The Media Odyssey

Three years ago RTL Deutschland had no relationship with YouTube. Today, 200 old episodes of a 1996 action series are driving 123% more first video views and 26% more subscriptions on RTL+. This YouTube and RTL partnership case study shows how legacy TV can monetize its back catalog and grow streaming subscriptions.

This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast features Evan Shapiro in conversation with Pedro Pina (Vice President of YouTube EMEA) and Stefan Schmitter (CEO of RTL Deutschland). They discuss how RTL treats YouTube as a partner of equals instead of a threat, and why the cannibalization...

Premium streaming lost 89% of the subscribers that signed up for new subscriptions last year, and the audience it’s chasing is watching video in the bedroom, on the bus, and on the toilet. Evan Shapiro’s keynote makes the case that media has to redefine broadcast and follow the whole consumer.

In this keynote episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast, recorded on stage at Jupiter Festival in Miami, Evan Shapiro unveils the newest Media Universe map and the Creator Ecosphere map. He walks through cross-screen attention data from 23 regions, including why YouTube, TikTok, and vertical video are winn...

YouTube built the kids content economy, then broke its own monetization pipeline. Now it's time to fix kids content.

This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast features hosts Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet with kids media analyst Emily Horgan (The Kids Streamersphere), breaking down her latest Netflix Kids Content Performance Report. They dig into why Netflix isn't building new kids IP, YouTube's broken monetization pipeline for children's content, and how what's actually working for creators and franchises in a brutally competitive kids' content landscape can be the roadmap to fixing kids content. 

Key Takeaways:

An Anthropic engineer warned AI could destroy humanity, but Silicon Valley's sudden AI "safety" panic looks a lot like a marketing campaign.

This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast with Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet breaks down how California's attorneys general settled in the Paramount-Warner Bros Discovery merger, what the deal's mandates actually require, and why the AI industry's sudden doomsday messaging conveniently coincides with OpenAI and Anthropic's IPO troubles. Plus a look at how Europe is positioning itself in the AI race.

Key Takeaways

Blair Imani just beat MrBeast on a brand-new ranking of creator influence and and the metric behind it could change how brands spend their money on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

This episode of The Media Odyssey Podcast, recorded outside at IBC, features hosts Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet with special guest Shira Lazar. They unpack the newly released Affinity 100, a ranking of the most impactful creators of 2026 built on a new metric called the Affinity Quotient, developed with Whalar Group and Foam.

Key Takeaways:

1. A New Way to Measure Influence
The Affinity...

Europe's public broadcasters are losing over 5% of their funding on average, and some budgets are being slashed by up to 70%. It's not because of economics, but ideology.

This bonus episode, recorded live at SME Live 2026 in Amsterdam, features Marion Ranchet with Serge Schick (France Medias Monde), Lieven Vermaele (VRT), Christophe Chantraine (RTBF), and Bastiaan Toering (NPO), discussing the funding pressures and strategic countermeasures reshaping European public service media.

Key Takeaways
1. Public Service Media Reach Is Massive, But Funding Is Shrinking

PSM reaches over 80% of Europeans weekly (close to 70% among 15-24 year-olds) at...

Streaming platforms are spending anywhere from 9% to 30% of revenue just to run their tech stack and a new study finally puts real numbers behind the guesswork. 

Don’t miss this special episode recorded on stage at Streaming Made Easy Live with Jonas Engwall (CEO of Bedrock Streaming), Bjarne Andreas Myklebust (NRK, Norway's public broadcaster), and Rowan de Pomerai (CEO of the DPP). They unpack the new Streaming Platform Ratio study benchmarking 16 European platforms against Netflix, why public broadcasters are outperforming commercial ones on tech efficiency, and the coming wave of premium vertical video.

Key Takeaways:

The 2026 World Cup shattered streaming records worldwide, Paramount and Warner Bros are locked in a multi-billion-dollar antitrust standoff, and Meta just settled a landmark child-safety case for $18 billion. The Media Odyssey podcast is back and we know what you did last summer. 

