Looking ahead in media

Technology enthusiasts may very well look back at 2023 as the year that we finally got an AI-powered dog collar that translates barks into English. For the lay-person, 2023 is likely the year they started to hear Artificial Intelligence in almost every conversation and article. 2023 will be marked as one of the most important years in the rise of Generative AI – owing in no small part to OpenAI launching ChatGPT+ to the masses, with other tech giants hurriedly following suit. 

February 2023 saw the launch of ChatGPT+ (later incorporating the even more powerful GPT-4); Microsoft’s integration of ChatGPT into Microsoft Bing; and the (some may say hurried) introduction of Google’s ‘Bard’ AI to the market.  

What makes this significant? 

The launch of these platforms represents a significant leap forward in the development of Large Language Models (LLMs), ushering in a new era of AI-powered communication. This generation of LLMs is particularly special due the ability to not only harness human language but also take on the appearance of human processing - technology that can not only now analyse large amounts of data, but also effectively synthesise insights and patterns in ways that are remarkably close to how we as humans would. The impact of this is already causing shockwaves throughout the industry. September’s Hollywood writer’s strike against the use of LLMs and AI represents just one of the many looming battles to come between man and machine in the creative industries. 

As ChatGPT caught the headlines and attention, so companies rushed to respond and create AI strategies, or at least sets of things that could keep executives or shareholders happy that they were doing something. A flurry of investment has ensued, chasing the new era. Microsoft’s $10 billion investment into OpenAI and subsequent launch of Copilot has certainly signaled its intent to be a pioneer of the new landscape and its enterprise applications.  

What to look for in 2024?

As LLMs grow in intelligence, capability and ubiquity, we can expect increased adoption of the early phase LLMs in enterprise applications. LLMs are already being used in a variety of such uses, including customer service chatbots, virtual assistants and content creation tools. But will this wave of tools be a bringer of real transformation? Like most shifts, the initial hype is frenzied and needs to shake out. Only then can commercial cases be grounded and true transformational action take place. Is ChatGPT the real deal? Or is something else waiting in the wings, or positioning to sweep all aside just outside the spotlight?  

What is clear is that the shift from human to AI-enabled processing is here and here to stay. As global policymakers convene over the coming year to deliberate on the future of AI, it will be fascinating to see where the superchips fall. 

For many, major social media platforms have become trusted mainstays of our daily lives. What people often forget is that these platforms remain tethered to strong cultural, commercial and political forces. 

In March 2023, the Treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) demanded that Chinese-based ByteDance sell all its TikTok shares, or risk triggering the app's national ban. A day later, the FBI and Department of Justice launched a formal investigation, and another week later TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before a US court. 

What makes this significant?  

These developments speak to ways that technology and geopolitics have become increasingly intertwined, catalysed in this case by a strained period in US-China relations. The US rationale can be considered in the light of two key pieces of Chinese legislation. The 2017 National Intelligence Law and 2014 Counter-Espionage Law compel all Chinese citizens and firms to provide evidence upon request to the Chinese government during espionage investigations or state intelligence work. 

With a rise in the public awareness of cyber acts and tensions, many in the US began to see that these could require ByteDance - a 150,000-person Chinese tech company that acquired TikTok in 2017 - to pass US user data to the Chinese government. The US was not alone; Tik Tok is banned in six other countries. 

The events of March 2023 revealed the resolve of US authorities to take action in the name of security and data protection – even with one of the US’s most popular social media apps. The moves follow a recent narrative of geopolitical manouvering with technology firms – from western firms blocking Chinese firm Huawei from providing 5G network hardware, to the attempts by the 2020 Trump administration to ban TikTok.  

On China’s part, there are counter-claims of US protectionism, and that there is no involvement from the Chinese state in using customer data from global companies like TikTok. There are also arguments that western governments have for years accessed or used its own global companies’ data or technology, extending their own policies and data-gathering significantly in responses to wide ranging anti-money laundering powers and global terrorism.  

What to look for in 2024?

