Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
6 min read • Published March 24, 2026
FADE IN:
Every Thanksgiving, Hollywood pretends to slow down.
Executives “step away,” inboxes auto-reply, and everyone likes to believe they’re about to spend four uninterrupted days thinking very deeply about gratitude instead of the year’s remaining greenlights and headcount targets.
Then the trades drop a Friday afternoon bombshell, a streamer leaks a sizzle reel, or a studio quietly updates its FYC page, and suddenly the entire industry is doomscrolling from their grandmother’s couch.
If there’s a theme to this week, it’s that nothing in entertainment ever really pauses. Not the rights battles.
Not the tax incentives. Not the slow-burn anxiety that generative AI is about to rebuild the business at a structural level. Probably not even the box office for Wicked: For Good, despite tepid reviews and proof you can’t spell “junket” without junk.
You can put the turkey in the oven, but the future doesn’t take holidays.
So here’s what actually matters right now. Consider it your Thanksgiving briefing. No sentimentality. No corny metaphors about harvests or feasts.
Just the stories shaping the business while everyone else is pretending to be offline. If you can, enjoy that turkey and binge-watch the final season of Stranger Things – and if you’ve got a gig, be thankful. If you’re looking, well, we’ve got your back.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Matt Charney
Executive Editor, Mediabistro
LEAD STORY
Platform Wars Go Prime Time: Netflix and NBC Smash Baseball’s Old Guard
Yes, we know. Thanksgiving is all about football, but when it comes to media, America’s most popular sport might no longer be its most lucrative.
The streaming wars finally reached America’s pastime (Go Dodgers), and the fallout is bigger than a blown call in October or the Guardians’ betting scandal. If you thought Thursday Night Football was as big as the streamers would spend on broadcast rights, think again.
Major League Baseball has finalized explosive media deals through 2028 that redraw the entire map of live sports distribution. Yes, baseball.
Of course, with one of the best World Series ever watched by an estimated 51M viewers – the most since 1992, when the existential threat to the networks was basic cable and the launch of Fox – this seems like an obvious home run for the networks.
Netflix enters live sports with Opening Day exclusives and the Home Run Derby.
NBC rips Sunday Night Baseball from ESPN after 35 years.
ESPN, in a surprising twist, lands what may be the most valuable asset: exclusive rights to distribute MLB.TV, the out-of-market streaming service that clocked 19.4 billion minutes watched in 2025.
It’s the clearest signal yet that if entertainment wants reliable, global, live audiences, they’re going to have to buy them the old-fashioned way. With a fat check for the rights to event viewing.
Back To Cali: $750M in Tax Credits Fuels a Production Repatriation Wave
While everyone else is arguing about stuffing versus dressing, California is busy launching the most aggressive production incentive play in its history. Last week, we discussed the decline in production that has cost tens of thousands of jobs and one of its primary economic engines – consider that in 2024, Ukraine actually had more major productions filmed there than the Valley (speaking of war zones).
It’s still early, but it already looks like the kind of tentpole project that studios dream about. Since the incentive went into effect July 1, the numbers so far show that this is one development we’re happy to see stuck in turnaround (a little screenwriter humor).
Consider:
Fifty-two film projects were announced in October alone
More than $1.4 billion in economic activity has been generated.
133,000 entertainment industry jobs have been created or saved.
Most importantly, the Baywatch reboot announced it was moving from Maui back to Malibu. Nice.
It’s the most assertive statement Sacramento has made in a decade: the runaway production era is over, and the state wants its industry back. West Coast for life.
Fix It In Post: AI Moves from Hype to Infrastructure in VFX
A new McKinsey report quietly dropped a truth that’s been obvious to anyone walking through a studio lot recently. Generative AI isn’t something that’s “coming.” It’s something that’s already baked into the foundation of the business, and as ubiquitous in the entertainment industry today as craft services or call sheets.
