Just wrapped up an episode of WatchMojo’s Inside series podcast where Rob Flis & I broke down the macro trends that led to the transaction, as well as what it means for stakeholders. Watch, or read below the video.

If you want to understand what is happening in today’s media landscape, you need to understand this simple diagram. It captures the shift from the old top-down era of media to the modern ecosystem era we now live in.

In the past, the industry worked like a pyramid. Those at the top controlled the premium inventory, the highest ad rates and the most valuable distribution. ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS defined the apex. Beneath them sat premium digital publishers like WatchMojo, followed by prosumers, then user-generated content. It was a hierarchy based on scarcity. Scarcity of inventory, scarcity of distribution and scarcity of participants. Whoever controlled the top controlled the market. That is the vacuum I saw which explains WatchMojo’s strategy and tactics in the first half of our operating history.

That world is gone.

Today we live in overlapping spheres, not pyramids. One sphere represents content, catalog, IP. The other represents distribution & audience. The most powerful players sit where those two spheres intersect. YouTube is the clearest example of this new reality. It is simultaneously the world’s largest content library and the world’s largest distribution platform. Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus, Max, NBCUniversal and Viacom sit closer to the content sphere but increasingly depend on distribution platforms they do not fully control. TikTok, Facebook, Twitch and Snapchat sit on the distribution side but shape global culture and attention in ways that traditional networks once did. Each one chooses if they want to license, invest in development & production, or acquire/own outright. But those are details.

The collapse of the hierarchy has created a horizontal ecosystem where the old rules no longer apply. The scarce asset is no longer content but attention. The premium is no longer based on position in a pyramid but on the ability to operate across platforms.

This shift is exactly what we discussed on Inside today when analyzing the Warner Bros Discovery mess, the Netflix relationship, the Paramount triangle and the broader consolidation wave. The legacy players are still thinking in pyramid terms, where they assume their historical status guarantees relevance. Meanwhile, platforms like YouTube and TikTok are operating in the sphere era, where distribution is fluid, audience habits evolve daily and agility matters more than legacy.

This also explains why WatchMojo thrived. We were born in the overlap. We built and scaled in the one place the old guard underestimated: the intersection where content and distribution converge. That is the engine of modern media.

This framework has implications beyond streaming, including sports, entertainment and civic development. Just like media companies can no longer rely on hierarchy, sports franchises can no longer rely solely on history. The future belongs to operators and organizations that understand ecosystems and can play across multiple spheres simultaneously.

I embedded the Inside episode here so that readers can see how Rob and I unpack the latest moves by Warner Bros, Netflix and Paramount through this lens. Once you understand this diagram, everything in media makes a lot more sense, including the chaos, the consolidation and the opportunities emerging from it.

Where are things headed? Stay tuned, and just watch!