While the US bill to ban TikTok was blocked by the Senate on the March 29th, two weeks later Montana became the first US state to ban TikTok on all personal devices. This law was set to come into effect in January 2024, but was ultimately blocked by a federal judge in November for violating First Amendment free speech rights. This highlights the difficulties governments face in regulating global technology – and don’t expect the end of the story to come soon. 

With 2024 being a US presidential election year, look out for the attention and sentiment that TikTok, social media and data privacy may receive in policy debates and campaigns. Will candidates be prepared to grapple with the power of global platforms, but also recognise the dialogue that is needed to avoid reinforcing geopolitical fault lines? 

In a sudden April twist, Twitter informed its business partners of a significant corporate identity overhaul, unveiling a fresh moniker – ‘X Corp’. The company’s makeover gathered momentum in July when Twitter, the social media platform itself, rebranded to ‘X’. The change aligns the company with some of Elon Musk’s other ventures, notably SpaceX and xAI, as well as the naming of one of his sons, X Æ A-Xii. The overhaul appears to be part of a broader vision: to create the X ‘everything app’, a concept that Musk tweeted about only shortly before acquiring the company last year. 

What makes this significant? 

This is seemingly not just about a rebranding. It signals a strategic shift. The platform, once confined to short 140-character ‘tweets’ has, in its evolution into X, ambition encompassing “comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world”. While the rebrand has taken place fairly seamlessly, the critical question remains as to whether the more expansive ambitions can be realised as successfully. 

While Musk appears unfazed by the challenges of pivoting to an ‘everything app’, these cannot be easily cast aside. X faces an advertising boycott, brought on by shifts in approach and policy, as well as uncertainty over the direction under Musk. Replacing the Twitter brand with X further creates advertiser and shareholder uncertainty, with Disney and Apple suspending advertising on the platform, notably after reports emerged of ads placed next to inappropriate posts. The boycott presents a very real threat to a company that last year saw 90% of revenues come from advertising. Indeed, income from ads witnessed a staggering 59% decline over a five-week period from April to May 2023, compared to the same period in 2022. 

What to look for in 2024?

2024 is likely to be a decisive juncture for X Corp. Musk is now openly speaking about the possibility of bankruptcy and the advertising boycott shows little signs of relaxing. Musk’s approach cedes little ground, recently calling for boycotters to “go [expletive deleted] themselves”. X Corp has already undergone very significant reductions in headcount and costs, with introduction of a paid subscription model seemingly not capturing customers’ imagination or wallets.  Expect X to pursue new, and more radical, revenue streams. Musk has teased adding financial services to the app and don’t bet against this, or other more lateral ideas, disrupting established markets and actually paying off. Musk’s track record may be one of very public pronouncements but is also one of exceptional success. Dare we bet against the serial entrepreneur with that ‘X’ factor? 

They say consultants love acronyms, but readers beware - there’s more here than even we find comfortable. May 2023 brought to Hollywood the longest disruption to American film and television production since the Covid-19 pandemic, becoming known as the ‘Hollywood Double Strike’. It was the first time since 1960 that both the Writers Guild of America (WGA), representing 11,500 screenwriters, and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), representing 160,000 actors and artists, would strike in unison.  On the other side were Hollywood’s largest studios and production companies, collectively the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).  

What makes this significant? 

Artist unions have gone on strike before. This time though was remarkable, not just because of the number of issues involved but also in the support garnered across the industry.  

The reasons for the strikes were multi-faceted, driven by a combination of potentially precipitous events coming together. First is the seemingly inexorable shift of platforms to IP streaming which, through a tendency for higher volumes and smaller residual payments, has financially disadvantaged writers. Second, the industry was just recovering from the financial ‘pause-button’ of the pandemic that curtailed employment opportunities and income for actors, screenwriters and entertainment production teams. Third, entering rapidly from stage left, has been the mainstream access and adoption of generative AI technologies, disrupting not just traditional production methods but also how to think about rights and fair returns to creators.  