This episode marks the Season 3 premiere with hosts Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet catching up after their summer break. They cover all the biggest news of the last month including the World Cup's record-breaking viewership clip culture, ESPN’s faulty sports rights math, and Disney’s stale IP. They also discuss how the P...

Happy Summer Break from The Media Odyssey podcast! 

What if the future of entertainment fits in your pocket and a six-year-old startup from Ukraine is already building it?

Welcome to the Media Odyssey Podcast, recorded live at StreamTV Europe, featuring Bogdan Nesvit, founder of HOLYWATER TECH and the microdrama platform My Drama. What started six years ago as an interactive fiction app has quietly evolved into one of the most data-sophisticated entertainment companies operating today. One that is now partnering with Fox Entertainment and eyeing a full theatrical release.

If you've ever wondered h...

Happy Summer Break from The Media Odyssey podcast! 

Jimmy Kimmel is at the center of the conversation where politics, free speech, and billion-dollar mergers collide.

In this episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast, hosts Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet unpack the dramatic suspension and reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel—a flashpoint that highlights the collision of politics, regulation, and the crumbling power of broadcast TV. Shapiro explains the FCC’s limited authority, why Chair Brendan Carr’s threats crossed constitutional lines, and how Disney’s rapid cave-in to political pressure triggered a fierce backlash.

The discu...

Happy Summer Break from The Media Odyssey podcast! 

244 million followers and a six-month content calendar: Jordan Schwarzenberger explains why showing up daily is the only strategy that matters. Welcome to The Media Odyssey Podcast.

In this episode, Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet break down the Nielsen/MRC measurement crisis that rocked the US advertising industry, then sit down with Jordan Schwarzenberger, CEO and co-founder of Arcade Media and manager of the Sidemen. The conversation reveals how the entire US advertising market transacted on flawed data for a year, while simultaneously showing how creator-led media companies a...

Happy Summer Break from The Media Odyssey podcast! 

CES isn’t about gadgets anymore, but who controls the interface between audiences, data, and distribution.

Welcome back to The Media Odyssey Podcast! From CES, Evan Shapiro and Alan Wolk, Co-Founder and Lead Analyst of TVREV, unpack what this year’s show revealed about the future of media, entertainment, and technology while expanding on their predictions for 2026. 

Beyond the hype of AI demos and hardware announcements, the conversation centers on power shifts: who owns how we get information, who contro...

Happy Summer Break from The Media Odyssey podcast! 

The media industry isn’t heading for a clean recovery but bracing for another year of pressure, recalibration, and structural change.

Welcome back to The Media Odyssey Podcast with a special thanks to Spectrum Reach! In this first part of their 2026 predictions, Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet lay out what the coming year will likely bring for media, technology, and entertainment. They cover ongoing layoffs, fragile ad markets, the rise of global distribution strategies, and a new phase of AI-driven discovery. 2026 will test which com...

Happy Summer Break from The Media Odyssey podcast! 

Public service media isn’t outdated, instead, it’s fighting for relevance, trust, and survival in a fractured global information ecosystem.

Welcome back to The Media Odyssey Podcast. In this episode, Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet sit down with Raney Aronson-Rath, Executive Producer of Frontline and Editor-in-Chief of Documentaries at GBH, for a conversation on the future of public media. From political pressure and funding cuts to platform expansion and audience trust, the discussion explores why public broadcasters must be everywhere audiences are without sacri...

Two-thirds of the world watches more video on their phone than on TV, TikTok is beating Netflix in most markets under 55, and traditional media is ignoring 60% of its own audience's attention. It’s The Media Odyssey’s season two finale!

Evan and Marion zoom out on the biggest trends of the year so far they haven’t covered yet: the AI investment bubble, the creator economy's growing pains, the state of kids' content, and the measurement crisis at the heart of the streaming and social media landscape. It's one of their most data-rich, openly argume...

AI infrastructure is now two-thirds of US GDP with 90% of companies investing in it reporting almost no ROI, and the media industry is frozen in place waiting for a merger that may never close. Happy H1.

