Episode 106

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Published on:

25th Oct 2024

The New Media Consensus

There’s a new consensus about the media business that is emerging. The past is not coming back, that much is for certain. The challenges are well known, and the bright spots — and they exist — tend to be smaller and harder to scale.

Transcript
Brian Morrissey:

you look like you're in vacation mode.

Brian Morrissey:

Got

Brian Morrissey:

sunglasses on, you're, you're seemingly outside in a European environment.

Troy Young:

I'm in Lisbon.

Brian Morrissey:

Do you like Lisbon?

Troy Young:

I've had a good time.

Troy Young:

It's a pretty town.

Troy Young:

Lots of hills to walk up.

Troy Young:

the food's been great.

Brian Morrissey:

Alex, do you miss that, that European work life balance?

Alex Schleifer:

I mean,

Alex Schleifer:

I grew up in the Mediterranean, which has a very specific pace of life, which is delightful.

Alex Schleifer:

But in many ways, I couldn't, I couldn't wait to leave it because I felt I was always moving, wanted to move a little faster, but now that I'm older, I kind of miss it.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, we should all retire to Europe.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

Well, isn't that what, you know, Europe is America's new Florida.

Brian Morrissey:

Welcome to People vs.

Brian Morrissey:

Algorithms, a show about detecting patterns in media, technology, and culture.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm Brian Marcy.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm joined as always by Troy Young and Alex Schleifer.

Brian Morrissey:

this week, New York Magazine published a terrific feature package on the state of the media industry with a simple, if obvious headline, can the media survive?

Brian Morrissey:

This gave me pause since, the rule in journalism is that anytime you have a question headlined, the answer is no.

Brian Morrissey:

Although in this case, I don't think that's actually the answer.

Brian Morrissey:

Anyway, many of the themes covered by the 57 power players interviewed, New York calls them the most powerful people in media, will be very familiar to any listeners of this podcast.

Brian Morrissey:

In fact, they represent something of a new consensus in the media business.

Brian Morrissey:

The big outstanding question, of course, is what this industry overall looks like in five years, but there is this emerging consensus of the moment that goes something like this subscriptions are the only credible business model for a serious news operation niche and specific is far better than mass in general, media is downstream of tech, and it needs to come to terms with the implications of that position.

Brian Morrissey:

Transcribed A new class of aggregators is emerging and they will have very different incentives from the last generations.

Brian Morrissey:

Lean and highly efficient media models are a must.

Brian Morrissey:

The past is simply not coming back.

Brian Morrissey:

And yes, that means print and the homepage, I'm sad to say.

Brian Morrissey:

The middle is, as always, a perilous position and many legacy players are stuck there.

Brian Morrissey:

Individuals are trumping institutions and will continue to do so.

Brian Morrissey:

Micromedia will grow and proliferate.

Brian Morrissey:

Often at the expense of mass media, you need to diversify.

Brian Morrissey:

If you're in the text content business, many media companies will end up becoming fronts for other better businesses.

Brian Morrissey:

IP is still valuable and there are myriad ways to build a business around it.

Brian Morrissey:

Even if that business doesn't have the same contours as the past, the New York times is an outlier.

Brian Morrissey:

Local news is the hardest problem to solve.

Brian Morrissey:

Growth hacks never last and can't be a core value proposition, and the competition is not other publishers, but a far broader information space filled with everyone from tech platforms to grocery store chain, ad networks, and anyone with a phone.

Brian Morrissey:

And, oh, by the way, AI bots to, maybe all this means is choice as in our conversation that we need a new idea, or perhaps as I posit, maybe this is fragmentation or decentralization was just an inevitability from when the Internet began.

Brian Morrissey:

And what we're in the midst of is not an end, but something of a new beginning and a morphing.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, new models are emerging.

Brian Morrissey:

they don't look exactly like the old models.

Brian Morrissey:

They're often smaller.

Brian Morrissey:

And I believe that we will see not hundreds, but thousands of these kinds of micromedia businesses, in the future.

Brian Morrissey:

it is difficult to operate a much larger business.

Brian Morrissey:

but I do believe that the future overall is pretty bright.

Brian Morrissey:

for the media industry.

Brian Morrissey:

Anyway, let me know your position on that.

Brian Morrissey:

You can email me at bmorrissey@therebooting.Com.

Brian Morrissey:

Now, on to the conversation with Troy and Alex..

Brian Morrissey:

I wanted to start off because, and Alex, you're going to have to bear with us on this because, you know, the media business loves Naval Gazer.

Brian Morrissey:

And it's just it's amazing.

Brian Morrissey:

so New York magazine came out with a, a package, which I was disappointed.

Brian Morrissey:

You weren't in and try.

Brian Morrissey:

I think I like that.

Brian Morrissey:

They should have included you.

Troy Young:

Maybe I was one of the anonymous people in there.

Brian Morrissey:

You could have been.

Brian Morrissey:

I just figured they anonymized they and they

Brian Morrissey:

anonymized all the, all the good stuff.

Brian Morrissey:

I, I liked how she included Charlotte Klein, I think put it together.

Brian Morrissey:

a lot of the sort of sniping that is the media business.

Brian Morrissey:

It's great.

Brian Morrissey:

but I wanted to, I wanted to start off by getting your sort of, what did you sort of take away?

Brian Morrissey:

Not, not a ton of surprises in there, you know, subscriptions, niche, et cetera.

Brian Morrissey:

We talk about a lot cus but, give me your vibe.

Brian Morrissey:

Check on it.

Troy Young:

we talk about it so much on this podcast that none of it really, Felt, you know, super insightful.

Troy Young:

we, we do appear to have a new consensus, right?

Troy Young:

And, and I guess it's that earning a direct relationship with the consumers is really the sort of true lingua franca of media and therefore subs matter and blah, blah, blah niches are the future.

Troy Young:

And now Apple news is good, which is, you know, I think.

Troy Young:

Something we can debate and that voices are, you know, a new organizing point for, you know, challenging media brands, all of which says to me that maybe we need a new idea because in media we stampede, right?

Troy Young:

Oh, there's a guy up on the balcony here with a falcon.

Troy Young:

To get rid of the pigeons, a killer falcon.

Troy Young:

Anyway, sorry folks.

Troy Young:

so in some ways, Brian, I think that media, in the media, everything old is new.

Troy Young:

I think we have this kind of digital media notion that everybody could build a media business.

Troy Young:

But before, it wasn't like that.

Troy Young:

And it was extraordinarily expensive.

Troy Young:

The barriers to entry were high and you had to earn in.

Troy Young:

And it was extraordinarily difficult to build a flywheel subscription mechanism.

Troy Young:

My, my takeaway is there's very few businesses that have meaningful, I mean, other than sort of, you know, micromedia businesses like you run, but the, very few of them have the sort of subscription flywheel.

Troy Young:

And that to me is the kind of hot, you know, the watermark that you want to get above.

Troy Young:

that's not to say that you're not augmenting the subscription revenue with other things, you know, advertising events, whatever.

Troy Young:

But, the flywheel's essential if you want resilience and you want to do real reporting.

