age of mass hits is over. We now live in a tribalized, fragmented landscape where passion beats reach, and cultural fluency is limited to your bubble.
To survive, content companies need to stop chasing everyone and start owning their corner of the map.
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Alan Wolk is co-founder and lead analyst at TVREV. He frequently speaks about changes in the television industry, both at conferences and to anyone who’ll listen.