The report, which is totally worth reading, projects 80 to 90 percent efficiency gains in VFX and 3D asset creation. That’s not incremental. That’s a collapse of production timelines. It’s directors A/B-testing shots before a single crew call. It’s indie producers hitting studio-level polish without studio-level budgets.
The question now isn’t whether AI transforms content creation. It’s whether the industry can absorb the shock without cracking. Guilds are drawing lines in the sand, and studios are staring down lawsuits over dataset origins.
Fresh opportunities across entertainment, media, and production. Even during a holiday week, hiring doesn’t hit pause. And neither do the job postings on Mediabistro. Here are some hot jobs worth checking out:
Tuesday 11/25: Netflix rumored to tease another live sports deal
Wednesday 11/26: Early box office enters tracking; Zootopia 2 expected to win long weekend
Thursday 11/27: Thanksgiving; Post Malone to play halftime show of Chiefs-Cowboys game
Friday 11/28: Back to Hawkins for the final season of Stranger Things as Black Friday streaming surge begins and awards contenders jockey for position; favorite Hamnet hits streamers
What gives me something like optimism, even in a business that treats optimism like a scheduling conflict, is that moments like this force the industry to stop coasting.
Hollywood has always done its best work when it’s slightly uncomfortable. Streaming didn’t happen because studios felt inspired. It happened because DVDs collapsed. Peak TV didn’t emerge from a vision deck. It came from networks realizing they were losing cultural relevance.
If you strip away the noise, what’s happening right now feels less like decline and more like recalibration. Production is coming back home because the state finally stopped pretending runaway shoots were temporary.
Streamers are rediscovering the value of broad audiences instead of chasing niche subscription spikes. And AI, for all its legal and ethical headaches, is putting craft back into the hands of people who’ve spent years racing impossible deadlines. It doesn’t replace creativity. It buys time for it.
That’s not naive optimism. It’s pattern recognition. Every time the industry resets, new voices get in. New formats break through. New careers start. Thanksgiving is supposed to be a moment to acknowledge what’s working, and for all the chaos, a surprising amount actually is.
Celeste Mitchell is an editorial writer and editor with nearly 30 years of experience creating consumer lifestyle content for publications including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and SELF. She previously served as Deputy Editor at Cosmopolitan and taught journalism courses through Mediabistro.
4 min read • Originally published June 6, 2015 / Updated March 24, 2026
Celeste Mitchell is an editorial writer and editor with nearly 30 years of experience creating consumer lifestyle content for publications including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and SELF. She previously served as Deputy Editor at Cosmopolitan and taught journalism courses through Mediabistro.
4 min read • Originally published June 6, 2015 / Updated March 24, 2026
Editor’s note: This article features advice from Anne Russell, who at the time of our original interview was editor-in-chief of Shape magazine. Russell has since added to an already impressive resume, including a stint as editor-in-chief of VIV magazine. She continues to work today as a writer, editor, and content creator in Los Angeles, where she has been president of Extra Special Media since 2013. Her advice holds up as well as ever.
Here’s one we hear all the time: “I want to pitch to magazines and newspapers, but I don’t have any clips. No one will give me an assignment without clips, but how will I get a clip until I have an assignment?”
That’s an excellent question — but, you’ll be surprised to hear, the dilemma isn’t as intractable as it seems. We checked in with Anne Russell, former editor-in-chief of Shape magazine and president of Extra Special Media, who gives these suggestions.
Start small
Start with something doable. Concentrate on pitching to publications that actually accept work from writers without clips — and they do exist. Small publications are often willing to take a chance on first-timers, so try newsletters and local newspapers and magazines.
Write for freebie newspapers and magazines, which have small budgets and are therefore always eager for unpaid contributors. Insist on choosing a topic yourself. This is your golden opportunity to generate a sample that demonstrates your ability to write about a certain subject. Editors will focus on the quality of your work rather than the publication it appeared in. Branded content outlets and content marketing publications are also worth considering — companies are always looking for contributors, and those clips are increasingly recognized by editors as legitimate samples of your work.
