Forget Peak TV, Here Comes Infinite TV

The Four Technologies Lowering the Barriers to Quality Video Content Creation

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I recently posted an essay called The Four Horsemen of the TV Apocalypse. I got a lot of feedback that the piece raised important ideas, but also that, at >10,000 words, many would be put off by the time commitment required. This is an attempt to convey the same ideas in a shorter version.

Source: Midjourney, prompt: “a television set that is simultaneously showing an infinite number of TV shows in an abstract style”

Tl;dr:

• The growing realization that streaming TV is less profitable than the declining traditional TV business is causing ripple effects along the entire entertainment value chain. Disney CEO Bob Iger recently called it “an age of great anxiety.”
• One notable thing about all this angst is that it has been caused by disruption of only one part of the value chain. Over the last decade, the barriers to distribute video content have plummeted, but the barriers to create TV series and films have risen dramatically. It’s expensive and risky and consequently is still dominated by only a handful of big entertainment and tech companies.
• This essay makes the case that, over the next decade, quality video content creation is on a path to be disrupted too. The question is not whether we have achieved “peak TV,” but what happens when we have “infinite TV?”
• Short form video, namely YouTube and TikTok, is already effectively infinite. But entertainment companies, “creators” and consumers largely think of this as distinct from TV series and movies, with a far lower quality and very different use cases.
• Below, I discuss four technologies that, collectively, could increasingly blur these distinctions over the next 5–10 years, resulting in “infinite” quality video content. Several are early, but they are not theoretical. They are all happening now.
• Short form video is changing some consumers’ definition of quality in a way that de-emphasizes the importance of high production values, lowering the barrier to entry; the hand-in-glove technologies virtual production and AI are on a path to democratize high production value content creation tools; and web3 has the potential to dramatically broaden access to capital.
• I am not making a value judgment about these trends, especially AI, which is deeply unsettling to many, or discussing their potential effect on employment, which could be meaningful. They are progressing whether one thinks they are good or bad.
• The surprisingly far-reaching implications of the disruption of video distribution over the past decade show how hard it is to predict the implications of a similar disruption of content creation. But exploring even obvious first order effects suggest that the changes in the entertainment business in the next decade could be more profound than what occurred over the prior one.

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