The recent announcement that Netflix formalized a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s television and film studios, as well as the HBO Max streaming service, got me thinking about an essay that Derek Thompson published on his Substack titled “Everything is Television.”
“A spooky convergence is happening in media,” he begins. “Everything that is not already television is turning into television.”
Thompson then gives three examples of what he means:
1. Social Media is moving from offering connection to streaming videos (in court documents from this summer, Meta admitted that only 7% of activity on their Instagram platform involves users following people they know).
2. Podcasts are migrating inexorably toward video format.
3. Even AI is shifting toward visual media with the launch of new products like OpenAI’s Sora and Meta’s Vibes.
Television, of course, can mean many things. “When I say ‘everything is turning into television,’” Thompson clarifies, “what I mean is that disparate forms of media and entertainment are converging on one thing: the continuous flow of episodic video.”
While I might disagree with the premise that all media is turning into television (the global book and movie industries continue to chug along well enough in their traditional formats), I think Thompson is pointing out a real and very important trend that’s particularly pronounced in the world of internet media. (I’ve been arguing this point for a while now; e.g., the first 15 minutes of my most recent appearance on the Tim Ferriss Show, when I tried to convince Tim that video was inevitably going to devour audio podcasts.)
This leaves us with a significant question: why are these media devolving into glorified TV? In other words, why has the internet, which once held promise as the collaborative, intellectually stimulating alternative to the boob tube, increasingly churned out a stream of TikTok clones?
I’ve come to believe that the answer is less about technological determinism than it is economic determinism. The video entertainment sector is shockingly lucrative, with the combined online video and traditional TV markets projected to reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. The reason why internet media are becoming more like TV, then, is because that’s where the money is!
The broadband and wireless internet infrastructure we built through public/private partnerships over the last two decades turned out to be the perfect foundation on which a small number of tech companies could build competitors to the existing television and video market – to grab their share of that trillion-dollar sector. You can’t blame Meta, or Google, or even OpenAI for chasing that market. It was too big to ignore.
But here’s the silver lining: Once we realize that these companies’ apps are essentially glorified TV, we should feel more comfortable ignoring them. There was a time when platforms like Facebook and Twitter wanted to convince you that they were part of a new social fabric; a fundamental technology that responsible citizens couldn’t ignore. Not any more. If they’re just TV, then we can respond the way we always have: by simply turning off the proverbial set.
I think it is ridiculous of Mark
Zuckerberg to completely trash facebooks and instagrams competitive advantage of actual real life friends. This Thanksgiving I noticed a significant drop in my real friends posting holiday pictures. Instagram is essentially a ghost town except for influencers trying to make a buck off sponsorships or click
bait/rage bait content. Who wants to sit around and watch ads all day in the form of actual paid advertisements and influencers paid to do videos that are essentially commercials designed to look like normal content. FOMO is dying since there isn’t any quality content anymore to miss out on. Ensh!tification is real and I think these platforms are going to have a big problem going forward when a large chunk of their real users just stop clicking. If the internet is turning into tv, it is bad low budget tv that just shows ads all day. What happens when people stop watching? Does the internet as we know it die? In 2025, i feel like the internet was better 15 years ago. The only improvement is ai like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok which are significant improvements over searching through google results. Otherwise the internet has morphed into a dumpster fire that isn’t even worth watching.
Great article. Traditional TV before social media gave us the choice to switch between different programs. Now we get a lot more choices of TV-like programs through Internet. The solution seems simple: “turning off the proverbial set”. I’m afraid the real problem is that many people cannot turn off the proverbial set, and that makes the digital declutter challenge Cal organized a few years ago even more relevant now. This online video market is scary and rarely used for the right reasons.
Well said.
Even if you were consuming video content, the old internet made you choose what to consume next; you had to be intentional. The new internet chooses for you in a hyper specific and dangerously addictive way. Short-form feeds are tuned directly to your brain, and it’s getting harder and harder not to get pulled in.
I find myself caught between seeking out the curiosity-driven, intellectually stimulating web of years past and today’s algorithmic “boob-tube,” trying to capture the joy of using it in the past without getting sucked into endless hours of doom scrolling.
This reminds me of Neil Postman. He predicted the dominance of this medium. A relevant quote from the great ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’:
“There is no audience so young that it is barred from television. There is no poverty so abject that it must forgo television. There is no education so exalted that it is not modified by television. And most important of all, there is no subject of public interest—politics, news, education, religion, science, sports—that does not find its way to television.”
An interesting commentary as always. However:
“There was a time when platforms like Facebook and Twitter wanted to convince you that they were part of a new social fabric; a fundamental technology that responsible citizens couldn’t ignore. Not any more. If they’re just TV, then we can respond the way we always have: by simply turning off the proverbial set.”
We– meaning you and I who have already rejected TV. TV is projected to be a $1 trillion industry by 2023, meaning that most won’t reject Facebook and Twitter because of this shift. In fact, it will just make them more addictive and powerful.
Hi Cal,
Thank you for the recent thinking piece on Derek Thompson’s essay—I really enjoyed the analysis of the economic forces at play.
I wanted to politely add one layer to your conclusion. You mention the financial attraction ($1T market) as the main driver, but I wonder if the root cause is actually the human behavior fueling that market.
Whatever high hopes we had for the internet, it seems the reality is that the vast majority of people simply prefer being entertained by moving images. It sounds profane, but it’s a fascinating, honest hint into the human condition in the 21st century. We are building TV because, deep down, that is what we want to watch.
Thanks for the great work.
Best,
Thomas
Brilliant ending to this article!
Isn’t it just TV commercials? They need to sell us more Pert!
Great article. I would submit that films are also become television – what is the Marvel universe but a long TV show? A standalone original 2 hour film with no spin-off or sequel potential doesn’t stand a chance.