Media Predictions for 2026
Eleven (some obvious and some arguable of course ) predictions for media five years from now as the new Wild West gets wilder fueled by the ongoing technology explosion:
NEWSPAPERS: Four or five will prevail as National brands and local papers will be supported by contributions, grants and possibly government funding. Smaller markets may survive as scaled back, free and highly condensed editions, medium and larger markets not so without public funds or decimated output
FM RADIO: Demographics will continue to skew older. A handful of under-50 powerhouses will prevail as will smaller market extremely localized stations. Generic radio will be omnipresent with some marginal successes but generally in clear decline.
STREAMING MUSIC: Will clearly become the dominant norm among younger demos favoring personal choice and with no historical allegiance to FM, and will explode 50+ once the high circulation services provide new takes on FM Radio’s “natural” 50+ audience that provide more character and curation than the jukebox effect provides, while utilizing the new listening technologies
PODCASTING: Will continue to develop as the modern day talk radio. There will be an extreme shake out as the existing and emerging big names will dominate and create long term pod brands, medium players may make money, most wont. Small players will fade out. Expect increased production values that colorize the presentations creating a theater of the mind environment to elevate creative.
SATELLITE RADIO: Will continue steady growth fueled by next generations in car audio, unification with other big media, and carriage of compelling brands and talent.
STREAMING TV: More new niche programming shows and channels to compliment movies, existing niches and series as the medium becomes dominant. Rich turf for new programming concepts as simply migrating existing programming from cable to streaming will not be a guarantee and exclusive programming beyond scripted shows will be a powerful differentiator in a cluttered environment. Expect more ad supported ventures to keep user costs down.
NEWS: Migration to devices continues with some radical non-TV news rooted concepts emerge. The existing style of news will continue to age itself out of dominance, credibility and relevance regardless of the platform it’s delivered on.
LIVE MUSIC EVENTS: Expect a revolution in large scale live events driven by extreme advances in audio and visual technology applied to live environment. A new golden age for medium and large scale live music
SOCIAL MEDIA: The current big players stay big with more than a little pollution from misinformation, socio-political division and conspiracy theories, while one or two new concepts enter the mix with great success among many failures.
MEGA MEDIA: The new era of big media consolidation will be slow to react but will begin to aggressively seek new programming ideas for differentiation and growth , some which will gain traction, though they will remain bulky and less than agile in fast response to the pulse of the street, opting to acquire fast moving upstarts to their portfolios in significant numbers. An exciting age for rebel content creators to find big homes. Radical new thinkers will be engaged by the smartest (but clearly non-radical) of the mega media to their competitive advantage
MASS APPEAL INTELLIGENCE: The information revolution will grow as information will continue to drive culture much as music or television has in the past. Responding to the dumbing of America and plethora of electronically fed nonsense, new infotainment programming will emerge that combines credible information with entertainment to target the factual info starved new mainstream. The appetite for “high IQ/Low BS programming increases
If there’s one takeaway, it’s that programming will begin to match the same level of innovation as the technology, creating a tour de force where breakthrough new content matches the genuine innovation of breakthrough new technologies.
...we can only hope