This is the Season 2 finale of the Media Odyssey Podcast (split across two parts) with a deep dive into H1 2026. Evan and Marion zoom out on the biggest trends of the year so far they haven’t covered yet: the AI investment bubble, the creator economy's growing pains, the state of kids' content, and the measurement crisis at th...

We’re back with another Media Odyssey LIVE! In this episode, Evan and Marion are joined by former media executives Tony Goncalves and Ami Angelowicz to discuss how to pivot your career after corporate media. The panel shares their personal stories of navigating layoffs, “misalignment burnout”, and finding satisfying careers completely in their own control. The conversation dives into building personal intellectual property, actionable daily habits for transition, and why taking a leap of faith on yourself is the best investment you can make.

Key Takeaways:

1. Misalignment Burnout
Ami Angelowicz breaks...

Comcast is splitting in three, Fox just bought Roku for $22 billion, and the Paramount-Warner merger still hasn't closed. Welcome to Media Shark Week.

This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast is Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet's deep-dive into the wave of media mergers reshaping the streaming and broadcasting landscape in real time. Recorded in early July, it covers four major deals in rapid succession: the Comcast-NBCUniversal split, the Sky acquisition of ITV, the Fox-Roku deal, and the stalled Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Without guests (or filters), Marion and Evan are comparing notes, disagreeing openly, and calling...

The growing vertical video landscape has potential far beyond microdramas. Two TV veterans just built the studio to take vertical premium all the way with true crime, dating reality formats, scripted drama, and a 12-step AI process to get there.

This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast with Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet features Guy Hameiri and Lior Friedman, co-founders of RoseBerry, a vertical premium television studio built on the belief that mobile is the new cable. Guy comes from 25 years in traditional TV production (Survivor, X Factor, Shtisel on Netflix). Lior comes from Amagi and the...

Two nearly century-old brands. One brand-new animated series. And a first-of-its-kind partnership that's never been done before.

This special episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast was recorded on the Croisette at Cannes Lions, hosted inside BBC Studios' headquarters, and features three guests across two breaking news announcements. Jasmine Dawson, SVP of Digital at BBC Studios, returns for what's become an annual tradition on the pod to unveil the Affinity advertising network. Affinity is a five-vertical, fandom-first ad sales operation expanding globally with a major push into the US. 

Dan McGolpin, Director of iPlayer and Channels a...

Demand for high-quality kids' content has never been higher, but the supply has never been more broken. And YouTube, the most powerful kids' platform on Earth, is running it like an algorithm, not a network.

This live panel episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast, recorded at the Media Universe Summit, features Evan Shapiro and Jamie Shapiro alongside Andy Donner, Head of Partnerships at Common Sense Media, and Sara DeWitt, Senior Vice President & General Manager at PBS Kids. The conversation centers on Evan and Common Sense Media's joint report on the state of the kids' content industry. 

59% of people now watch video on their phone first. If your content strategy doesn't account for that, Evan Shapiro has a message for you: you're already losing.

This keynote episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast features Evan Shapiro's live Stream TV Europe presentation. It is a fast, data-driven breakdown of where streaming media, social media, YouTube, and TikTok are headed next. Built on original research from MX8 Labs and Evan's new Cross-Screen Attention Index, the talk argues the media industry is now entirely consumer-driven, and most legacy companies haven't caught up. 

Valerie Bertinelli has been a content creator since she was 12 years old. She just stopped asking permission to make the shows she wants.

This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast features special guest co-host Valerie Bertinelli — television icon, actress, author, and Food Network — alongside Billy Cooper, CEO and co-founder of Visible Things, the direct-to-consumer platform infrastructure company behind Valerie's brand new streaming destination, Valerie's Place. 

The episode is equal parts media business case study and candid personal conversation. Billy walks through how Visible Things works as a white-label platform technology that gives legacy talent and creat...

1.7 million subscribers. A Global deal. Live Bundesliga rights. And a studio in Brooklyn for the World Cup. The Overlap built it all without owning a single match.

This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast features Scott Melvin, CEO of The Overlap, the multi-award winning sports channel, for the beginning of the 2026 World Cup. What started as a side hustle for a Sky Sports pundit itching to do long-form conversation has grown into one of the most-watched football content businesses in the UK, now backed by media company Global and expanding its creator network on...

