Every major company spent the last twelve months reacting to forces it no longer fully controls, whether that was audience behavior, creator gravity, ad market reality, or the sudden legitimacy of generative AI as a distribution layer. The era of confident roadmaps gave way to defensive strategy, sharper tradeoffs, and a growing recognition that attention moves faster than institutions.
At The Streaming Wars, we don’t chase volume. We track inflection points. The pieces below weren’t just well read, they changed conversations inside companies. These are the stories execs forwarded, argued about, and quietly adjusted plans around.
Here are the ten that defined the year.
10. The $6.6 Trillion Digital Commerce Boom and the Rise of Shoppable TV
Shoppable TV remained one of the industry’s favorite buzzwords, but this piece cut through the noise by grounding the conversation in actual commerce behavior. As retail media, CTV operating systems, and ad tech continue to blur together, the takeaway wasn’t that shoppable TV is inevitable. It’s that most media companies are solving for the wrong layer of the problem.
The value here wasn’t hype. It was clarity about why execution keeps lagging ambition.
9. Netflix Considers Video Podcasts as Streamers Chase the Creator Economy
Netflix doesn’t pivot casually. When it starts publicly circling video podcasts, it’s an admission that creator-native formats are no longer optional. This piece framed that move not as a content experiment, but as a structural response to YouTube’s gravitational pull and the changing economics of engagement.
The real insight was what this says about how streamers now define “premium,” and how fragile that definition has become.
8. Ask Skip: Did We Bet Too Big on FAST?
FAST had a narrative problem long before it had a monetization problem. This column tackled both.
By laying out CPM ceilings, engagement limitations, and the sameness baked into many FAST lineups, the piece helped brand-side and publisher-side execs recalibrate expectations. FAST isn’t dead. It’s just not the savior it was sold as.
That distinction mattered a lot this year.
7. From the Archives: Crackle — The O.G. of FAST That Got Left Behind
We were happy to see one of our From The Archives pieces make the list. This one brought real nostalgia across the industry. Former Crackle and Sony staff, Roku alumni, You.TV folks, Float Left people, and Adobe vets all reached out. Huge shoutout to everyone who shared and commented about this piece. The story reminded everyone that if you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.
6. Madman’s Rant: Is Ryan Reynolds’ MNTN Just Another AdTech Mirage?
This piece landed because it said out loud what many were whispering. Performance CTV is powerful, but it’s also oversold. By dissecting the narrative around celebrity-backed ad tech and the limits of attribution-driven storytelling, the column forced a more honest conversation about where real value accrues.
It wasn’t anti-innovation. It was anti-delusion.
5. Disney Opens the IP Vault for OpenAI and Sets the First Real AI Licensing Playbook
This was the moment the AI conversation stopped being theoretical.
Disney didn’t just invest in OpenAI. It established a framework for how legacy IP holders can participate in generative ecosystems without surrendering control. By licensing sanctioned character models into Sora, Disney positioned itself upstream of creation, not downstream of distribution.
In my view, this will age as one of the most important strategic moves any studio made this decade. Not because of AI hype, but because it reframed IP ownership for an era where creation is infinite and control is scarce.
4. YouTube Is TV. Everyone Knows It Except the People Paid Not to Know It
Few pieces this year triggered as much executive discomfort.
The argument wasn’t semantic. It was economic. Audiences already treat YouTube as television, especially on connected TVs. The resistance comes from institutions whose compensation models, measurement frameworks, and power structures depend on pretending that isn’t true.
This piece landed because it forced readers to confront an uncomfortable reality: attention has already moved. The industry just hasn’t caught up.
3. How to Burn $3 Billion and Still Not Know Your Name
Skip’s takedown of Warner Bros. Discovery’s latest rename captured the industry’s growing fatigue with rebrands, resets, and corporate theater. It went straight at the contradiction of having world-class content while suffering an unresolved identity crisis.
This piece became shorthand inside the business for a simple truth many execs keep relearning the hard way: clarity is a strategy. Confusion is a cost. And no amount of marketing spend can compensate for not knowing who you’re supposed to be.
2. Hollywood Isn’t Being Disrupted by AI. It’s Being Rebuilt Around It
This piece cut through the AI noise and focused on the transformation that actually matters. Not chatbots or novelty tools, but the rebuilding of entertainment infrastructure itself: localization, personalization, animation, discovery, and distribution.
This wasn’t speculative futurism. It was a clear-eyed map of where the business is already heading and how quietly, but fundamentally, the ground is shifting beneath legacy workflows.
1. Ask Skip: Is Media Reinventing Itself or Just Buying Time?
Skip articulated (as he often does) what many insiders felt but hadn’t said out loud: much of legacy media isn’t reinventing itself. It’s buying time. This became the defining critique of 2025.
And Skip distilled the moment into one line that landed like a verdict:\
“Legacy media isn’t pivoting. It’s downsizing its way to the exit.”
No article captured the year’s mood better.
Thank you from The Streaming Wars
Thanks for reading, sharing, subscribing, and showing up for The Streaming Wars this year. What we’re building only works because the people who actually shape this industry choose to spend time with us.
You’ve helped turn TSW into something rare in media right now: an insider-run publication with no ads, no paywall, no corporate spin, and no performative objectivity. Just perspective, and straight talk from people who’ve spent time in the trenches.
Our goal has always been simple. Build a publication worthy of the execs, operators, analysts, builders, founders, and creators who keep this business moving. Create space for insight, highlight thought leaders. Focus on the decisions that matter. Push the conversation forward without chasing clicks or cluttering the page with junk.
Whether you’ve been with us from day one or found us this year, thanks for being part of it. We’re not slowing down. The work continues.
See you in the new year.