So the big strikes are ultimately about pay, right? Well yes but also no. It is potentially bout the future of people in the entertainment industry itself. 

As of now, changes have been proposed as a major win for workers, with increases to the minimum wage, compensation and pensions; improvements to terms for employment length and the size of writing teams; and better or new residuals (royalty payments) for streaming content. The most interesting provisions of all concern how AI can and cannot be applied to scripts, in essence giving writers use of generative AI (within company policies) but not to use software to reduce writers or their pay. In addition, writers’ material cannot be used to train AI systems without their consent. 

What to look for in 2024?

For movie lovers, the strikes’ resolution improves the outlook for 2024 productions and we should be back on track for our favourite entertainment. But have the fundamentals really gone away? 

Will screenwriters choose to use the AI tools now legitimately within their reach? Are you disadvantaged if you don’t? Will studios or other new firms find ways to harness the technology without incumbent teams to have to retain? Will audiences start to notice or, dare we say it, prefer content that has had a degree of technological adaptation or personalisation? Will similar legal action in publishing reignite a debate that hits writers stance once again?  

There’s so much to watch in this space, when will we ever get to The Crown Season 6! 

June saw Lloyds Bank seize Telegraph Media Group (TMG) in place of around £1.2bn of debts owed by the Barclay family, placing TMG assets valued around £650m on the market – including The Telegraph newspapers and the Spectator magazine.  

The announcements gripped the publishing world and potential sale sparked more interest than expected, with potential buyers racing to get a head start before the official auction began in October. The frenzy was short-lived, with Abu-Dhabi backed investment fund RedBird IMI announcing that it had reached agreement to acquire the assets. 

What makes this significant? 

News ownership has always been a hot topic, with tensions often called out between commercial interests and editorial voice, or between owners’ interests and calls for independence. That RedBird IMI is funded by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the vice-president of the UAE, a country many feel has a poor track record on free expression of opinion, provided further tension in this case.  

This has been a story twisting and turning at almost every stage. UK Culture Secretary, Lucy Frazer, issued a Public Interest Intervention Notice (PIIN) over the proposed deal, prompting investigations by media regulator Ofcom and the UK Competition Markets Authority. 

So what is at stake here? Is this a storm in a teacup, when you consider the majority of news consumption has been increasingly shifting away from traditional sources towards social media and tech platforms? Do we still care about what ‘old media’ brands say or who owns them? Are the Telegraph titles just small fish in an increasingly large, global pond?  

But maybe the situation is not so simple. The Telegraph is one of the world’s most established and authoritative news brands. It speaks and people listen. They trust it to be well researched, diligent and consistent. Many loyal readers turn to its content, and so it helps shape views that travel as thise people share their views and opinions.  Now this isn’t news of course, but it might be why that, even in a digital world of news anywhere and everywhere, it remains as important to apply media ownership rules as carefully as ever. 

It will be very interesting to look at how Ofcom conducts its analysis.  Taken purely on share of audience or attention, the case for intervention may be weaker – but to ignore the trust, position and weight that a 170+ year old news brand has built would be a mistake. Now more than ever, trusted brands are potentially more scarce and valuable than ever.  

What to look for in 2024? 

Ofcom and the CMA are due to report back at the end of January 2024. No rest over the holidays for them it seems! And no rest either for Redbird IMI who in November announced plans to acquire TV Production company All3Media for another £1B+ valuation.  

The next chapter is hard to predict. Expect more twists and turns. How do you block a bid that might be the only one to save an established institution? What conditions would safeguard press and editorial freedoms and how practical could they really be?  Will Redbird IMI’s pursuit of All3Media temper the attractiveness of the Telegraph assets? Hold the front page someone?

Following tentatively successful trials in a few markets, July saw Netflix decide to clamp down on password-sharing for their service in 100 countries, including the US and the UK. They sent emails to inform subscribers that accounts should only be shared between 'you and the people you live with' - or expect to face fees. Although this was only enforcing their existing policy, it was a deviation from what many had considered a fairly laissez-faire attitude to enforcement.  

