The line between entertainment and news has blurred. Satirical shows like Last Week Tonight are many young people's primary source of news, while conspiracy theories spread using the same algorithmic tools as cat videos. When entertainment is designed to provoke emotion (outrage, fear, joy), it becomes indistinguishable from propaganda.
Furthermore, "churn" (the rate at which customers cancel) is the new boogeyman. To fight churn, entertainment companies are reverting to a tactic from the cable era: bundling. Disney is bundling Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. Verizon bundles Netflix and Max. The future might look less like a la carte streaming and more like a revamped version of the cable bundle—just delivered over the internet. Even with fragmentation, mass cultural events can still occur, but they happen on social media. When Bridgerton drops a new season, the conversation doesn't happen at the office the next day; it happens on TikTok within the hour. Deeper.23.08.03.Lika.Star.Silencio.XXX.1080p.HE...
This shift from linear to algorithmic curation has fundamentally altered the nature of popular media. The pace has accelerated. Where a film in the 1990s had three acts, a TikTok video has three seconds to hook you. The "hook, hold, reward" structure of short-form video is now bleeding into long-form media. Netflix previews auto-play; trailers are cut into six-second teasers. The line between entertainment and news has blurred