In this episode, I’m delighted to speak with Doug Shapiro. Doug is a US-based independent consultant and advisor, writer, speaker and lecturer, as well as a Senior Advisor at Boston Consulting Group. He has spent his entire career in and around the media business, including 14 years as a media equity analyst and 12 years at Time Warner and WarnerMedia. Doug has also just finished work on a book, Infinite Content: AI, The Next Great Disruption of Media, and How to Navigate What’s Coming, due to be published by MIT Press in early 2027. He writes The Mediator on Substack — the links below, and I’ve also linked to Doug’s Media Mental Model – it’s an exceptionally useful way of thinking about the structural changes underway in the media business, bringing together Doug’s writing across the different forces reshaping the industry. In this episode, Doug and I focus on three ideas from his Media Mental Model that get to the heart of how the economics of media are changing. First, the current shift in the consumer definition of “quality”. Modern media has been the domain of scarce, professionally produced media, for which ‘quality’ was tied to production values, polish and sophistication. But YouTube, Tik Tok, Reels, and the YouTube x gaming cross-over has given us new forms of media that elevate different attributes - authenticity, relevance, convenience, participation and community. These new forms of ‘quality’ are easier and cheaper to make – so where does this leave ‘traditional’ media producers? Second, we explore what happens as content itself becomes ubiquitous. Doug argues that, as ‘quality’ content can be produced virtually anywhere and by anyone, value migrates towards what Doug terms ‘complements’ and ‘chokepoints’, such as curation, IP, community, trusted provenance, professional validation. Third, Doug has posited that content might increasingly become top of funnel rather than the final product; less the ‘end’, and more the ‘means’, aggregating attention, building consumer relationships and funnelling demand towards scarcer more valuable downstream experiences and services. If these two these come to pass - where do traditional media companies position themselves? Doug’s perspectives are typically thoughtful, thorough and wide ranging – I hope you enjoy the episode. Here’s some further links / references: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-shapiro/ https://www.dougshapiro.media/ https://dougshapiro.substack.com/ https://dougshapiro.substack.com/p/media-mental-model-1c6 https://dougshapiro.substack.com/t/book-infinite-content Thank you, Dan Fahy