What makes this significant? 

This move was not a guaranteed win for Netflix, as many subscribers - and their friends and family – greeted the news with some umbrage or frustration. Indeed, in the run-up to the enforcement coming into effect, UK comparison site Broadband Genie shared survey results indicating that a quarter of subscribers were considering either eyeing the exit door, or downgrading to a cheaper tier, due to the decision. Similar results were reported by ViewNexa in the US. They found that 30% of surveyed 16-24 years olds said that they felt betrayed, creating a risk for Netflix that young beneficiaries of a shared account would lose their positive perception of the service and switch to alternatives. 

So why did Netflix make the move? We know that the post-pandemic cost of living crises and increased competition in the SVOD market had slowed both subscriber and package value growth, which, with heavy investment in content in production and planned, would have forced Netflix executives to explore all approaches to firm up a wider, paying audience and reduce revenue leakage. 

It seems that the gamble has paid off. In October, Netflix announced a global increase of 8.8m new subscribers in the three months after the decision came into effect. This is potentially unsurprising, given that Netflix had previously claimed that more than 100m users worldwide shared passwords, creating a large pool of potential new sign-up customers. A further indication of success was Disney’s move to follow suit, announcing their own password-sharing clampdown less than a month after Netflix published their figures. 

What to look for in 2024?

So far, the balance has tipped in Netflix's favour and rewarded their calculated gambit. It will be interesting to watch for any subsequent shifts in audience behaviour and how competing streaming services may seek to attract and retain a more price-conscious and less sticky viewer base. A big strategic unknown is whether Netflix successfully converted former password-sharers to paying customers on a sustainable basis, or if potential future audiences were lost.  is there a danger that younger viewers became alienated by the move and have begun exploring other sources of content to build strong relationships with? YouTube anyone? 

Although illicit password-sharing may become a thing of the past, keep an eye out for how streamers might use access to differentiate themselves from each other. Will Netflix emphasise their advertising-supported tier as a lower cost point of entry? Will streamers spot the risks (and potential) of younger audiences choosing the easily accessible and free, driving a new wave of a next big thing that catches everyone off guard? 

In August 2023 more than 2 billion people globally watched the Women’s World Cup for football (okay, soccer). A sport long in the shadows of its older and more successful brother, had delivered record attendances, media attention and audiences - culminating in Spain defeating England’s Lionesses 1-0 in a nail-biting Final.  

The tournament follows a period of growth and investment in the women’s game that has seen rising spending by broadcasters and streamers on rights, increasing pay levels for players and growing domestic league attendances (albeit all still low compared to the men’s game). The U.S. has long had a thriving women’s soccer industry, albeit still small compared to other U.S. domestic sports.  

What makes this significant? 

This isn’t just a story about women in sport. It is a media, audience and rights story. 

Access to distribute content to global markets makes aggregating audiences easier and more effective. Modern media provides the ability to reach and aggregate untapped markets – in this case the untapped demand for women to play the game at professional levels, to raise the level of the sport and for audiences to come to enjoy it. Building grass-roots movements and showcasing role-models takes time but the trickle-down can work.   

As interest grows, so does the money flow. In 2020 the USA’s National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) struck a rights deal of c.$4.5m per season.  This November’s new deal was for $240m over four seasons. In 2021 the UK’s Women’s Super League (WSL) secured a 3-year deal with the BBC and Sky in a ‘landmark moment for the women’s game’, believed to be worth £8m a season.  

Ultimately, this is still small fry compared to the rights for the men’s game. In the UK, Sky and TNT paid £6.7bn for the UK viewing rights to four seasons of the English Premier League, albeit this was only a 4% increase from the previous rights round.  

Live sport has become a valuable differentiator for some media companies and streamers, aggregating audiences in large numbers. Players like Sky and DAZN have clear strategies to invest in sports rights and relatively new sports, such as UFC or MMA.  But it’s not always a hit. Amazon’s foray into professional tennis seems to have ebbed and their experiment with Premier League and Champions League football hasn’t developed further (say into a bid for more rights). Interestingly, Netflix appears least interested in live sport rights – but never say never! 

