“It’s surprising how long things take and then shocking how fast they can happen....The only people left watching broadcast, ad-supported TV are going to be the poor or the technologically illiterate.”
I'm a big fan of Prof. Scott Galloway's work and look forward to his weekly vlog, Winners and Losers. He's got strong opinions about the Four Horseman / Gang of Four - Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple and the data to back it up. He also has hot takes on the losers, typically companies in the "advertising industrial complex", like broadcast TV and old school consumer packaged goods.
This week's edition is no different. With voice becoming a revolutionary technology, brands are losing their influence. Amazon's "virtual butler" Alexa is now in 4% of US households, Siri handles over 2 BILLION commands a week, and 20% of Google searches on Android handsets are inputted with voice. As Prof. Galloway demonstrates in the video, this eliminates the need for packaging, design, and shelf space for traditional brands. Every day, fewer and fewer people put a brand name in a Google search. With Alexa, Amazon omits other brands in favor of its own private label brand and seems to charge more versus its own website because of the lack of transparency.
Excluding sports, viewership for all broadcast networks is down. Since networks don't own sports, just rent their broadcast rights for a limited time, there's blood in the water. Especially when the Four Horsemen decide to seriously enter that market with their cheap capital. Amazon will be broadcasting Thursday Night NFL Football starting this upcoming season. Are the others (FB, GOOG, AAPL) far behind? Sunday Night Football on Facebook Live?
Lower Revenues and Viewership + Higher Cost of Broadcast Rights = Impending Doom for ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox.
From Superman: The Man of Steel #20 (1993)