Troy Young:

And, yeah, we all look kind of, Belongingly at the New York Times because they have a subscription flywheel that is, you know, very resilient and, and, defensible.

Troy Young:

And it enables them to create a better product and very, very few media brands have that.

Troy Young:

Let's call that a, like a 50 million subscription business or even a 20 million subscription businesses material.

Troy Young:

And in that, that switch, you know, locals clearly the big casualty because local struggle of local media businesses have, have not been hugely successful in generating sub revenue.

Troy Young:

Two thirds of the jobs are gone in the last decade.

Troy Young:

And this is an interesting step.

Troy Young:

The New York Times employs 7 percent of newspaper employees.

Troy Young:

So, if you can't make that subscription flywheel work, and increasingly being purely ad led is just, it just feels like it's getting harder and harder, you need to have a media adjacent business, right?

Troy Young:

And is that a marketplace business, an affiliate business, a licensing business, lists, you know, maybe IP based video businesses, but You, you're, you're sort of adjacent to, you know, a core, publishing proposition.

Troy Young:

I was reminded of it, Brian, and we had a little, back and forth on this.

Troy Young:

I'm in, I'm in Lisbon and there's, this is in 2014, I think, the first timeout market started in Lisbon.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, it was

Troy Young:

Uh, and now they have them in a bunch of places, including in Brooklyn, and it was packed, really big market.

Troy Young:

I think there's, there's, I agree with you that there can be a kind of a food court vibe that

Brian Morrissey:

It's a food court.

Brian Morrissey:

It's a food court.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, what are we

Troy Young:

none of the food is really that good or that distinguished.

Troy Young:

But it's fun, you know, it's lots of people, there's a vibe there.

Troy Young:

Now they're doing, it forced me to look up their business, which is publicly traded.

Troy Young:

In London, it's, I think, a little under 150 million and loses money and has a bit of debt and in a bit of a tight spot.

Troy Young:

and they're trying to expand to multiple markets, right?

Troy Young:

They had one in Miami, they're doing one, I think they're doing one

Brian Morrissey:

The one in Miami closed.

Brian Morrissey:

Didn't

Troy Young:

okay, so they're doing one in Dubai.

Troy Young:

They got a whole bunch of markets, on, on

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, Cape Town and they're, they're going to stamp it.

Brian Morrissey:

I think I always liked

Brian Morrissey:

the original.

Brian Morrissey:

I remember I talked, I did a couple podcasts with Julio Bruno, who was leading that.

Brian Morrissey:

That effort to change that business.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think that's a great example of a lane that has developed where the media has lost its original core economic purpose, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Like timeout.

Brian Morrissey:

You don't pick up timeout to figure out what's going on in the city around you.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't, I

Troy Young:

was half the, it was under half the revenue when I looked at it.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah,

Brian Morrissey:

and so they, they built out a marketplace business, which is really not a market business, not a marketplace business.

Brian Morrissey:

they built out a market business really hard.

Brian Morrissey:

It's capital intensive.

Brian Morrissey:

They took on a ton of debt.

Brian Morrissey:

you know, Julia left like a couple of years ago, the pandemic.

Brian Morrissey:

Like hit them.

Brian Morrissey:

Actually, that's why the Miami thing didn't work.

Brian Morrissey:

They were just opening it at that time.

Brian Morrissey:

and you know, they're soldering through.

Brian Morrissey:

But I think that that is these lanes are developing.

Brian Morrissey:

I think when I was reading the packages thinking about like our conversations.

Brian Morrissey:

It seems pretty clear.

Brian Morrissey:

There's a, there's the escape velocity lane, which is, you know, the New York.

Brian Morrissey:

It's very small.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like the New York Times.

Brian Morrissey:

That's everyone goes to the same examples or it's business publications like Bloomberg, which also, by the way,

Brian Morrissey:

has a terminal business.

Brian Morrissey:

Ft Wall Street.

Brian Morrissey:

You're not going to be fine.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

And then you've got some like, Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

Deep, what I consider DTC cultural, like the Atlantic, the Atlantic.

Brian Morrissey:

It looks like they have a model, you know, they were able to make, to make the turn on, on subscriptions.

Brian Morrissey:

It's not going to be a

Troy Young:

it really has become a bit of a doomsday publication, right?

Brian Morrissey:

It

Brian Morrissey:

Is but it

Troy Young:

anything, is there anything more depressing than reading the

Brian Morrissey:

Well, did you see Trump shared a, or no, Elon Musk shared, same thing, shared a, fake Atlantic, story.

Brian Morrissey:

and.

Brian Morrissey:

It was, you know, it, it was plausible that it could have been, an actual story.

Brian Morrissey:

but we, we're in this, this sort of post truth world.

Brian Morrissey:

but that's, and the New Yorker, I think the New Yorker has done a really good job.

Brian Morrissey:

And there are a few of those and that's a lane that's fine.

Brian Morrissey:

But the reality is most people are not going to get that lane.

Brian Morrissey:

The middle is going to get crushed.

Brian Morrissey:

So.

Brian Morrissey:

You, you need to be either extremely small and focused, and I, I read within that piece a sort of, I guess, nostalgia for the way this business used to be because there was a dismissiveness to, you know, in the anonymous comments to the idea of having, why do these people just want to have like a profitable business with like 9, 000 like paying readers?

Brian Morrissey:

Well, because that's business that tells me that this person one has never built anything in their life positive They never built anything and to that They've probably been stewards of money losing businesses constantly and three think that this is not actually a business You have to run profitable businesses Wow go figure and a lot of the previous models, they didn't work in a different era and they're not working now.

Brian Morrissey:

And so then the other lane that it, that opens up is you become what I consider like a front operation for a different, better business.

Brian Morrissey:

Media is good, good to get attention, right?

Brian Morrissey:

But the reality is, if you look at advertising spending and you go through these reports, publishing, Advertising on publishers is now in the other category.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, it doesn't even warrant a section.

Brian Morrissey:

You know, and that's not coming back.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't see that changing exactly.

Brian Morrissey:

There's only so much subs to go around.

Brian Morrissey:

So, yeah, the most resilient models are gonna be smaller.

Brian Morrissey:

Right?

Troy Young:

And you know what, for all, I mean, for all of the sort of hang ranging, news might be a good and okay, you know, segment to be in.

Troy Young:

News might be okay if you can find the path.

Alex Schleifer:

Why do you say that?

Alex Schleifer:

I

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

How many of these beards have you had?

Troy Young:

I say that because it's always new, because we are in a moment where One entire category of news is dying, which was all the local stuff where there's one big successful liberal media organization called the New York Times.

Troy Young:

And then there's a few business pubs.

Troy Young:

Because news needs to be made every day, and if you can figure out your own formula, which helps people navigate the world better.

Troy Young:

They'll subscribe to you.

Troy Young:

I'm not sure it's easy to build a subscription proposition around fashion, unless it's B2B fashion.

Troy Young:

It's very difficult.

Troy Young:

Lifestyle categories are really difficult.

Troy Young:

That's why.

Troy Young:

I, I, I just, where, where are you going to find that?