Deal with daily sites
You can often drum up quick clips writing for websites that have daily needs for fresh content. The caliber of the provider can matter, so shoot for reputable and recognizable sites that can give you a brand-name writing sample. But something’s better than nothing, so write for any pub that’ll have you.
The same logic applies to newsletters. Substack and similar platforms have become legitimate publishing venues, and a byline in a well-read newsletter can be just as useful as a traditional website clip. It also helps to build a writer’s website where you can house everything in one place.
Just make sure your final, edited article is free of typos and misspellings. A writing sample with mistakes will not work in your favor — even if you aren’t responsible for them.
Pitch with references
When you send a pitch without clips — or with only byline-less clips — consider attaching a list of references. Compile the names of editors or former colleagues who have supervised your work (even if it wasn’t writing work you did for them) and include their contact information.
Two to three people will suffice; more than four is overkill. Just make sure that these references are actually prepared to vouch for you — a bunch of names might seem impressive, but the editor will call and a fake reference will be found out.
Play up your focus fields
Forget that you don’t have much journalism experience; you probably have stellar credentials in other fields. Don’t underestimate the value of your own expertise. Are you a dentist? A history buff? Do you have a hobby you’ve perfected? Focus your efforts on publications that cover your area of expertise. Here’s how to position yourself as a subject-matter expert that editors actually want to hear from.
In your letter, play up your specialized knowledge, not your writing skills. Take full advantage of anything and everything you have going for you.
Pitch the unique, interview the evasive
Pitch story ideas that only you can do. Spend some time hunting down an unusual idea that you are uniquely qualified to cover. Or, better still, nail an interview with someone who is known for being elusive.
The goal is to present an opportunity to an editor that she cannot refuse, and this is what will give you the edge against all those other people who have clips. Remember that more than anything else, editors are hungry for new and different stories.
Sell with your pitch letter
Demonstrate quality writing in your pitch letter — it’s a written document, after all, and it should prove your ability to communicate ideas and concepts. Without clips, the prose in your pitch letter assumes greater significance. Here’s a breakdown of the elements that make a pitch letter work.
Opt for op-eds
Write a personal essay or an opinion piece. Of course, an editor won’t assign a first-person piece like this based on a query letter, so you have to do the work first before you can shop it around. Your advantage here is that the writing speaks for itself. Before you submit, make sure you’re not making one of these common personal essay mistakes.
Resist the urge
And, finally, remember: When you don’t have samples of non-fiction writing, it’s tempting to send an editor samples of other types of writing you have done, such as poetry, a song or a screenplay. Resist this temptation. These things don’t show you have a command of journalism — and they just might freak out the editor.
Celeste Mitchell is an editorial writer and editor with nearly 30 years of experience creating consumer lifestyle content for publications including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and SELF. She previously served as Deputy Editor at Cosmopolitan and taught journalism courses through Mediabistro.
6 min read • Originally published February 8, 2016 / Updated March 24, 2026
Celeste Mitchell is an editorial writer and editor with nearly 30 years of experience creating consumer lifestyle content for publications including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and SELF. She previously served as Deputy Editor at Cosmopolitan and taught journalism courses through Mediabistro.
6 min read • Originally published February 8, 2016 / Updated March 24, 2026
Updated March 24, 2026
We’re always getting questions about what certain obscure (or sometimes not-so-obscure) publishing terms mean. To help, we’re rolling out Mediabistro’s media glossary.
So, freelancers and media-job-seekers: Bookmark this bad boy and hit it up whenever you’re asking yourself, “What the heck is a nut graf?!”
All-rights contract: A legal contract between a publisher and a freelance writer which grants all rights to the completed work to the publisher. This is not so good for the writer. Before signing anything, it’s worth knowing the key terms in any freelance contract.
Beat: A subject or industry that a reporter (or editor) is responsible for covering. Also how you’ll generally feel after a long close night.
Book: Industry slang for a magazine. As in, “I’ve got a piece in the book this month.” Using it correctly is a reliable way to signal you know what you’re doing.
