No, it hasn’t been the best of times for those who are still trying to keep their professional heads above water in media. Ask anyone at Skydance or Netflix, assuming they’re even in a mood to communicate at all. Those that weren’t already forced to reactivate their “open to work” graphics are either tripling down at holding down the fort while their employers assess exactly how much bone their reactive “right-sizings” cut out of their ability to function or they are working their Slack channels hoping against hope someone they know from grad school might just have an actual lead on an open position somewhere that we all know damn well don’t really exist on LinkedIn or Indeed.
What you do find there is moral support and the omnipresent “thoughts and prayers” from those who’ve already been down that road. And on occasion some thoughtful essays and seminal works from those who are fortunate and/or fed up enough to say “no mas” to the cycle of desperately pursuing something close to what they have been doing to put themselves in a position to consult and advise the remaining leaders who clearly are lacking in their abilities to set a path for growth based on real experience.
Alan Wolk is one such blessed genius, and I unabashedly call myself a fan. I subscribe to his TV REV newsletter which typically drops on a Friday morning and has one or two expanded and nuanced takes on breaking news similar to those that I muse on–his tend to be slightly more original and often a lot more provocative than are mine. Maybe that’s because he’s been doing this a lot longer than me–from his own LinkedIn biography, he appears to have ankled the agency industry in 2008 and has been utilizing the TV REV banner since 2015 where he (s)pearhead(s) consulting projects for media industry clients utilizing TVREVs staff of journalists and industry experts and provides services (which) include: research reports on breaking topics, thought leadership, customized trend reports business development (matchmaking) and product marketing. As a postscript, he notes that I also do a whole lot of speaking, write for Forbes and NextTV and opine on Cheddar.
In other words, he’s doing exactly what I’d like to be doing a lot more of, and appears to be doing pretty decently in the process.
So when he actually decides to supplement his usual weekly essay with an actual book–something else I’m still yearning to do–you’d best believe I’m going to find some way to scrape up enough to at least download a Kindle copy to check it out. What he made available earlier this month with the provocative title WELCOME TO THE AGE OF FEUDAL MEDIA: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE MONOCULTURE COLLAPSES more than delivers on the value proposition.
The book is not necessarily groundbreaking in the subjects it focuses on–the splintering of both audience size and ideological diversity of all media is the firehose we all drink from. What is novel is the perspective Wolk provides as to how we got into this mess in the first place, what signposts along the way proved to be harbingers and, most of all, perhaps a ray of hope that using the past as prologue could actually provide some sort of a future. He telegraphed his intentions and teased his techniques in his TV REV post from October 2nd:
It’s a look at what the descent into Feudal Media has brought about, not just for the media and advertising communities, but on a broader societal basis as well.
In the book, I’ll take you through the origins of mass media and the monoculture and how it all came apart. We’ll look at the key players in the Feudal Media ecosystem and their prospects over the coming years, with a slight detour to look at the limitations of the creator economy as seen through the lens of OnlyFans. Next there’s a full examination of just what we’ve lost and gained with the collapse, everything from the state of news to the state of fame to the loss of serendipity.
And because I am an eternal optimist, the book ends with a plan to get us out of this mess. Not a return to the monoculture, mind you, but a way out.
Only someone as seasoned as is Wolk could successfully connect these kinds of dots and draw actionable insights applicable to today from the newspaper wars of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst more than 130 years ago. Only someone as broadly experienced as Wolk could realize that the size and scope of communality that THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW set six-seen decades ago is now only capable of being emulated by You Tube–but with infinitely more “acts” that any weekly variety program could muster. And only someone as open-minded as Wolk could actually find some legitimate data points and lessons learned from OnlyFans.
That small list, I dare say, includes moi. But Wolk has a pedigree and a publisher, so he gets to do what some of us still only hope to. So although we both may at times go down a slippery slope into an abyss–his call-to-action blurb concludes with the dire warning Welcome to the new dark ages of media.–he gets to lay out a viable way to rise like a phoenix–well, maybe merely a hungover binger–from where we now find ourselves.
And since he does, you would be hard pressed to find a better way to spend what I’m confident you might have in the cushions of your couch than downloading or perhaps even really biting the bullet and purchasing a physical copy.
No spoilers this time. That would take away any urgency this may have inspired for you to take action. That, to me, is even a more cardinal sin than just offering thoughts and prayers.
Until next time…