Troy Young:

So to me, you know, one of the great examples to discuss in terms of that, you know, that one that's very difficult.

Troy Young:

I mean, listen, you could easily, I'm talking about Time Magazine, you could easily put that into the, like.

Troy Young:

Okay.

Troy Young:

We're going to harvest it for IP.

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

and, and we're going to do time studios and we're going to documentaries or, you know, clearly,

Brian Morrissey:

what, they are doing that.

Troy Young:

well, that's part of the business.

Troy Young:

The other part of the business, essentially a list brand, right.

Troy Young:

You know, the top, you know, people in

Brian Morrissey:

By the way, that's Newsweek.

Brian Morrissey:

Newsweek is very successful.

Brian Morrissey:

I think that's, we should have Dev on here, because they've actually been successful with this model.

Brian Morrissey:

Go

Troy Young:

what brands have kind of emerged that maybe have a shot.

Troy Young:

Does puck have a shot?

Troy Young:

Is that news kind of news, right?

Troy Young:

The semaphore have a shot.

Troy Young:

Does Axios, is Axios a business?

Troy Young:

Is Politico a business?

Troy Young:

These are all news businesses.

Brian Morrissey:

Sort of.

Troy Young:

Well, it's just that, like, I mean, in the magazine category, lifestyle businesses were always ad led.

Troy Young:

They're

Troy Young:

always ad led businesses.

Troy Young:

And I just, I'm struggling to figure out how that model is going to last long term.

Troy Young:

Right?

Troy Young:

Everybody just said, well, if it's, if our advertising isn't growing, we'll, we'll offset it with affiliate.

Troy Young:

To me, affiliate is under, particularly product affiliate, is under tremendous pressure.

Troy Young:

Google doesn't like the

Troy Young:

category anymore.

Brian Morrissey:

mean, it seems to me it's pretty clear that most magazine brands will end up in that sort of front business category.

Brian Morrissey:

it'll be a front for, for something, whether it's brand activations, whether it's a lists and rankings business that, you know, these brands still have value, to be rung.

Alex Schleifer:

a problem.

Alex Schleifer:

Then, like, how do you retain people?

Alex Schleifer:

Because do people dreamt of becoming writers all their life?

Alex Schleifer:

Want to work on a fun activation for a

Brian Morrissey:

well, you don't tell them that Alex.

Troy Young:

don't, and you don't hire them.

Alex Schleifer:

Well, but that's what I'm saying.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, like, what is the talent go?

Alex Schleifer:

I think that's, you know, often missed.

Alex Schleifer:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, I mean, That's I think that's a good because that's the doom loop scenario.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't want to get negative, you know, I think counter to that.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think it sort of glossed over.

Brian Morrissey:

This is there's a lot of people developing really successful solo type businesses downstream of news.

Brian Morrissey:

And whether that's podcasting or or newsletters.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, these are small, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Some of these are really profitable.

Brian Morrissey:

you know, Maddie Glacius.

Troy Young:

Yeah, but, but let, right.

Troy Young:

But like, well, let's not put those aren't real media businesses, dude.

Troy Young:

Madagascar, it's a couple million bucks.

Troy Young:

It's not a business.

Alex Schleifer:

you have a hundred of those.

Alex Schleifer:

It's better

Troy Young:

it's a hot dog.

Troy Young:

It's a hot dog stand.

Alex Schleifer:

you put a hundred of

Brian Morrissey:

first of all, it's not a hot dog stand.

Brian Morrissey:

I actually looked this up because a pizzeria, like, you know, they're, they usually top out at like 600,

Troy Young:

It's a pizzeria.

Troy Young:

It's a pizzeria.

Brian Morrissey:

There's a lot of pizzerias

Alex Schleifer:

a lot of pizzerias that were, it's like, you know,

Brian Morrissey:

Excuse me,

Brian Morrissey:

Papa

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, does this thing,

Troy Young:

I'm not saying you can't Brian.

Troy Young:

I don't know.

Troy Young:

Let's not take this

Brian Morrissey:

I'm offended.

Brian Morrissey:

I feel attacked.

Troy Young:

No, Brian.

Troy Young:

I think that you're, I mean, without disclosing

Troy Young:

anything, you

Troy Young:

probably

Brian Morrissey:

I have a front business and a newsletter business.

Alex Schleifer:

And a burgeoning podcast business, I would

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

guys, but,

Brian Morrissey:

off my lawn.

Troy Young:

I'm happy for you, Brian, but like a couple million dollars is not a business.

Troy Young:

It's not a big business.

Alex Schleifer:

but here's the thing, right?

Alex Schleifer:

You have these organizations that hire, used to hire hundreds of people live on an excellent business that is advertising huge margin.

Alex Schleifer:

and now, you know, that that's exploded and it means maybe instead you have 200 businesses with one person that makes 2 million a year.

Alex Schleifer:

That's way

Brian Morrissey:

200, there's gonna be thousands of them.

Brian Morrissey:

Thousands.

Brian Morrissey:

There's gonna be so many of these businesses, and they're not necessarily gonna stay where they start, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Like, look, Eric Newcomer left Bloomberg, okay, and he just did his four year anniversary post, and He generated 2 million.

Brian Morrissey:

He's gonna generate 2 million this year with 50 percent margins.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay, so he's gonna keep hiring and like that will become a smaller version.

Brian Morrissey:

Maybe Eric can get that to like a giant business.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

But at worst, I think it becomes like a smaller version of this era is like TechCrunch.

Brian Morrissey:

It's he's he's right between VCs and startups at a time of a gold rush into AI.

Brian Morrissey:

So he's making a ton of money off events.

Alex Schleifer:

we're seeing like these media organization no longer breaking the scoops or having the big interviews, right?

Alex Schleifer:

Like, like there's, there's hardly, I mean, there might be a 2 million business, but to the consumer, it hardly matters.

Troy Young:

because it's all good.

Troy Young:

It's all good.

Troy Young:

I'm very happy for the journalists that used to make 200 that's now making 80 and, and is, is, you know, cleaning the dishes and writing the

Brian Morrissey:

I, I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

I feel like,

Troy Young:

It's great.

Troy Young:

No, I'm, I honestly think it's great.

Troy Young:

It's not a scaled business.

Brian Morrissey:

It's

Brian Morrissey:

not a scaled business.

Brian Morrissey:

Absolutely.

Alex Schleifer:

well, maybe it was, yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

Maybe that's what we're saying.

Troy Young:

yeah, It's

Brian Morrissey:

W we're

Alex Schleifer:

this election, this election isn't being run by like scaled media business,

Brian Morrissey:

How

Brian Morrissey:

big is Joe Rogan's business?

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

What do you

Brian Morrissey:

think?

Troy Young:

it's at least a hundred.

Troy Young:

It's at least a hundred million.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

got that like 250 million deal with, Spotify and that's a good, is that a scaled business?

Troy Young:

It's Papa John.

Alex Schleifer:

are the margins on that?

Troy Young:

They're killer.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, they're killer.

Alex Schleifer:

It's just some dude in a chair.

Brian Morrissey:

basically a lot of the media businesses are caught between being upstream to downstream and that like tech is upstream of media.