Clips: Your published writing samples, the currency of the freelance world. No clips, no assignments; good clips, better assignments. Simple math. If you’re just starting out, here’s how to build your portfolio from scratch.
Close: The night (or nights, at a monthly, bimonthly or quarterly) when pages are finally being finished off and sent to the printing plant. During a close, mag-world people have no life.
Credit line: A list of photographers, illustrators or stylists appearing in small type on the page. It’s like a byline, but for art people, and for no good reason, much smaller.
Deadline: When your assignment is due. Ignore them and they’ll stop being a problem, because you won’t get any more work.
Dek: A sentence or few sentences below a headline, a dek summarizes the article. Like many magazine-production terms, it’s intentionally misspelled (instead of “deck”) so that others involved in the process won’t accidentally think it’s real copy.
Display type: Heds, deks, pull quotes and other written material that’s printed in a larger font or different color from the main body copy, to help draw a reader’s attention.
Embargo: An agreement that information provided early (by a PR firm, company, or government agency) won’t be published until a specified date and time. Breaking an embargo is how you stop getting early information.
Evergreen: An article that has no news peg and thus can be published at any time of the year or repeatedly, year after year. A “glossary” column, for example, is an evergreen.
File: As a verb, when a writer submits a completed assignment to an editor. As a noun, the material submitted.
First North American Serial Rights (FNASR): The standard rights most magazines want to purchase: the right to publish your piece first, in North America, in print or digital. After that, the rights revert to you. Much better than an all-rights contract.
Galley (or galley proof): An early typeset version of a story sent for proofreading before it goes to print. If you’ve ever caught a typo in a final magazine, someone wasn’t reading their galleys.
Graf: A paragraph, once again intentionally misspelled.
Hed: An article’s headline, sometimes intentionally misspelled. Writing a great one is harder than it looks. These headline tips can help.
Independent contractor: Most freelancers are considered independent contractors, which means the publication doesn’t take legal responsibility for the employee, deducting taxes and so forth. Generally, but not always, an independent contractor doesn’t receive benefits. If you’re navigating the freelance life, here are 7 ways to be a more productive freelance writer.
Kicker: The final paragraph or sentence of a story, usually designed to be funny or wry or somehow end things with a bang.
Kill fee: Payment to a writer whose piece won’t be published. It’s usually a percentage of the agreed-upon piece fee, but sometimes it’s a flat rate.
Lede: The intentional misspelling of “lead,” it’s the opening to an article.
Masthead: The official list of names and job titles of those responsible for producing a publication: editors, writers, designers, art directors, sales representatives, publishers, lawyers and support staff. It usually runs someplace in the first few pages of a magazine, but it’s not always there, which is frustrating.
Multiple submission: Pitching the same story idea to several publications simultaneously.
Nut graf: Also sometimes known as trumpet or billboard graf, it comes right after the catchy lede and clearly lays out the thrust of the article. It’s like the thesis statement in a term paper. Here’s what else makes a good magazine story.
Off the record: Information provided by a source that cannot be used in print. It can, however, be used (without revealing the source) to coax information from another source, and sometimes people can be persuaded to put previously off-the-record information on the record. Not-for-attribution information, by contrast, may be used in print but without the source’s name attached. In general practice, information cannot be placed off the record retroactively.
On background: A step above off the record. Information provided on background can be published, but the source can’t be named or identified in any traceable way. Distinct from not for attribution, which is essentially the same thing with slightly looser conventions depending on who you ask.
Pay on acceptance: A policy under which the publisher pays the writer when the assigned article is completed and accepted by the editor. We like to be paid on acceptance.
Pay on publication: A policy under which the publisher pays the writer when (or soon after) the article appears in print. We like this less.
Pull quote: A compelling and provocative quote from a source that is “pulled” from the running text of an article and featured as display type.
Query, also called a pitch letter: A letter from a freelance writer to an assigning editor that describes a story idea. A query is also the term for a request from an article’s editor for more information to flesh out the piece. It can also be used as a verb. Inexplicably, some pronounce the word qwee-ree while others pronounce it qweh-ree. Not sure how to reach editors in the first place? Here’s advice on how freelancers can connect with editors.
