WHY BROADCASTERS ARE PARTNERING WITH THE PLATFORM THEY ONCE FEARED

Premium streaming lost 89% of the subscribers that signed up for new subscriptions last year, and the audience it’s chasing is watching video in the bedroom, on the bus, and on the toilet. Evan Shapiro’s keynote makes the case that media has to redefine broadcast and follow the whole consumer. In this keynote episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast, recorded on stage at Jupiter Festival in Miami, Evan Shapiro unveils the newest Media Universe map and the Creator Ecosphere map. He walks through cross-screen attention data from 23 regions, including why YouTube, TikTok, and vertical video are winning the phone-first audience, how the creator economy is shifting toward the affinity economy, and why the “cannibalization” fear is a myth, using World Cup viewership as proof. He also covers streaming retention, the rise of advertising over subscriptions, vertical premium television, employee-generated content, and how brands and media companies can win by thinking like creators in the user-centric era. Key Takeaways: 1. The User-Centric Era Is Here, and the Phone Is the Remote Control 81% of the world’s population is 54 or younger, and phones beat television sets for video time by more than two to one in the US and more than three to one in Brazil and Mexico. In the 23 regions surveyed, the bedroom was the top place to watch video, and 75% of the Indian Premier League cricket final was watched on phones. 2. YouTube Wins by Serving the Whole Consumer The new de-duplicated cross-screen attention index (index.eshap.tv) puts YouTube first in the US because it is the only platform on both television sets and phones, with a vertical product. Among under-55s TikTok ranks second, and among under-25s TikTok wins total attention in the US. 3. Premium Streaming Is Plateauing as Advertising Overtakes Subscriptions In the past year SVOD added 175 million subscribers and lost 156 million, a net retention of just 11%. PwC data shows advertising surpassing subscriptions in global revenue for the first time in a long time, which explains why premium streamers are rushing into ads. 4. The Cannibalization Myth Doesn’t Hold Up During the World Cup, CazéTV in Brazil hit 24 million concurrent YouTube streams for the final while 70 million people watched on broadcast at the same time. RTL in Germany reports a 26% increase in paid subscriptions and a 126% increase in sampling from audiences reached on YouTube, and BBC Studios’ Jasmine Dawson says that in every case studied, social distribution is additive. 5. Think Like a Creator Indie creators on the Affinity 100 list showed three to five times better engagement quality than mega creators. Heinz drove about $45 million in earned media and a 12% sales lift by mocking FIFA’s stadium branding rules, and Kit Kat’s stolen-truck posts reached 128 million people and $224 million in earned media. World of Wonder’s WOW Presents, built on its Drag Race fandom, reports 96% retention.

YouTube built the kids content economy, then broke its own monetization pipeline. Now it's time to fix kids content. This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast features hosts Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet with kids media analyst Emily Horgan (The Kids Streamersphere), breaking down her latest Netflix Kids Content Performance Report. They dig into why Netflix isn't building new kids IP, YouTube's broken monetization pipeline for children's content, and how what's actually working for creators and franchises in a brutally competitive kids' content landscape can be the roadmap to fixing kids content.

An Anthropic engineer warned AI could destroy humanity, but Silicon Valley's sudden AI "safety" panic looks a lot like a marketing campaign.

Blair Imani just beat MrBeast on a brand-new ranking of creator influence and and the metric behind it could change how brands spend their money on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. This episode of The Media Odyssey Podcast, recorded outside at IBC, features hosts Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet with special guest Shira Lazar. They unpack the newly released Affinity 100, a ranking of the most impactful creators of 2026 built on a new metric called the Affinity Quotient, developed with Whalar Group and Foam. Key Takeaways: 1. A New Way to Measure Influence The Affinity Quotient weighs likes and comments, adds shares at double weight, and divides by views to measure engagement per view rather than engagement per post. It captures depth of impact rather than raw reach. 2. Blair Imani Tops the List, MrBeast Ranks 85th Educator and historian Blair Imani (fewer than 1 million total followers) ranked #1, while MrBeast, the world's biggest creator with half a billion followers, landed at 85. The list shows a shift from "creator economy" to the "affinity economy," where depth of engagement matters more than scale. 3. Indie and Expert Creators Are Rising The list highlights "indie creators" and niche experts (a finance guru, a film reviewer, a makeup artist turned inclusivity consultant) showing that creators with as few as 10,000-50,000 highly engaged fans can build sustainable, meaningful businesses. 4. Brands Still Chase Follower Counts Despite the Shift Even as the industry talks about quality over quantity, brand briefs still specify minimum follower counts (e.g., "250K-plus"). Shira Lazar argues B2B and knowledge creators are starting to shift that mindset, since the people following niche experts are often the ones making purchasing decisions. 5. The Creator Ecosphere Map Returns in October Evan Shapiro will unveil the second edition of the Creator Ecosphere Map on October 8th at the inaugural Jupiter Festival in Miami, sponsored by YouTube. The new version will rank roughly 800 creators using the Affinity Quotient across all major platforms, with all underlying data made publicly available for validation.

Europe's public broadcasters are losing over 5% of their funding on average, and some budgets are being slashed by up to 70%. It's not because of economics, but ideology. This bonus episode, recorded live at SME Live 2026 in Amsterdam, features Marion Ranchet with Serge Schick (France Medias Monde), Lieven Vermaele (VRT), Christophe Chantraine (RTBF), and Bastiaan Toering (NPO), discussing the funding pressures and strategic countermeasures reshaping European public service media. Key Takeaways 1. Public Service Media Reach Is Massive, But Funding Is Shrinking PSM reaches over 80% of Europeans weekly (close to 70% among 15-24 year-olds) at a cost of just €3.60 per citizen per month. At the same time, average funding fell more than 5% between 2019 and 2024, with some countries like Switzerland cutting budgets by 70% despite no public deficit, reflecting political and ideological pressure rather than economics alone. 2. Broadcasters Are Cutting Costs to Protect Content RTBF is reducing its workforce by 10% over four years mainly through attrition, cutting a radio station, and some sports rights. VRT is rationalizing its brand portfolio down to three core digital platforms (news, sport, audio-visual) while keeping 65% of its budget tied to content production. 3. SVOD and Partnerships Are New Revenue Levers NPO's NPO+ SVOD service, launched in 2016, has driven a decade of added revenue, and its co-production "Wolven" with Disney+ shows public broadcasters increasingly open to streamer partnerships. This mindset shift wouldn't have happened five years ago, contrasting with France's failed Salto SVOD venture. 4. YouTube Strategy Varies by Broadcaster France Médias Monde treats YouTube as essential reach across 18 markets it can't cover alone, RTBF uses release-window delays to protect its own platform while benefiting from a large audience halo effect outside Belgium, and NPO/VRT build YouTube-native content designed to funnel viewers back to their own platforms. 5. Collaboration Across PSM Remains Limited European public broadcasters still rarely share technology or infrastructure the way commercial groups like RTL or Bedrock do across markets, despite recognizing the need for scale. Efforts like the EBU-backed Public Space Incubator offer a small but promising start. Thank you to all the panelists: Serge Schick - https://www.linkedin.com/in/serge-schick-447019104/ Lieven Vermaele - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lievenvermaele/ Christophe Chantraine - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophechantraine/ Bastiaan Toering - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bastiaan-toering/