Brian Morrissey:

They take most of the value because they control the distribution.

Brian Morrissey:

There are the commanding heights, et cetera.

Brian Morrissey:

and then downstream you have, particularly in the, in the news industry.

Brian Morrissey:

People are making lots of money without doing the, like, the, the really hard, like, reporting work that is not economically feasible.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, we always talk about these podcasts, you would talk about, like, you know, people who are doing the reporting and they're just providing the raw materials for an entire, these might be a hot dog stands or pizza parlors.

Brian Morrissey:

But, they're profitable, unlike a lot of, news companies.

Brian Morrissey:

And

Troy Young:

Only the companies that have the subscription flywheel can do the reporting for the real reporting because the reporting isn't, it needs.

Troy Young:

Supportive hundreds of thousands of subscribers because it's not an economic affair

Troy Young:

as a kind of input and output,

Alex Schleifer:

for reporting, it's not something you can copyright, or truly own.

Alex Schleifer:

So it's very easy to just, Pick up and recontextualize for an audience, right?

Alex Schleifer:

So these tiny businesses with tiny cost structures have like their field reporters are, you know, the two or three large news outlets, social media and, And then, you know, they don't need that infrastructure anymore.

Alex Schleifer:

That's kind of

Alex Schleifer:

what's tragic, right?

Alex Schleifer:

If you spend money on reporting, you can't really protect it.

Alex Schleifer:

that's always been the issue with news is that it's like a, you know, the second you gave everyone else the infrastructure to publish, then they had free access to content.

Alex Schleifer:

And maybe you got it three minutes later but you could essentially rebuild your news pro, program from.

Troy Young:

I had a question for Brian around this Alex that I put in the text thread and he didn't really answer it

Brian Morrissey:

I either missed it or I didn't know the answer.

Troy Young:

well, I'll ask it to the audience and I'll ask it to Brian but I'm getting frustrated with these sort of It's not that they're news, they're sort of these news centrists.

Troy Young:

They're like Bill Maher and, and our, and, and our buddy Shane Smith patting each other on the back saying, Oh, we, we like to get information from both sides.

Troy Young:

We're tired of liberal media bias.

Troy Young:

You know, you, you gotta dig deeper and we know how to dig deeper and we're not just going to go along with what the liberal media says.

Troy Young:

Because we need to because we need to see the other side of the story and and to me underneath when I peel it back part of it is the sort of it's the all in the Lex Friedman, the Joe Rogan, the Shane Smith, the Bill Maher, they're all trying to grab power from the sort of what was previously the Kind of this protected media elite that had a lock on, on, on kind of the one point of view, right?

Troy Young:

The reported point of view.

Troy Young:

And this is a kind of a power grab, right?

Troy Young:

And, and they too have, and part of it is kind of funny because they want to say we don't like the, we don't like Kamala and we don't like her.

Troy Young:

Can't say that we like Trump, but we kind of like Trump and some of them just say they like Trump, but they're, they're, they're these kind of new center right group, but they're, they challenge mainstream media, but they use mainstream media to back up their points of view.

Troy Young:

We've said that before, and I don't know where it goes.

Troy Young:

It's just like.

Troy Young:

You know, and, and people listen, you know, they have huge audiences, right?

Troy Young:

But there's nothing underneath of it from a reporting perspective.

Troy Young:

It's just like us, a couple of fucking idiots talking about something and pretending they know something on a podcast,

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah,

Troy Young:

you know what I mean?

Troy Young:

Where's the

Brian Morrissey:

to the information space.

Brian Morrissey:

well, I mean, I would say a few things.

Brian Morrissey:

One is, I think this is just a normal sort of toadying up to new power centers, right?

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, this is like the reverse of David Brooks.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, David Brooks was always the guy who would be like, Oh, I'm a Republican, but like, I'm the kind of Republican that progressives, can tolerate.

Brian Morrissey:

And so, you know, signaling that

Troy Young:

those, I know those, those types.

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, you're not about the wackos, et cetera.

Brian Morrissey:

There's always, because the, But I feel, and we'll see what happens in the election, I have no idea, but it feels like there has been a shift from,

Troy Young:

You don't want to be a Republican in high school.

Troy Young:

It's the worst.

Troy Young:

You want to be

Brian Morrissey:

well, no, I mean, we've seen those statistics like, young women will absolutely out of hand not date someone who is a, is a Trump supporter, a lot of them.

Brian Morrissey:

So

Troy Young:

It's not, it's not sexy.

Brian Morrissey:

that's a tough, like, that's a tough, that's a tough

Brian Morrissey:

call at the ballot box for a young man.

Brian Morrissey:

I gotta say.

Brian Morrissey:

You might want to make a business decision guys.

Brian Morrissey:

Like I'm just saying

Alex Schleifer:

know what I love about speaking about the news just for a second, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it's the way, you know, all of these people with sprayed faces discuss these statistics and then they're like, huh, that is an interesting statistic.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, why is that happening?

Alex Schleifer:

And then you're like, well, I don't know.

Alex Schleifer:

You know, maybe it's because he's a sex offender and

Brian Morrissey:

yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, that's

Alex Schleifer:

on removing women's rights.

Alex Schleifer:

Maybe that's why women are pissed off.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't know.

Alex Schleifer:

I

Brian Morrissey:

That's common in like the Joe Rogan kind of thing where he's like no no No, they're and he goes look it up and then they look it up and they're like, no, it's totally different.

Brian Morrissey:

He's like Yeah, but those, those statistics are not,

Troy Young:

Fungible.

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, it's like, okay, well,

Brian Morrissey:

it's a lot of virtual virtue signaling because the, the, the, the pendulum has swung a little bit.

Brian Morrissey:

We've seen this in, in the political discourse and society in general, you know, we went through a little bit of a, a wacky period where things went too far.

Brian Morrissey:

You know, I think it got branded as woke and whatever.

Brian Morrissey:

And a lot of news organizations are trying to pull that back.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, the LA times this week, the owner.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

And this is how screwed up these businesses, you know, the owner wanted to, like, get them out of, which is kind of interesting because his daughter apparently is like super progressive, but wanted to get them out of the endorsement business, which I mentioned this podcast, I'm very in favor of newspapers getting out of the political endorsement business.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, focus on government accountability, not endorsements.

Brian Morrissey:

Don't tell people how to vote.

Troy Young:

Not only that, but like literally who cares what the LA Times

Brian Morrissey:

Like, yeah, that's what I mean.

Brian Morrissey:

You're not even having an impact.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, like, nobody's voting based on the

Troy Young:

Like they can barely review a movie.

Brian Morrissey:

what other business and then, and then the, the union protested to this and there was like, how can an owner you know, be instructing, how pushing them how to like, actually make the product.

Brian Morrissey:

And it was well.

Brian Morrissey:

I how do you operate these businesses if you own them, but can't actually.

Brian Morrissey:

Operate them.

Brian Morrissey:

It's just it's a very, it's a very screwed up situation, but I think that's a, it's part of a larger and really the times as part of this, like the times has been trying to claw its way back from.

