Former Amazon Studios FAST exec, former Variety VIP+ senior analyst.
Media Strategy
A 6-year-old reports a cursed Labubu at after school the way you'd report rain. 481.6 million Netflix streams, two Oscars, and WrestleMania's third-best merch seller confirm it. Gen Alpha voted for demons, hauntings, and curses — across five categories. The industry hasn't caught up.
Media Strategy
The startup behind Carousel on what a 148% engagement jump really means — and where this goes next.
The Attention Economy Series
Gen Z didn't kill television. The misunderstanding worth correcting is thinking television is something legacy media still owns. It isn't. The audience switched networks ten years ago. Only the operators who accept it will program the next decade.
The Attention Economy Series
Better app. Better FAST. Better content. Three foundational delusions are still costing legacy media billions of dollars and years of strategic time. All three lost their argument. None has died.
![AI Turned a FAST Library Into TV. Engagement Rose 148% [EXCLUSIVE]](https://storage.ghost.io/c/61/ae/61aea785-b063-49f6-8399-6c21ea00ff18/content/images/size/w600/2026/05/Gemini_Generated_Image_82daxq82daxq82da.jpg)
FASTMaster on FAST
FAST operators can license content cheaply. They've never been able to afford the connective tissue — hosted segments, curated intros, countdowns — that turns a playlist into a channel. Carousel changes the denominator. Love TV Channels' 148% engagement growth is the proof.
The Attention Economy Series
A broadcast network was never just a distribution channel — it was a gatekeeping apparatus. The Control Layer's gatekeeping function has migrated to two new classes of operators. Neither one works for legacy media.
Media Strategy
The distribution layer of modern television is controlled by two companies headquartered in Mountain View and Los Angeles. Neither sends a representative to the Television Academy gala. The data is unambiguous. The industry just refuses to state it plainly.
The Attention Economy Series
Continuous. Lean-back. Zero-click. Programmed-by-someone-else. Those are the four traits that defined linear television in 1995 — and the four traits the YouTube CTV home delivers in 2026. The cable box was never the product. The couch was.
The Attention Economy Series
YouTube now takes more US television viewing than Netflix. Viewers stream over 1 billion hours of YouTube on connected TVs every day. The audience didn't leave the lean-back ritual — they handed it to algorithms legacy media doesn't program.
The Grey Rhino Files
Streaming AI search has two surfaces, not one. Inside-app handles retention. Inside-LLM handles acquisition. They cover different moments in the discovery funnel and they are not substitutes.
The Grey Rhino Files
Proprietary recommendation was the moat. It isn't anymore. Discovery happens on TikTok, Letterboxd, and inside ChatGPT — and the metadata work to compete there is sitting unused.
FASTMaster on FAST
FAST is stuck in a Nimby spiral: everyone wants change, nobody wants to be the catalyst. This month's US FAST update breaks down the channel bloat, the rise of OEM and vMVPD-branded O&Os, and a new 20-minute FASTMaster Intelligence keynote on the problems no one will say out loud.