Roundup: A story format that collects multiple examples, sources, or products on a single topic. Easy to pitch, easy to sell, and often evergreen.
Running text: The main text of an article or in a package, as distinct from sidebars, charts and so forth. Also sometimes called the main bar.
Service: A type of writing that offers advice and useful information. Also called a how-to.
Sidebar: Text or a chart that is separated from the main bar and highlights additional information about a story.
Slug: The short internal identifier given to a story during production. Has nothing to do with the slimy garden variety.
Spike: When an editor kills a story before assigning it a kill fee, meaning you did the work and got nothing. Not to be confused with a kill fee, which at least acknowledges your pain.
Stet: An editor’s indication on a manuscript that previously crossed-out text should be reinstated.
TK: A place marker used in drafts of an article to indicate missing information. It’s an intentional misspelling of “TC,” for “to come,” as in “more info to come.”
Work for hire: Like an all-rights contract, but baked into the job itself rather than negotiated per piece. If you’re a staffer, everything you write is probably work for hire whether you know it or not.
Jenell Talley is a journalist and program analyst with a background spanning media, government, and editorial work. She holds a journalism degree from Howard University and a master's in human resources management from the University of Maryland.
3 min read • Originally published May 3, 2016 / Updated March 24, 2026
Jenell Talley is a journalist and program analyst with a background spanning media, government, and editorial work. She holds a journalism degree from Howard University and a master's in human resources management from the University of Maryland.
3 min read • Originally published May 3, 2016 / Updated March 24, 2026
Lots of companies have a business development director, including yours. And there are business development director openings on the job board. Yet you’re not sure what the position entails or if it’s the right job or ambition for you. Well, wonder no more.
We asked a couple of business development directors to tell you all about the job. Check out what they had to say, and consider taking a chance on a profession that’s all about creating opportunity.
What exactly does a business development director do?
Whether the job is in television, tech, or digital media, a business development director is responsible for driving a company’s growth and increasing its revenue, identifying and developing new business opportunities, and building and expanding the presence of the company and its brands.
The role also involves leading sales and client-relationship management, tracking new markets and emerging trends, recommending new products and services, proposing and developing new strategic partnerships, writing proposals and plans, and guiding long-term objectives to meet business needs and requirements.
“It’s an all-encompassing role,” says Sajeel Qureshi, VP of business development at Computan, a marketing support organization with offices in Canada and the United States. Qureshi manages a sales team, oversees marketing campaigns to generate leads, earns media placement to position the company as an expert in its discipline, and allocates and manages the sponsorship and pro-bono budgets.
What skills do you need?
Persistence, knowledge of the product or service you’re selling, and communication skills are essential — and all equally important, says Tim Drudge, brand and business development manager at St. Vincent Sports Performance in Indiana. “Without one of those skills, the others fail.”
Qureshi emphasizes the importance of communication skills in particular. A business development director is one of the first points of contact someone has with the company, so it’s vitally important to be able to explain what the company does and how it can help in simple, digestible terms — whether in person or via email.
You should also understand how to use technology to stay ahead of competitors. Knowing what software and automation platforms are available in your industry — and picking the ones that best fit your organization — is a must.
Who is a business development director’s boss?
This depends on the size of a company and its setup, though most business development directors report to a vice president or to the owners.
What do you need to get ahead in this position?
People skills. That means effectively communicating with customers and building real relationships. Verbal communication is a lost art, says Drudge. “Not only does it lead to clear expectations, but it builds a longstanding relationship — and revenue — that can be counted upon year after year.”
Strong networking skills matter just as much. The ability to connect with new contacts, stay top of mind with clients, and open doors through relationships is what separates good business development professionals from great ones.
How can you break into this field?
The career ladder to this position usually starts with an entry-level job in sales or marketing. You don’t need a degree in a specific area before starting your climb, says Drudge, so long as you have top-notch people skills and a genuine passion for the products and services you’ll be selling.