Brian Morrissey:

Frankly going too far, I think and now it's interesting because in the run up to the election I would never see this you see like super progressive people claiming that the New York Times is biased against progressives.

Brian Morrissey:

It was like, oh my god

Brian Morrissey:

What is

Alex Schleifer:

well, I mean, I I mean, I don't think the New York times is, but when you see some of the reporting, I think the thing that's driving.

Alex Schleifer:

People and honestly, me crazy, like me crazy is, is the way the reporting is framed where, you know, there's one side saying things in a, in a reasonable matter, you might disagree with them even, even strongly, and then the other side, it's just some rambling lunatic.

Alex Schleifer:

And you can see all the gymnastics to put that into an article that makes it sound sane.

Alex Schleifer:

And that is, to me, like, that is, I'm so angry at the news right now.

Alex Schleifer:

I just like, I could watch it, I could watch this whole shit burn down.

Alex Schleifer:

The horse racing stuff, there's nothing substantive.

Alex Schleifer:

And then they'll literally pick a tweet where there's like, 37 words that made no sense next to each other and they'll recontextualize it.

Alex Schleifer:

So it makes it makes somebody's doing his homework.

Alex Schleifer:

and that feels like the New York Times constantly doing that.

Alex Schleifer:

Just like going across the middle, trying not to offend anyone.

Alex Schleifer:

you know.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't know that that's kind of I think

Troy Young:

It's a hard, it's a hard time to cover the GOP, no, no doubt about it, because they're insane.

Troy Young:

It's a fucking clown car.

Troy Young:

And, I don't know how, to your point, I totally agree, Alex.

Troy Young:

How do you make, how do you, you, you try to kind of be a little more balanced, but not point out that this is, like, unhinged behavior?

Alex Schleifer:

everybody kind of like immediately flares up to like a hundred percent, but it's, you know, to use the word of the moment.

Alex Schleifer:

I think it's just the New York Times being demure like.

Alex Schleifer:

Well, we can't stoop this low.

Alex Schleifer:

So even though, he's, you know, stood up and vomited on his audience, we're just going to say, you know, he had strong words against, you know, the current immigration climate or something, you know, but, isn't it like maybe that's like old ways of doing things and reporting the news in the way that, that feels like.

Alex Schleifer:

Kind of gracious right where they don't want to be mean overly biased and it comes across as just completely edited, and sanitized for their audience.

Alex Schleifer:

So it's it's

Troy Young:

And yet there's, there's nowhere for a good conservative, like a conservative with a kind of,

Troy Young:

cultural liberal.

Troy Young:

There's nowhere to go.

Troy Young:

Where do you go?

Troy Young:

The choices

Brian Morrissey:

is that, the lane that the Free Press is trying to, to occupy?

Troy Young:

A little bit, sure.

Troy Young:

It's the lane that I, it's the, it's the road that I personally travel.

Troy Young:

Uh, but,

Brian Morrissey:

I thought you

Brian Morrissey:

were more of a PirateWires guy.

Troy Young:

I mean, I find Pirate Wires to be amusing, to be honest with you.

Troy Young:

they're, they're, um, you know, cynical and strident, and they admit that, you know, that Trump is PT Barnum, but they're, they're, you know, they're good conservatives.

Troy Young:

They're cutting.

Troy Young:

They're nasty.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, that's fine.

Brian Morrissey:

the dispatch actually is trying to occupy that lane.

Brian Morrissey:

I think they got, they end up getting, they try not to have the TDS as you call it, as everyone calls it.

Brian Morrissey:

but at the same time, they are, they're Republicans who just cannot, abide by, by Trumpism and MAGA.

Brian Morrissey:

I think, I think the centrist lane is one that like so many people are trying to get to, and I think it's, yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

It's gonna be really difficult.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, I think the culture has changed, but I don't know if there's a tremendous market.

Brian Morrissey:

and if Trump wins this election, I think we're gonna go back to craziness.

Alex Schleifer:

go back, go back, to creating,

Brian Morrissey:

It hasn't been crazy the last four years.

Brian Morrissey:

We just

Alex Schleifer:

no, I mean, it's been, it hasn't, it hasn't, but the media landscape has, it's funny, right?

Alex Schleifer:

Because a lot of it, if you look at where we started 4 years ago, there's been this shift towards.

Alex Schleifer:

Whatever, tone, the Rogans, et cetera, have, you know, kind of kept amplifying, which is kind of the pseudo fake intellectualism, pragmatism, both sides leaning slightly right, anti woke, it's just, it's just being cranked up, and I do think that if the election is actually going to, for a lot of them, dictate it.

Alex Schleifer:

Like where they end up right a lot of it is, is masked in some sort of, it got amplified when, when he lost because then, you know, you could, it works very well with the victim mentality.

Alex Schleifer:

Bill Maher, I can't listen to because he is like, he has turned into kind of like this constant victim mindset and you see it in the way things are phrased

Brian Morrissey:

He's

Alex Schleifer:

Joe Rogan.

Troy Young:

No, we like, Bill, Bill Maher is now the quote unquote most trusted journalist in America.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, sure.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, no offense to Dan Abrams, but I don't know.

Troy Young:

I'm just using, these are just the facts, these are just

Alex Schleifer:

well, what happens, you know, when one or the other side wins and you can no longer play the victim, I do think we're going to, like, there's going to be some tonal shifts, whoever wins, and it's going to be interesting to, to

Brian Morrissey:

but do you think that, like, let's just say Trump wins.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

And, I think that is completely a possibility just based

Troy Young:

Do you wanna, should we keep the podcast going, Alex?

Alex Schleifer:

I just,

Brian Morrissey:

just based

Brian Morrissey:

on

Brian Morrissey:

the

Brian Morrissey:

actions of the campaigns.

Brian Morrissey:

I think that

Alex Schleifer:

I'm just having a

Alex Schleifer:

panic attack here.

Alex Schleifer:

What?

Alex Schleifer:

Let's,

Brian Morrissey:

It's like, kind of like investing where you, you assume that, that other people have more information and you just follow them.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I assume that campaigns with a billion dollars have more information on what is going on in this election than like 538.

Brian Morrissey:

And if you look at the actions that they're doing, I think it's, it's pretty clear the direction that this is going.

Brian Morrissey:

Now, let's just assume for a minute that Trump wins.

Brian Morrissey:

Does

Troy Young:

Will it mean that we pay less taxes?

Brian Morrissey:

um, depending on how you're doing,

Alex Schleifer:

Finally, I can dump that toxic sludge I've been holding into the river.

Brian Morrissey:

This is, this is a good time for those holding toxic sludge or crypto.

Alex Schleifer:

Why is it, it was all generated by all the crypto I've been mining,

Brian Morrissey:

does, does the, the news media quote unquote, do they return to like hashtag resistance?

Brian Morrissey:

Or do they continue this like awkward kind of dance of trying to trying to occupy the middle?

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, what, from a business perspective, I don't know if it's going to be as effective to get subscriptions by taking the hashtag resistance.

Alex Schleifer:

Oh, I actually think completely the opposite.

Alex Schleifer:

There'll be, a huge part of the population, probably a, a majority, right?