Full Disclosure meets Media Odyssey in this crossover episode of The Media Odyssey podcast with Roben Farzad, host of Full Disclosure on NPR and former Wall Street reporter for BusinessWeek and Bloomberg.

The episode covers a wide sweep of interconnected stories: the proposed Paramount-Warner merger, the editorial independence implications of foreign money in US media, the GameStop-eBay bid as a case study in social media-driven market manipulation, and the state of M&A activity across the Atlantic.

From Roben's firsthand perspective on the lack of US media coverage of...

Eight episodes, $25,000, 2 million views. One indie creator just proved you don't need a studio, a streamer, or a greenlight to break into the fastest-growing format in streaming media.

This bonus episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast features Eli Shell, founder of Sidewise Studios and creator of In-House, a vertical comedy series he wrote, funded, and launched entirely on his own. The vertical video market is almost entirely dominated by high-melodrama romantic drama and Eli saw that as a gap, not a template. In-House is a workplace comedy shot in vertical format, built on a...

10 billion views. 200+ episodes. A Random House deal and a streamer announcement incoming. Toonstar built it all without asking anyone's permission.

Welcome to this episode of The Media Odyssey Podcast with hosts Marion Ranchet and Evan Shapiro featuring John Attanasio and Luisa Huang, co-founders of Toonstar, a next-generation animation studio built from the ground up to produce kids' and family content at the speed of the internet. Veterans of the Warner Bros. who got an early front-row seat to the rise of YouTube and the creator economy, John and Luisa are tacking a simple but...

Pure play digital is now capturing 75% of every US ad dollar and 60% of that goes to just three companies. What's left for everyone else?

This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast brings in Mike Shields, founder of the Next in Media newsletter and podcast and one of the sharpest voices in streaming media and advertising analysis working today. Recorded during Upfront week, this snapshot of the advertising ecosystem addresses who's winning, who's losing, and whether traditional media advertising still has a viable path forward in the era of accelerating cord-cutting and big tech dominance.<...

What if fans could own a piece of the films they love and get paid when they hit? One company is making it happen, and Hollywood gatekeepers are not invited.

Welcome to The Media Odyssey podcast featuring Marc Iserlis, Head of Film at Republic, a platform built one simple but radical idea: fans should be able to invest in the films and studios they care about. Evan and Marion have spent the season exploring what they call the "affinity economy," and in a streaming media landscape where independent voices are increasingly squeezed out, Marc's...

Five companies just committed $725 billion to AI in a single year. Meanwhile, kids content is in freefall and the people who can least afford it are paying the price.

Welcome to the Media Odyssey Podcast! Evan, fresh off a surprise Webby Award win for Best Creator Thought Leadership, breaks down Q1 earnings from the five biggest tech companies (Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple) and the AI Loop. Big tech’s collective $725 billion AI spending commitment is less a sign of innovation than a circular, self-reinforcing economy with dot-com bubble written all over it. Ma...

What if the future of entertainment fits in your pocket and a six-year-old startup from Ukraine is already building it?

Welcome to the Media Odyssey Podcast, recorded live at StreamTV Europe, featuring Bogdan Nesvit, founder of HOLYWATER TECH and the microdrama platform My Drama. What started six years ago as an interactive fiction app has quietly evolved into one of the most data-sophisticated entertainment companies operating today. One that is now partnering with Fox Entertainment and eyeing a full theatrical release.

If you've ever wondered how a media startup goes from zero to 7 million monthly...

Europe’s media industry leaders gathered in Lisbon this past week for the inaugural Stream TV Europe, and the prognosis is—to everyone’s surprise—refreshingly optimistic. Welcome to The Media Odyssey podcast!

In this episode, Evan and Marion break down the biggest moments from Stream TV including: the "renaissance" of the living room and the shift in digital strategy by global players. They are later joined by Denis Oštir to discuss V’s ambitious new V Index, a unified measurement tool designed to bridge the gap between traditional broadcast and digital streaming.