What to look for in 2024?

Early 2024 will see the next round of WSL and Women’s Championship rights out for tender. Expect another record deal and more headlines for women’s football.  However, 2024 could well be a cool-down, with consumer spending under pressure, and it may fall to the BBC’s public service funding and desire to support the women’s game that sustains investment in a tougher period.  

A more dramatic turn of events could be if WSL did something really different or innovative. Perhaps as the Women's Indian Premier League Cricket did when it sold its rights for $116.5m to Viacom for five seasons, and who then sub-licenced to Sky and DAZN. Now if WSL did something like that, maybe that gap to the men’s game feels a lot smaller all of a sudden! 

In September, the News Corp CEO said that Large Language Models (LLMs) are ‘fatally undermining journalism and damaging our societies’? Strong words but what is going on?   

At their simplest, LLMs are software technologies that can comprehend and generate human language text. Rather like how we might teach our own children, they are trained using rules but also experience (or data sets) to get feedback from. Advanced LLMs like ChatGPT and BARD can scrape from millions of sources to train themselves at lightning speed. The algorithms find patterns in the data and deep learning wraps the output in conversational language.  So much more enticing and effective than run-of-the-mill search engines.  

So what has News Corps attention? Firstly, we are now witnessing the huge potential of AI to assimilate and analyse critical information, produce ethical and narrative judgements, and mimic empathy and human nuance that can build, or at least replicate, trust. In such a world what does it mean to be a journalist or a news gatherer or a trusted news brand? 

Secondly, we are seeing that AI companies can write code but they need content to train their AI on. Many are using content from content creators like NewsCorp, sometimes repackaging it and sometimes feeding it in as source data for automations and new content.  

What makes this significant? 

This isn’t just about disruption. It might also be about acceptance and cooperation. News Corp has always had a firm, robust reputation, not known for conciliatory responses to competition. However, in this case News Corp have positioned their approach as one of negotiation with AI companies to together maximise opportunities. Could this possibly be a case of when you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?  Many may say it is too late to negotiate, that technology’s advance is winning the race. 

But perhaps it is too soon to negotiate?  News organisations are trusted by people in ways that LLMs currently aren’t.  Is it a given that the move to technology is as inexorable or one-sided as evangelists may suggest?  Some studies suggest that ChatGPT’s accuracy has actually been reducing with each product evolution, and no one seems to know why. Could it be that we are missing the essential ingredient of people who know how people think and work? Is this a truth we walk past at our peril? 

What to look for in 2024?  

The NewsCorp and AI negotiations are matters of speculation. Will it be like when Associated Press struck a deal with OpenAI to licence part of its news stories archive? Will it help monetise intellectual property and real-time content production? In our series on rights and royalties, we know that many media companies are expanding their role in the value chain in response to competition. 

New Corp believe they will help create models that benefit creators, publishers and journalists, with sustainable revenue streams for the content ecosystem and greater efficiency. Whether that is right or not, it is good to see the news industry engaging with the technology players in constructive ways.  

Yet, where are the regulators and guardians of public values and free speech in this discussion? When commercial leviathans get together saying they are looking to preserve what we as a society value, can we trust in the outcome? (Does anyone know how to write an AI Prompt for that?) 

In our 2022 Media Year in Review, we identified the saga over Microsoft’s proposed deal to acquire Activision Blizzard as one of our highlight moments. Fast forward to October 2023 and the $69 billion deal - the largest in gaming history - has finally been cleared. The acquisition has not been without controversy.  After US and other global regulatory clearances, it was the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that blocked the deal in April 2023 over concerns that Microsoft would become too dominant in the Cloud gaming market – a market that is still relatively nascent but rapidly growing. 