Alex Schleifer:

that, I don't think we'll tolerate this kind of middling by down the middle, reporting on what's going on.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, I

Alex Schleifer:

I

Alex Schleifer:

think, I just, I just, it's going to just, get like, I think it's going to get ramped up, like, we keep saying it's like, it's kind of like all entertainment, entertainment is comfort, right?

Alex Schleifer:

Life is difficult.

Alex Schleifer:

And I think if people are just like so bummed out, they just want to turn the news and hear somebody say, you're right.

Alex Schleifer:

This is fucked.

Alex Schleifer:

Look at this idiot.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, you know, like people seek comfort and, and when, you know, everything looks like it's going the wrong direction.

Alex Schleifer:

the last thing you want is to have somebody gives you like the pragmatic view of what's happening.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, I, I, I, I, you know, I don't think there's, there's any other way than, than things ramping up.

Alex Schleifer:

Don't you think?

Alex Schleifer:

You think the opposite?

Brian Morrissey:

I think there is going to be a return to a little bit of the democracy dies in darkness.

Brian Morrissey:

Stuff I think that's I think that's a lane to occupy.

Brian Morrissey:

I just don't know from a business perspective.

Brian Morrissey:

I know I'm like, talking about the business and it's all about

Alex Schleifer:

Sure.

Alex Schleifer:

But I mean, the business is what's going to keep those things running.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, look, the reality is.

Brian Morrissey:

Pivoting to, you know, being oppositional in 2017 was a great short term business decision for publishers, and you can't divorce that from the fact that they took it.

Brian Morrissey:

Trump was amazingly good for the bottom line of these companies because

Alex Schleifer:

was like a tornado or a war in the Middle East.

Alex Schleifer:

Like he's just, you know, there's just like something

Troy Young:

My fear, I wonder, though, if the whole sort of system, like, the system kind of tips over.

Troy Young:

Meaning it's sort of like our connection.

Troy Young:

The only time these days it seems that our connection to reality really matters is when someone like gets hurt or gets killed, right?

Troy Young:

When someone's fundamental rights are taken away.

Troy Young:

But like everything else, it's just like, well, what did he say?

Troy Young:

Oh, that was a lie.

Troy Young:

everything has kind of been virtualized.

Troy Young:

We live in this kind of fictitious play world where we all kind of use, you know, self reinforcing truths to help us feel better about what we already believed.

Troy Young:

And nothing, I mean, it was so much easier when there was, even if it was biased, there was some kind of like.

Troy Young:

You know, connection to an authoritative truth dictated by admittedly a small group of people, but these sort of overlapping points of view of a, of a kind of global cacophony of creators and different opinion leaders and the people that are more clownish somehow went out in this world.

Troy Young:

It's like, what the fuck?

Troy Young:

Like, does it just.

Troy Young:

what's the natural end of that process?

Troy Young:

That's what I don't understand,

Brian Morrissey:

are you reading

Brian Morrissey:

the Yuval Hariri book?

Brian Morrissey:

Because I, I just started getting into it.

Brian Morrissey:

He talks about the sort of naive view of like, and which was peddled, frankly, by like Facebook and a lot of Silicon Valley,

Brian Morrissey:

um,

Alex Schleifer:

the book?

Alex Schleifer:

Well,

Brian Morrissey:

he talks about how, you know, this, the basic that more information means, like, we'll, we'll agree on quote unquote truth.

Brian Morrissey:

You know, which is different than facts that we will come to an agreement on truth, and we'll be more enlightened clearly has not happened.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, we have more access to information now than any time at all on earth.

Brian Morrissey:

And it is actually had seemingly the opposite impact in that there is less of a center of gravity around what is true and not.

Brian Morrissey:

And even.

Brian Morrissey:

if if truth matters, I mean, you see this a lot with the, they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs.

Brian Morrissey:

Basically, defense of the fact that

Troy Young:

I, I love that, I love that, I love that

Brian Morrissey:

is it doesn't matter.

Brian Morrissey:

It doesn't matter.

Brian Morrissey:

It doesn't matter if this thing is

Troy Young:

No, but this is why the moment, the Elon moment is so weird and beguiling, right?

Troy Young:

Because physics is true, right?

Troy Young:

We'll agree that like, catching a rocket ship out of thin air is true.

Troy Young:

That's crazy.

Troy Young:

Like electric cars are true, conductivity through satellites, that's true.

Troy Young:

Like physics is true.

Troy Young:

We applaud the, the, the creations of a mad innovator, right?

Troy Young:

But like, the rest of it, like, what does it matter?

Troy Young:

It's like, does Elon just appreciate something that, that Alex doesn't?

Troy Young:

That the world, it, it, it, we're, we're, truth just, it's just like, whatever story you want to make up.

Troy Young:

But he can still, like, make rockets.

Troy Young:

Physics matters.

Troy Young:

We can make things.

Troy Young:

We can be a, we can get to Mars.

Troy Young:

Did

Brian Morrissey:

We're going, we're going

Brian Morrissey:

back to post modernist and this is like Clinton, uh, depends on, depends on the meaning of the word is.

Alex Schleifer:

well, I think

Troy Young:

no, but,

Troy Young:

Elon Musk is a very confounding person

Alex Schleifer:

but it also shows like one of our you know, as a species, one of our weaknesses, which is when we kind of, find something attractive about a person that we immediately want to find everything attractive and what's happened with, like, you know, where everyone's media, we're noticing that, yeah, Elon, like that rocket stuff is, is really impressive and there's obviously like a lot of, you know, intelligence in the man, but also like really deeply flawed, you know, needing to be loved kind of

Alex Schleifer:

energy.

Alex Schleifer:

That's that.

Brian Morrissey:

Hasn't this always been the case?

Brian Morrissey:

Gauguin

Alex Schleifer:

I think what's happened, actually, I was thinking about that what's happened over the last decade, maybe 15, maybe 15 years, is that like, we've really have to come to terms with like, not, Not getting too close to our heroes.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, there was definitely me too.

Alex Schleifer:

We're just like, um, you know, people that had been kind of revered for so long, just,

Troy Young:

Yeah, but that's demented, violent behavior, but we're talking about stuff

Alex Schleifer:

but I think his is demented, violent behavior.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, I, I mean, I, I don't know how you guys feel about it, but like a lot of that rhetoric it will hurt people, right?

Alex Schleifer:

so for me, it's not just like I, there's like a, a character that has quirks and throws a guitar out of a hotel room and, you know, has crazy parties.

Alex Schleifer:

these are genuinely people that have, want to pass regulation that is going to impact people in a really physical way.

Alex Schleifer:

So I don't see it as just like quirkiness.

Alex Schleifer:

And, and so when that happens, I think we're kind of like, it kind of breaks our brains and I think we're

Troy Young:

Yeah, what's weird about it though, Alex, is that at this point, even the supporters can't take half of what Trump's saying seriously.

Troy Young:

And they're just like, okay, yeah, he's going to say that shit, but when he gets into power, it'll all be moderated.

