Streaming viewership officially overtook old-fashioned “linear” TV for the first time in May 2025, according to the Bank of America Institute. Spending on streaming content grew more than 10% year over year even as traditional TV viewership flatlined.
That marks “a historic shift in how people spend their downtime” and makes streaming “almost as large as linear TV and radio combined,” Fortune Intelligence editor Nick Lichtenberg says.
This inflection point came despite what many culture critics bemoan as a decline in the quality of studio-made video content. The “golden age of TV,” kicked off by The Sopranos around the turn of the century and sustained by the likes of Mad Men and Breaking Bad into the 2010s, is over, they argue.
Maybe that’s true. But even if it is, we’re at the dawn of a “golden age of content” defined not by studio production values but by personalization, expertise and insight. Pioneers like Rob Goldberg’s Fresno, a next-generation studio backed by investors like Chamath Palihapitiya and Sky Dayton, showed what’s possible before the advent of generative AI. Today, the potential is far greater; tomorrow, who knows?
Here’s why observers of the content creation ecosystem — and, yes, even some cultural critics — are optimistic about the future.
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Algorithmic “Content Engines” Are Really Good Now
Fresno’s defining innovation was a “content engine” that “understands not only what type of video content can thrive on new platforms but, equally importantly, how to package that and distribute it in profitable ways,” Palihapitiya explained in 2017.
That engine piqued the interest of sophisticated investors like Sky Dayton, best known as the founder of early consumer Internet platform EarthLink and other digital businesses. Fresno used its powerful algorithm to develop original content ideas or finesse existing concepts into high-quality productions capable of resonating with broad — or narrow and loyal — audiences.
That work, again, took place before the advent of what we know today as generative AI. Algorithmic content creation and recommendation tools are much better now than they were a decade ago and continue to improve at an incredible rate.
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Quality Content Is Now Available Anytime, Anywhere
Also not a new trend: on-demand access to vast amounts of quality content. What the Internet initially did for user-generated writing and video content streaming did for studio productions and AI is in the process of doing for studio-quality user-generated productions.
We can’t know for sure where this is headed, although one interesting trend is the re-emergence of “bundled” platforms that look a lot like the now-obsolete cable and satellite TV packages of yore.
However, it’s helpful to take a step back and acknowledge just how much has changed over the past 15 years. The availability of on-demand content has, arguably, wrought changes well beyond the entertainment industry — for example, by enabling a multi-billion-dollar food delivery industry to flourish.
It’s notable, by the way, that Palihapitiya and Dayton were early investors in CloudKitchens, a “picks and shovels” play in that space.
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Generative AI Remains an Assistant, Not a Director (For Now)
For all its capabilities and despite its incredible learning rate, generative AI remains (for now) in an assistant role to talented human creators.
Yes, AI video and image generation tools are game-changers for content development. They drastically reduce the time and expense of producing high-quality visual media. Things will never again be the same because of that.
Yet they are quite literally not ready for prime time, and no one knows for sure when they will be. Humans — again, for now, but maybe for quite some time to come — will be needed to “check their work.” That’s a bullish signal for the future of entertainment.
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Educational Content Tools Are Rapidly Improving
For a peek at the future of AI-supported content, visit your local K-12 school. It’s now routine for teachers to use AI tools to design educational content and even entire lesson plans, according to CNN.
“Many teachers are now incorporating AI into lesson plans, another sign that AI-powered tools are becoming more commonplace in the classroom,” CNN says. By one metric, about 70% of teenage students use generative AI tools in some fashion.
This trend all but guarantees today’s kids will be comfortable interacting and creating with AI outside the classroom as well. How the content creation ecosystem benefits (or not) is an open question, but it’s certainly something to watch.
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The “Attention Era” Is Ending
The era of “attention for attention’s sake” is ending due to the decline of mass social media platforms like Twitter and the rise of more personalized, targeted recommendation algorithms on platforms like TikTok.
It is true that these algorithms will, at least for now, continue to reward virality. But as audiences for viral content fragment, we’ll see a flight to “viral quality” as per the next trend.
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The “Clout Era” Is Just Beginning
Again, viral content will persist, but it’ll be of higher quality and greater value to its audiences, who will in turn be more loyal to individual (or collective) creators.
We already see this in the success of micro- and nano-influencers on Instagram and TikTok. We also see it in the narrow but deep audiences of creators on newsletter-based platforms like Substack. Expect this trend to continue and perhaps expand to new platforms supported by next-generation AI or augmented-reality tools.
A Bright Future for Creatives and Creators
The future is bright for creatives and content creators. Surprisingly so, for those accustomed of late to hearing nothing but doom and gloom about the industry.
For this glass-half-full outlook, we can thank improving “content engine” and recommendation algorithms, ever more useful generative AI, a re-centralization of content access in an “anytime, anywhere” format, and a restructuring of the creator economy to reward expertise over virality.
Other factors are at play as well, including much-improved educational content that will change how the next generations learn and seek entertainment. Thanks to them, the creative economy of the future will look very different than today’s — and better for all involved, too.
