Wayne, what's next---two-second commercials so advertisers can tie in with the "micro-dramas"? If I were Disney, Paramount, Amazon, etc, I'd be tickled pink if Netflix went in for short shorts in a big way as its share of viewing--and subscribers would drop significantly. But not to worry-I assume that wiser heads at Netflix will prvail.

I'm surprised no reference was made to "Nashville Star" which was on USA Network in the early 2000s and helped launch Miranda Lambert's career. This is basically the same format.

I think that CNN or MSNow will have to be sold in my opinion DOJ could force that to happen they did that when Disney bought most of the FOX assets other than FOX broadcast, FOX News, FS1/2, BTN, & FOX Business had to sell the RSNs as the DOJ didn't want Disney to have a lock on all the sports with the RSNs. I didn't know that Versant wanted WBD I know Skydance has shown interest in WBD cable networks.

Fabulous article on an incredible woman and inspiring leader. I've had the pleasure of knowing Sherry Phillips, both personally and professionally, for years. I can attest to her artful skill, graceful, confident manner, and ethical, creative approach to everything she does. This is a great article, Ray Schulz, spotlighting a super-smart, warm, wonderful woman.

Fabulous article on an incredible woman and inspiring leader.  I've had the pleasure of knowing Sherry Phillips, both personally and professionally, for years.  I can attest to her artful skill, graceful, confident manner, and ethical, creative approach to everything she does.  This is a great article, Ray Schulz, spotlighting a super-smart, warm, wonderful woman.  

I know a lot of people between southern Nevada and southern Californa would love it if Walmart or some other major retailer(s) took on the former outlet mall in Primm, Nevada for mixed use development. People traveling between the states or coming from Las Vegas and going across the street from the mall to play the lottery would be thrilled to have something there again. Having it attached to a hotel and casino opens up a multitude of additional options as well. The only concern is the Brightline West rail line system being built might affect vehicle travel between the two states and no stops (stations) in Primm.         

Spot on Gord

@joshchasin Usually it's pornographers and bad actors that leverage technology first to their advantage. Performance-oriented growth and curious test-quickly-and-learn marketers also tend to adopt early. Conversely, survey insights professionals are often the most skeptical and risk-averse group, loyal to ivory-tower-validated protocol, and are late to adopting innovative techniques. (Not always, but often if not mostly.) Eventually the latter group comes along for the ride to remain relevant and exploit the competetive advantage. In the more narrow case of bots masquerading as people in insights surveys, you definitely can only fight AI bot fraud with AI detection, because AI emulates humans better than fraudulent humans (as Steve Millman conceded at The ARF AxS conference a few years ago). Cheers, amigo!

"Adult entertainment, whether it is called pornography or erotica, has not been a driving force behind generative AI efforts or large language models (LLMs)."

Um, here's a BBC article FROM TWO YEARS AGO (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65932372) where through Midjourney/Stability/etc, "users appeared to be making child abuse images on an industrial scale".

Just because it wasn't on OpenAIs revenue map does not mean it is not a driving force. How about have some morals as a company over treating adults like adults further spiraling humanity down the drain of being able to form actual relationships. 

Synthetic is fine - until you have to test something the AI models have yet to be trained on... The danger is, when you use an AI audience for that testing application, you'll still get results...

AI chatbots don't analyze facts or history, they reflect back the media and academic materials they train on. In this case, these ridiculous chatbot reports tell more about how distorted academic and media analyses of the media are than they tell about the media itself. There is no doubt that elite print and television media in the US has been significantly left-center for decades. There are many major left-center print sites and just one Wall Street Journal, and many left-media television news sites but just one Fox News. The fact that left-wing academics and media members have produced so much navel-gazing chum denying this reality that chatbots repeat it doesn't change reality.  

@Joshua Chasin: I can't wait until the MRC releases standards for filtering invalid human traffic.

I've said this before, but I find it ironic that we spent years endeavoring to keep machine-generated respondents out of our surveys. Now we rely on them.

@Leo Kivijarv: Thank you. I will check it out.

This is great analysis about media bias. Another source you might examine is the excellent book by Harold Holzer published about five years ago entitled "The Presidents vs. The Press: The Endless Battle Between the White House and the Media - From the Founding Fathers to Fake News." Mr. Holzer doesn't examine every single president, but does highlight the most famous battles.

So, Wayne, did they indicate what the CPM premium is for these "fixed units" will be? It reminds me of the "premium pod" position idea that NBC tried on the original episodes of its new cable shows some years back. As I recall, tey wanted a 75% premium for such positioning in low clutter breaks--only two "30s" per break. But the buyers balked and the idea was dropped.

'Economic Gloom'?

Please try to quantify that for us instead of expressing your personal opinion.

More delusion, ask Bud Light or Cracker Barrel

Agree - consumers craving cozy! Brands that crack the AI-driven surface level will break through. Insightful!

A1 it's good technology 

Adam, I find it fascinating that you frame legitimate criticism of Weiss by real journalists as "chattering" and "hand-wringing" when you yourself wrote a VERY hand-wringing article about chocolate snowmen only a few days ago: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/409451/language-alert-snowman-becomes-snowperson-on.html

Sorry about your eyes-glazing-over problem but maybe a dose of self-awareness could help.

Good one, Cory. I have long been advocating this kind of evolution.

The problem has been--and still is--that we are talking about a transformation on the agency side without a parallel--and supportive---- transformation on the cflient side. Instead, most clients are focused on paying their agency "partners" as little as possible and, recently, of suspecting them of operating  unethically re "principal media" deals, alleged kickbacks, etc. As a result, the agencies must operate lean and mean, which means that they can't afford the costly and time consuming effort to retrain their media people to understand the full marketing process or to integrate them in it.  They know that their clients will not support such investments financially, let alone retrain their own CMOs and brand managers so they, too, are in the know about modern media planning and buying options. Consequently, the cost efficient agency creative, planning and buying silos remain largely intact

In short,  we seem to be at an impass--just as in the past. How do we get any real movement unless the client is willing to appreciate the need and support it?It takes two to tango.

A better way would've been tax incentives for films being made in the USA in my opinion, I get it filming in other countries is also a good thing. Tariffs not a good thing for the movies and studios in my opinion I think there are better things then tariffs on the studios and movies.