Troy Young:

And

Troy Young:

you

Alex Schleifer:

he gets into power, the people we don't like won't be and that's the price worth paying, you know,

Troy Young:

What do you mean?

Alex Schleifer:

well, I think, I think a lot of people look at it.

Alex Schleifer:

It's like, it's not really about whether Trump wins or loses, but whether the other side loses, you know, and, uh, and whoever gets into power.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, he literally called Ted Cruz's wife ugly and Ted Cruz is like licking his boots.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, it's incredible what people will do to get close to power.

Brian Morrissey:

think there was something of a backstory to that, though.

Alex Schleifer:

Really?

Alex Schleifer:

What would it

Alex Schleifer:

be?

Brian Morrissey:

have to go back and check and get it.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, there was something of a backstory.

Alex Schleifer:

But you know,

Troy Young:

Well, he, I mean, we have the leader of the free world saying that

Troy Young:

like the

Brian Morrissey:

the leader at that time.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm not, look, I'm not defending, look, Trump's, he's Trump.

Brian Morrissey:

I guess my hope is, and then we'll move on to another topic, is, at least this time around, I think that a lot of, news organizations have, Have learned a little bit, right?

Brian Morrissey:

And I think getting caught up in the dumb leak drama.

Brian Morrissey:

I just hope that does not happen again.

Brian Morrissey:

Who's fighting with who?

Brian Morrissey:

Who said like, Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

This is playing into, like, Trump is a carnival barker, he, he understands how programming, and he programmed this reality show, White House, that we don't hear any of that stuff with, with Biden, none of it, like none of it, I never hear about people fighting and whatnot, like didn't for the last four years, and that was like, tremendous.

Brian Morrissey:

and I don't think it illuminates the public at all, and I think it all ends up just creating just this swirl of drama that, like, it's impossible for a normal person to understand what is important, and the histrionics and the hysterical tone

Alex Schleifer:

mean the coverage of the Trump White House?

Brian Morrissey:

yes.

Brian Morrissey:

I think they played into his hands as a carnival barker, and I

Brian Morrissey:

think it led to a public that is less was less illuminated on real issues.

Brian Morrissey:

And then when there was issues, they got, they got so hysterically covered that everything, everything was

Brian Morrissey:

like the collapse of civilization and most people.

Brian Morrissey:

I think when you look at like, why the trust in media is so low and it has It has actually accelerated with, with Trump and granted he's out there delegitimizing them is because a lot of people looked at him like, well, wait, this Russia stuff didn't turn out really to anything like all these things didn't, at least in the view, I think of a large group of the population.

Brian Morrissey:

A lot of a lot of the hysterics were not warranted.

Brian Morrissey:

And so it's The

Alex Schleifer:

ratings were through the roof, right?

Alex Schleifer:

When you're turning political

Brian Morrissey:

was Al Capone's vault.

Brian Morrissey:

I watched that thing.

Alex Schleifer:

what?

Brian Morrissey:

You didn't get that in Cyprus.

Brian Morrissey:

Al Capone's vault.

Alex Schleifer:

No,

Brian Morrissey:

Fox, an early Fox, early Fox, quote unquote, found Al Capone's vault in Chicago, and they had a primetime special to open the vault.

Brian Morrissey:

Got it got a ton of people to watch.

Brian Morrissey:

I

Brian Morrissey:

watched as a kid.

Alex Schleifer:

I think um, what the, the, the difference here is though that like your, if, if that happens again, of course all the worst parts are going to be amplified because much of the news media is even more desperate.

Alex Schleifer:

So they're not going to all of a sudden say, well, now's when we're going to start making the right calls that are just not, trying to just drive, you know, engagement through an arrangement, right?

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, that's the hack, like, you know, Facebook taught everyone this is how you do it.

Alex Schleifer:

and there's no reason not to do it.

Alex Schleifer:

You know, and so I think unless people, people's interface to media fundamentally changes their media diet.

Alex Schleifer:

I think all of this stuff is still going to be created and pushed towards you because that's what we gravitate to,

Brian Morrissey:

let's let's move on from this.

Brian Morrissey:

Let's let's talk about the new aggregators.

Brian Morrissey:

A perplexity is raising, at a 9 billion valuation.

Brian Morrissey:

News Corp suing them.

Brian Morrissey:

Meanwhile.

Brian Morrissey:

Tollbit, which we've talked about here before, they raised 24 million.

Brian Morrissey:

They help, they help publishers understand who is, is crawling, their sites and scooping up their data, with the idea that they'll at least be able to, to set up something of a, of a toll booth and get paid for all of those crawlers.

Brian Morrissey:

and I think what we're seeing is we're going to see a really interesting year as Google pushes out AI overviews and search changes, quite a bit.

Brian Morrissey:

Troy, what do you think about News Corp going after Perplexity?

Troy Young:

I think it's essential.

Troy Young:

I hope they see their ass off.

Alex Schleifer:

Wow.

Troy Young:

I mean, it's just so clear that, that these are the sort of unpaid ingredients into a business that, they'll sort of genuflect to, equitable relationship with media.

Troy Young:

But this is, let's be honest, this is just kind of reprocessed intellectual property for the most part.

Troy Young:

Um, I find this new generation of aggregators to be very compelling from a consumer perspective, like I've been testing the new news aggregator particle, it uses all the sort of, you know, expected AI techniques to make the aggregation of news more compelling for the consumer, and it works.

Troy Young:

And they too will go out and say, we don't mean any foreign media.

Troy Young:

Here, we'll do a little deal with you, but you know, I mean, the market will work it out and the tool bits of the world will try to create a tool booth in the middle and maybe that revenue looks like something that's the new programmatic, assuming that there's enough revenue on the aggregator side to parse up to

Troy Young:

like parse between 100 different providers and actually be meaningful, but it's troubling, man, like, The revenue stream for, for, you know, most folks from small media brands or mid sized media brands for, for perplexities is going to be really tight, you know, really tiny, unless they have enormous scale.

Troy Young:

And, you know, for them to kind of evolve to be the central bank of the media industry seems scary to me from a business point of view and what they're doing right now does pretty much amount to IP theft.

Troy Young:

So.

Troy Young:

I think that, you know, I, I get why it's a good product.

Troy Young:

I use it.

Troy Young:

I think it's interesting.

Troy Young:

I like the

Troy Young:

interface ideas, but you know, they wouldn't exist without your hard work

Brian Morrissey:

Hmm.

Troy Young:

and and they just wouldn't, they would not exist.

Troy Young:

And unless there's

Troy Young:

alignment

Alex Schleifer:

it's also a good, a great product.

Alex Schleifer:

Napster.

Alex Schleifer:

Napster was a great product.

Alex Schleifer:

You could get all this and, and I think it's just, but here's the thing I, I worry like if it doesn't.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

but Napster died so Spotify could live,

Alex Schleifer:

right.

Alex Schleifer:

And if it and you know, some would say that Spotify wasn't a great deal for a lot of artists.

Alex Schleifer:

I think, we always get better at trying to get information and people's work out of them for free, whether it's to promise them, exposures by them creating content or.

Alex Schleifer:

You know, exposure by allowing Google to, you know, kind of siphon off their content and expose it on, on search results.