It also helps to keep your LinkedIn profile sharp and stay visible in your industry. Business development is a relationship-driven field, and the connections you build early in your career are often the ones that open the biggest doors later on.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
17 min read • Originally published February 12, 2026 / Updated March 24, 2026
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
17 min read • Originally published February 12, 2026 / Updated March 24, 2026
This week, the Super Bowl ended with the Seahawks dominating the Patriots, but the real story, as always, had nothing to do with the action on the field.
That’s because the Super Bowl is more than a sporting event – it’s a cultural touchstone, a uniquely American spectacle (even when the halftime show is in Spanish, it’s somehow more mutually intelligible with English than Bawitdaba or the seminal Po Dunk).
It’s also the last true appointment viewing event in American media, the kind of shared cultural moment that disappeared along with the MASH finale, the ‘Who Shot JR’ cliffhanger on Dallas, or Liza Minnelli appearing on any daytime talk show.
For comparison, only about 8 million people globally have watched Oscar frontrunner Marty Supreme (about 7 million more than Melania); the most recent White Lotus season captured the Zeitgeist, but only around 6 million viewers to date; or 2025 Best Musical Tony winner Maybe Happy Ending, which has sold just over half a million tickets since its debut in 2016.
That sort of viewership is why the Super Bowl remains an unprecedented media and advertising machine, with companies shelling out an eye-watering $8 million for a single 30-second spot, with some ads selling for as much as $10 million. That’s basically like throwing the equivalent of the annual GDP of a developing nation towards a crypto commercial with a questionable celebrity cameo, or the entire average budget of an A24 release on a single spot.
Is it worth it? Well, the Super Bowl drives the one mass audience moment remaining in American media, and brands are willing to pay exorbitant fees for that concentrated attention, even though ads are optimized for word of mouth and brand awareness – not direct sales impact.
Break-even analysis shows that to justify spending, Super Bowl advertisers require tens of millions in incremental revenue before generating any revenue from their spend, and tens of millions more to justify the resulting ROI. And yet, ad space sells out months in advance, with demand (and pricing) soaring every year.
The stupid money generated by the biggest of Big Games is great news for anyone working in the media industry, too, with thousands of jobs created around the periphery of this multi-ring circus – the game is a reliable boon for roles ranging from production crews to live technicians and post production editors to event marketers, media planners, account teams, and more.
A recent study by a Bay Area think tank (hella) estimated that the most recent Super Bowl would create over 5,000 local jobs, plus an additional 15,000 roles from increased demand in tourism, logistics, and event support.
These numbers are a bit misleading; the overwhelming majority of these roles are obviously temporary, gig, or contract work that’s both inherently seasonal and highly unstable. Even then, the competition is fierce.
The people you see working the game are not “the lucky few.” They’re actually the survivors of a brutally competitive labor market that chews up ambition while restricting opportunities.
For the 60 jobs created for local youth through the Juma program in partnership with the Super Bowl, thousands of applicants competed for roles with an average pay of around $18.70 an hour; staying above the poverty line in the Bay Area, by contrast, requires at least $27/hr minimum hourly wage.
But this low pay, extreme competition for a handful of unstable opportunities, isn’t just reserved for the big events like the Super Bowl – it’s endemic throughout the multi-billion-dollar economic driver that is the sports industry.
That’s why this week, we’re taking a closer look at sports-related careers and job trends. We’ll look at what the numbers say, where hiring is actually happening, and what the future holds for jobs in the sports media and industry.
Super Bowl LX didn’t just deliver TV ratings; it underscored how many people you need behind the scenes to deliver that spectacle.
From sideline reporters flying between franchises to influencers-turned-broadcast contributors, the industry’s talent pipeline extends far beyond the field.
But before we dive into our deep dive into careers in sports, let’s take a look at the week’s biggest stories, and break down what the headlines really mean for industry professionals and media careers.
