I’m a big fan of Bob Dylan. One of my older sisters brought home The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan LP when I was nine or ten years old. I really didn’t understand what the songs were about then, but I knew his music and lyrics were rooted in the conviction, pain, sorrow, and humor in his delivery. By the time I went through high school and college, there wasn’t a situation I came across that a Dylan lyric didn’t address.
So many of his songs were prescient, providing a glimpse of his version of the future before; one of Dylan’s other fans, Bruce Springsteen, wrote as a lyric, “none of this has happened yet.”
I wonder what the now octogenarian Dylan thinks of what’s going on in the media and entertainment industry. I can think of two of his songs -- “The Times They Are a-Changing,” and “A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall” that are almost perfectly applicable to the tumultuous environment in which we are enveloped.
Headlines about cord cutting, the departure of advertising revenue -- being vacuumed up by Big Tech’s digital platforms -- the questionable financial viability of many streaming platforms, the unknown impact of artificial Intelligence on virtually every aspect of the industry from content creation to balancing the books, and predictions of another round of consolidation among players from all sectors of the industry make me want to:
Admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone
And we better start swimming or we’ll sink like a stone…
I can’t get over the feeling that media and entertainment companies are on the cusp of an industrial revolution. It seems to me that the whole industry is reinventing itself on an almost daily basis. As someone who’s still relatively new to the community -- but who has been an avid consumer of M&E products for six+ decades – it is both frightening and fascinating.
Frightening because I don’t really know who’s leading the charge for change -- consumers, investors, visionary leaders, false prophets? -- or where it might end up. I fear that for many of those companies and individuals who don’t start swimming pretty soon, the outcome could be devastating.
Fascinating because one of the greatest benefits of being the CEO of MFM is the opportunity I have to surround myself with incredibly intelligent people who can help me better understand the underlying forces driving us in a new direction.
Let’s take AI for instance. I served as the moderator of the MFM Regional Meeting in Washington, DC on October 18. The topic for that session, as well as for our Regional Meetings in Atlanta on October 26 and Los Angeles on November 15, was “AI and is impact on you, your company, and your career.”
I captured one key point from each of the four panelists that stuck to me like a Dylan lyric:
- “Start the move to utilize AI with one project, not the entire portfolio. If you don’t do it well on your first try, you risk losing the confidence of your entire team for using it on additional projects.”
- “You’re not purchasing a pilot; you’re purchasing a co-pilot. Someone who helps the pilot manage the flight more effectively and better serve the passengers. When something goes wrong – and it will – you’re still going to need Captain Sully to land the plane.”
- “AI is a great assistant for the bad guys, too.”
- There is a bigger risk to consider: the risk of falling too far behind by not utilizing AI.”
This column might seem a bit like a Dylan song -- meandering along, seemingly random, maybe even confused. That’s because this observer is watching the maelstrom from an interesting vantage point, trying to help financial professionals in the media and entertainment industry see the signs, read the tea leaves, and You are learn how to adapt to the changing climate rather than be overwhelmed by it.
“I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.”
Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.
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