Troy Young:

Google, the Google trade was easier.

Alex Schleifer:

But the Google trade, the Google trade was a step, a single step in the same direction.

Alex Schleifer:

Right.

Alex Schleifer:

And then it kind of like adjusted the norms, everybody, the, you know, so, so you're looking at the open web and.

Alex Schleifer:

And you're looking at, wait, wait a second, like there's no reason we send these people there because we already have all that information.

Alex Schleifer:

And unless that gets legislated, it's hard to see how any non kind of like, uh, subscription based content, you know, survives or gets monetized in an efficient way.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, I think with Napster, it's interesting because let's just stick, stick with that.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, there's no RIAA of publishing,

Brian Morrissey:

right?

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I mean, News Corp can't, can't do it on its own, right?

Brian Morrissey:

And, and publishing, like, I think Spotify is imperfect, but.

Brian Morrissey:

The music industry is doing all right.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I mean, I think if you look at the, the life of artists now, it's very different.

Brian Morrissey:

You can't just go into the studio and like cut an album and sell a bunch of CDs and

Brian Morrissey:

make a ton of money.

Brian Morrissey:

You got to be touring like 150 days a year.

Brian Morrissey:

And, it's a grind, but you know, the, the industry changed at the end of the day.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

And I mean, I think that's the big difference.

Alex Schleifer:

And that's why you're seeing a lot more activity with, with kind of these music generators like Suno is that the music industry is ready for that

Brian Morrissey:

Oh yeah,

Alex Schleifer:

They're still good at it.

Alex Schleifer:

They've got a playbook.

Alex Schleifer:

The film industry, I would say is the same.

Alex Schleifer:

And then, I mean, if media had the same thing, it would be such a different landscape.

Alex Schleifer:

You know, these businesses would, would, would really have to struggle to try to, You know, generate it to kind of, you know, build their LLMs off that content.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, I wonder how much of that is also that's because it's text, know,

Brian Morrissey:

Well, that's what we talked about last week.

Brian Morrissey:

I

Brian Morrissey:

mean, text is, is a bad position to be in in some ways.

Brian Morrissey:

A

Alex Schleifer:

it was the first thing that we could generate quickly.

Alex Schleifer:

It's, easy to distribute.

Alex Schleifer:

most people can put something together, and so it's, it's very hard to, it's very hard to defend, unfortunately.

Troy Young:

Hey guys, I got a good product in the chamber you know, talk forever.

Troy Young:

I was at a friend's house the other day.

Troy Young:

I got a couple of good products here.

Troy Young:

Had a good media product, and a good product.

Troy Young:

So my friend has one of those Rivians and it got the Halloween update.

Troy Young:

And when he pressed the button to open the car, it made the Halloween sound, which was like an owl coo, like, and then he's like, get And he shows me the screens and there's all these crazy Halloween graphics and the lights outside and inside the car go multicolor and it's kind of crazy.

Troy Young:

And then he's like, check this out.

Troy Young:

And he puts on the kit, the, you know,

Troy Young:

like the David Hasselhoff Knight Rider.

Troy Young:

thing and everything, all the dash changes into like all these analog gauges or these, you know, old computer gauges like kit.

Troy Young:

And the soundtrack starts playing.

Troy Young:

And I thought, what a fun way to bring a brand to life, you know, like having that surface area for, you know, surprise and delight and assignment, the cars are becoming less about mechanics and more about software and entertainment.

Troy Young:

So I thought that was cool.

Troy Young:

you guys can chat about that.

Troy Young:

But the other thing I wanted to, to, to mention is that sometimes I, I look at my dog and I feel guilty and I wonder if my dog is bored and I'm like, Oh, my dog is so fucking bored and I feel like I need to entertain the dog you know, the dog's sleeping or laying for hours on the sofa or whatever.

Troy Young:

I'm like, poor thing, she's bored.

Troy Young:

And you know, I will never know.

Troy Young:

But, I was thinking about the dog because I watched this great movie on the airplane, from Vim Vendors, and it's called Perfect Days, and I think it's a great movie.

Troy Young:

it's about this character named Hirayama, and he, There's obviously a backstory.

Troy Young:

There was some sort of life tragedy fall from grace.

Troy Young:

You know, he was a corporate man or married or whatever, but they don't get into any of that.

Troy Young:

Ben doesn't get into any of that.

Troy Young:

He's a toilet cleaner in Tokyo.

Troy Young:

The remarkable bathrooms of Tokyo and the movie is, and he's happy is the thing.

Troy Young:

He seems very, very happy.

Troy Young:

you wanna know if he's lonely, but, and or what keeps him going.

Troy Young:

but really his life is in like the sort of, he's much more than what he seems because he takes great joy in the craft of his work every day and the rhythm of life and in the simplicity of his life.

Troy Young:

And, you know, he cleans toilets.

Troy Young:

He looks at the trees he loves trees.

Troy Young:

He reads books, and he listens to great iconic American rock like we read there's a great soundtrack.

Troy Young:

All right.

Troy Young:

And, the movie has this kind of rhythm of life with Tokyo as the backdrop and, you know, Tokyo architecture.

Troy Young:

it, it's just the light and the buildings and the character.

Troy Young:

I think he won at, Ken, he won Best Actor and it's, it's nominated for an Academy Award in the International Film category.

Troy Young:

Anyway, the movie's called Perfect Days.

Troy Young:

It's definitely a good product.

Troy Young:

And I was really surprised by it.

Troy Young:

So I hope you, you, you watch it.

Brian Morrissey:

Alright, I'm gonna check it out.

Brian Morrissey:

Let's leave it there.

Brian Morrissey:

This was a compact episode for us.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm, I'm good with that.

Troy Young:

Really?

Troy Young:

What about the Rivian?

Troy Young:

Do you like the Rivian

Alex Schleifer:

I nearly bought the Rivian.

Alex Schleifer:

It just wouldn't fit in my garage in San Francisco.

Alex Schleifer:

so getting something else, but it's a great, great car, great software,

Troy Young:

Thank you very much for all the birthday wishes.

Troy Young:

I

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, is it your

Troy Young:

it.

Troy Young:

I mean,

Brian Morrissey:

wow.

Brian Morrissey:

Happy

Brian Morrissey:

birthday.

Troy Young:

wasn't going to bring it up

Alex Schleifer:

Well,

Troy Young:

since you

Brian Morrissey:

now you

Brian Morrissey:

have.

Brian Morrissey:

Happy birthday.

Brian Morrissey:

Are we, are we doing next week's episode in costume, by the way?

Brian Morrissey:

Unrelated?

Alex Schleifer:

maybe.

Alex Schleifer:

Let's try.

Alex Schleifer:

Let's try

Alex Schleifer:

it.

Alex Schleifer:

Let's do it.

Troy Young:

Ciao

Troy Young:

guys.

Troy Young:

Bye.

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About the Podcast

People vs Algorithms
A podcast for curious media minds.
Uncovering patterns of change in media, culture, and technology, each week media veterans Brian Morrissey, Alex Schleifer and Troy Young break down stuff that matters.
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