1. The...

You have six subscriptions, can't remember what's on any of them, and still can't find something to watch. Welcome to the subscription economy in 2026.

Get the full Subscription Signals 2026 report here: https://bango.com/reports/reserve-report/?utm_campaign=2026_Campaigns_SubscriberReport_ReserveReportMO

In this episode, Evan and Marion dig into Bango's Subscription Signals 2026 report: an annual study of subscription attitudes and behaviors across the US and UK. Then they are joined by Giles Tongue, VP of Marketing at Bango, to break down the findings. 

Bango i...

He helped create the most listened-to podcasts in history and then walked away from the New York Times to start over from scratch. Welcome to The Media Odyssey Podcast!

In this episode, Evan and Marion sit down with Brian Reed, documentary podcaster and co-founder of Placement Theory, whose career spans documentary podcasts This American Life, S-Town, and now Question Everything. 

The conversation traces the origin story of Serial, which was expected to get a few hundred thousand downloads and ended up with hundreds of millions, all the way through to Brian's decision to l...

AI can't replace your editors, but it can do 80% of their most tedious, repetitive work in a fraction of the time. Welcome to The Media Odyssey Podcast!

In this episode, Evan and Marion open with the news that OpenAI is shutting down Sora's B2C offering, unpacking what it signals for the AI and media landscape. They welcome Olivier Reynaud, Co-founder and CEO at Aive, a platform Aive built around the central challenge facing every creator and media company today: how do you produce enough high-quality, platform-tailored video content to keep pace with the...

244 million followers and a six-month content calendar: Jordan Schwarzenberger explains why showing up daily is the only strategy that matters. Welcome to The Media Odyssey Podcast!

In this episode, Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet break down the Nielsen/MRC measurement crisis that rocked the US advertising industry, then sit down with Jordan Schwarzenberger, CEO and co-founder of Arcade Media and manager of the Sidemen. The conversation reveals how the entire US advertising market transacted on flawed data for a year, while simultaneously showing how creator-led media companies are building sustainable businesses by thinking like traditional media. Rather...

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Paramount's $110B acquisition projects impossible growth, while Tubi data shows 80% canceling paid services. Welcome to The Media Odyssey Podcast presented by The Stream by Tubi!

In this episode, Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet dissect two reports: the Paramount investor deck projecting their Warner Brothers Discovery acquisition, and Tubi's "The Stream" report on consumer streaming...

Versant spins out with $2B free cash flow, ITV faces Sky acquisition, Banijay grows experiential 18%, and Canal+ hits 42.3M subscribers. Welcome to The Media Odyssey Podcast live!

In this earnings coverage episode, Marion Ranchet and Evan Shapiro break down results from four companies undergoing major transformations: Versant's spinout from Comcast, ITV's potential acquisition by Sky/Comcast, Banijay's post-Endemol Shine merger performance, and Canal+'s global expansion strategy. The conversation reveals the challenges traditional media companies face as cable declines, the strategic missteps in corporate separations, and how European companies are diversifying revenue streams to...

Archive content finds new life on YouTube while broadcast TV is officially "a blip in history." Welcome to The Media Odyssey Podcast live from MIP London!

In this special live episode from MIP London, Evan Shapiro sits down with Martin Trickey, who runs Zoo 55, ITV Studios' digital distribution arm that launched just over a year ago. The conversation reveals how traditional broadcasters are finally waking up to the massive untapped value in their archives, how YouTube is television for older demographics as well as younger people, and why the broadcast era was just a...

Netflix backs out of the bid for Warner Bros. Discovery (aka “Disco Bros”), leaving Paramount Global — sorry, “Nepomount” — as the likely merger partner. Welcome to another live earnings edition of The Media Odyssey.

In this episode, Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet break down the bombshell developments between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount. Is this smart consolidation… or a true “Titanic meets the iceberg” moment?

Key Takeaways:

1. Netflix Walks Away — Political Pressure?

The timing raises eyebrows: Ted Sarandos’ White House visit came just days before Netflix exited the bid. Was there political pressure? Possibly. Re...