What is TV’s endgame?

Channels with Peter Kafka

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Tv & Film, Business News, News

4.4 • 585 Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A decade ago, Disney CEO Bob Iger freaked out the media industry by acknowledging something many of us saw coming — his previously unassailable TV business was starting to erode. But even with a 10-year warning, today’s moguls seem unable to copewith 2025’s reality: The pay TV business is permanently eroding, and there’s nothing in its place that’s likely to generate the same kind of revenue and profit. But the people who run Big TV are trying to find answers, anyway. So I asked Lightshed analyst Rich Greenfield to talk through some of their moves. What will David and Larry Ellison do once they finally buy Paramount? What are the prospects for ESPN’s soon-to-launch streamer? What about Fox’s soon-to-launch streamer? Who’s going to buy all of these ailing cable TV networks that are coming on the market? And what kind of deals - if any - can get done in the Trump 2.0 era? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:00.7	welcome to a world of infinite worlds a world of adventure possibility and happily ever afters. It's all waiting for you
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1:35.9	From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels of Peter Kafka.
1:41.0	That is me.
1:41.9	I'm also the chief correspondent at Business Insider. And today we are talking about
1:46.5	the end of TV, at least TV as people knew it like a decade ago, kind of TV where you paid
1:52.9	one company, a bunch of money, and got a bunch of TV channels in return, and that was that.
1:58.3	As you know, that model is going, going, gone.
2:01.6	We are watching everyone who still makes money from that model
2:04.4	scramble to figure out the next thing.
2:07.2	And for this episode, I wanted to focus in
2:09.0	on some of the particular challenges facing the big TV guys.
	...

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