The CMA openly criticised Microsoft for having “the chance to restructure during the initial investigation but instead continuing to insist on a package of measures that [CMA] told them simply wouldn't work”, with further claims of prolonging proceedings and wasting both time and money. Ultimately, the UK watchdog has followed US and Europe’s equivalents in giving Microsoft the green light, having been swayed by a revised deal that sells Activision’s cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft, and gives Sony and Nintendo access to Activision Blizzard’s games for 10 years. 

What makes this significant?  

With games such as Candy Crush, Activision Blizzard helps Microsoft establish a foothold for growth in mobile, alongside further reinforcement of its subscription service. The International Data Group (IDG) forecasts mobile games revenues to reach over $122 billion in 2023, compared to $59 billion in console and $46 billion on PC, and Microsoft have made it clear that they want a much bigger piece of the action.  

For consumers, there is ongoing debate as to whether any acquisitions of this scale are good for choice or competition, but many are leaning towards optimism, with this transaction meaning consumers may benefit from not only greater access to a broader variety of games across consoles – but also lower prices. 

What to look for in 2024?

Microsoft is now on track to establish itself as a giant in the gaming sphere, building-out its subscription service “Game Pass” to host a multitude of popular games for its Xbox customers to enjoy, while entering mobile gaming. Whilst the new deal means that prized Activision Blizzard games and franchises will be accessible to Microsoft’s biggest competitors (for now), there will no doubt be plans to launch new and innovative games, and these are not so constrained and would be able to have Microsoft or Xbox exclusivity. 

With Xbox getting more competitive, we expect reinvigorated efforts from other publishers and gaming platforms (such as Sony or Nintendo) to push developers for greater variety, improved game release quality and new product innovations. Maybe the conditions on the deal will have struck the right balance after all? 

On 1st November 2023, a potentially momentous event unfolded at Bletchley Park, UK. The location renowned for the Enigma codebreaking played host to some of the world's foremost leaders, from tech magnates to research luminaries and government leaders.  All were gathered to discuss the safety of the global development of Artificial Intelligence.  As a symbol, Bletchley Park served as a fitting backdrop for the summit, a reminder of man and machine achieving what had been considered impossible together.  

Much of the event was centred on much-needed dialogue, education and collaboration, via agreed international frameworks, that would help to identify, understand and manage AI-related risks. The aim being to provoke crucial conversations about how we, as a species, advance our development and use of AI whilst ensuring that appropriate measures can be taken to safeguard against unintended consequences, malevolent uses or even (dramatic drum roll please) global Armageddon. 

What makes this significant? 

Believe it or not, this was the first global summit on AI. Yes, years after exasperated Chess and Go players kicked out at emotionless computers, 2023 was the first attempt at a joined-up, summit-style conversation on the global implications of AI technology.  

The focus on risks and the status of ‘Frontier AI’ (the most capable, general-purpose AI models that are projected to far exceed the capabilities present in today’s advanced models) is of course laudable – with inclusive discussion across disciplines and stakeholders about future advances, ethics and consequences. The summit stands as a testament to AI's remarkable growth and arrival on centre-stage in 2023.  A potential 'inflection point' in our technological advance that requires governments, societies, scientists and leaders to jointly navigate.  

What to look for in 2024?

The AI Safety Summit was a step in the right direction for international cooperation on AI use and the risks posed. With the Bletchley Declaration of AI Safety, the EU and 28 other countries have paved the way for a joint effort to address AI risks, emphasising the urgency of preparation and proactivity. The summit and declaration are unlikely to have direct regulatory impacts or actions, but perhaps the signal of a focus on responsible AI research and policy is a win on its own?  

Yet AI isn’t a new thing. A lot of what we are seeing in the technology around us is actually old news. The AI frontier is way ahead and moving fast ahead, incomprehensible to 99.99% of us. Politicians nod sagely and make pronouncements on topics many didn’t know existed mere months ago. Technology leaders talk of responsibility and ethics whilst signed up to quarterly earnings targets and bold visions of robotic utopia.  And we all watch from the stands. Do we feel comfortable that we are in safe hands? And are those hands human anymore?   

France is set to host the next AI summit in late 2024.  We hope for avancement but we expect déjà vu.