1. The Labor Economics of the Super Bowl
The Super Bowl isn’t just a football game; it’s a content factory, with everyone from podcasters, producers, and technical crews to sportswriters, broadcasters, and on-site coordinators creating the engine driving a week’s worth of multi-platform coverage that generates more eyeballs than any other entertainment event of the year.
In just the last few years, credentialed media covering the show has skyrocketed – the NFL now includes social, streaming, and even influencers in the accredited press pool of almost 6500 media professionals, compared to only 2400 in 2021.
Under license from Creative Commons, God and the USA
Additionally, networks, newsrooms, and digital platforms add an estimated 4,800-5,000 roles each year to simply meet demand from viewers, visitors, and voyeurs. And that’s not even including the cast of thousands backing halftime performer Bad Bunny – or the 3 temporary PAs responsible for the Kid Rock-led “alternative” halftime debacle.
That show was for the questions that don’t have any answers, the midnight glancers, and the topless dancers (and whoever Lee Brice is).
While you probably hadn’t heard of any of the performers at the Turning Point halftime extravaganza unless you’re a big fan of American Idol deep cuts, chances are you’ve heard of one of the army of YouTube stars the NFL enlisted to cover the big game.
From Mr. Beast to Haylie Kalil (who’s probably hoping to avoid a hung jury in her impending libel case – boom), the league turned to exclusive streaming partner YouTube in a deliberate attempt to court a younger audience of viewers.
While those elusive Gen Z viewers probably have no idea what the hell that Good Will Dunkin’ ad was referencing, nor who Ben Affleck or Jennifer Aniston are (lucky them), they’re also not turning grown men giving each other CTE into event viewing – a cause for concern for a league that’s trying to soften its image as a blood sport controlled by really rich, old, stodgy white dudes. Look no further than the GOP to see how that perception resonates with the younger generation.
YouTube’s Super Bowl LX blitz included a full roster of content produced in partnership with the NFL, Google and capitalist pawns (er, creators), including an influencer flag football game, stand ups from the Levi Stadium field and access normally reserved for traditional media, such as interview opportunities with players and coaches, who no doubt were happy to trade Al Michaels for Kay Adams for their locker room sound bites.
This resulted in non-traditional coverage and behind-the-scenes access to live moments that most traditional sports media wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. It’s an experiment that leans hard into the NFL embracing influencers as distribution and branding partners, rather than just those crazy kids from the interwebs who would have never before been considered for credentials.
The “sports reporter” job used to be about wire copy and beat notes; today, the business is aggressively pivoting toward creator economics, where audiences follow personalities and develop parasocial relationships with individual influencers rather than with networks or mainstream media outlets.
That means opportunities for anyone who can build an engaged online audience, produce compelling short-form content, and game the algorithm for relevance and reach. Sports leagues and broadcast rights holders (like Google) are increasingly outsourcing more of their media strategy to creators with built-in fan bases and millions of followers.
This growing push towards non-traditional content isn’t a one-off; it’s proof that you can build a viable career by leveraging social media skills and making sports feel relevant to non-traditional audiences and younger viewers. Talking heads on TV will always have a place in sports media, but the playing field continues to widen – as do the opportunities for savvy sports streamers.
3. The Economics of Advertising
Love it or hate it, advertising drives the economic engine, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue for sports media. The Super Bowl is the closest thing the US has to a monoculture moment (Incluso cuando Bad Bunny canta en español, es un crack) – and brands are paying 8 to 10 million dollars for half a minute of airtime because it’s really the only legacy brand left capable of consistently capturing an otherwise fragmented audience.
That’s some expensive paid media, but it’s more than big companies burning brand marketing budgets. Those spots represent entire payrolls, teams of strategists, media buyers, creatives, data scientists, production crews, and agency account leads whose entire year can hinge on how they rank on the USA Today Ad Meter. Of course, the on-air ad is only a small part of the all-out blitz that starts months before kick-off.
If they’re buying big for the big game, even the most mundane consumer packaged good will be working for months on integrated campaigns involving teasers, influencer tie-ins, event activation, media planning, brand lift studies, and other really exciting marketing motions.
After the confetti falls, analysts will pore over engagement metrics, sentiment data, conversion signals and Q ratings (among other made-up agency “analytics”) to prove to their clients that they generated ROI on their ten million dollar ad spend, and that it was definitely not a forgettable, regrettable budgetary bonfire.
For anyone in sports media, this one’s pretty obvious. The Super Bowl is more than a big-time broadcast; it’s a marketing machine that generates billions of dollars in brand spend every year.
According to Nielsen, live sports are one of the only formats that consistently reach millions of viewers in real time – a big reason why ad dollars keep going up, even as linear television goes down for the count. That sustained demand fuels what jobs in creative direction, performance marketing, audience analytics, and media buying, among other disappearing disciplines.
Many aspiring sports media professionals approach their nascent careers like fans; they should remember that, in this industry, the real action is never on the field. It’s in the boardrooms and war rooms where brands decide how and where to allocate that 8-figure ad spend. If you can turn thirty seconds into sustained relevance, well, you’ve probably got a pretty promising career ahead of you (or a really killer sex tape).
4. Do the Rights Thing
Sports media is about more than highlight reels and hot takes; the entire industry is funded primarily by broadcast rights revenue, not advertising dollars. This week, the increasingly lucrative, increasingly competitive battle for broadcast rights returned to the Worldwide Leader in Sports (and largest media brand in Bristol, CT).
In a heated bidding war, ESPN secured rights to the NFL Network and NFL RedZone, effectively consolidating a significant portion of the league’s image, narrative, and presentation into a single ecosystem controlled by a single corporate conglomerate. Hint: it’s the same one charging like $200 for one-day passes to their mediocre theme parks, ostensibly to recoup this profligate spend through margins on Dole Whips and old-timey paper silhouette making.
This is a pretty big structural issue. When one platform has an effective monopoly on premium properties and associated IP, it not only controls distribution but also how advertising dollars are allocated, how production budgets are set, and how supporting headcount is determined.
The NFL is already the nation’s most valuable media property, dominating the list of most-watched live broadcasts every year (unlike, say, whatever midseason replacement Fox greenlit this time around). With its new deal in place, though, the league is just another billion-dollar brand in the same IP stable as the Marvel Universe, Star Wars, and the Lizzie McGuire franchise.
Consolidation isn’t unique to sports media, and like other sectors of the media industry, it’s effectively an opportunity and a red flag. Larger, vertically integrated platforms require deeper infrastructure – more editors, streaming engineers, analytics specialists, sponsorship strategists, and other mundane, but necessary, high-paying corporate gigs.
Similarly, integrated ecosystems require increased content operations, digital packaging, cross-platform programming, and audience engagement. That means while the machine gets bigger, so too do the job opportunities.
This is obviously a double-edged sword. When rights are concentrated, so too is power; more inventory is controlled by fewer companies, which means fewer decision makers, stakeholders, and, in short order, staff across siloes and specialties.
If you’re in sports media, your career trajectory will be determined as much by proximity to whoever happens to control distribution as by luck, timing, or talent. Better start sucking up to the good folks over at Netflix, or start sending care packages over to the Team Disney Building.
When rights consolidate – and for the NFL and most other major sports, they look to be locked down for the indeterminate future – production centralizes, and jobs become tightly clustered, rather than evenly spread. The question is, are you positioned inside that cluster, or do you live outside of the friendly confines of the Nutmeg State?
This brings us to the part no one likes to say out loud: if you want a career in sports but don’t have the athletic skills, you’d better have the pedigree or the connections already in place.
The truth is, this is one industry where getting your foot in the door requires genes more than grit, where who you know is more important than what you know, and networking is the only talent that really matters when building a sustainable career in sports.
But then again, that’s probably true of most industries, too.
The Job Market Reality
Sports media jobs are among the most disproportionately competitive roles in the market, at least relative to total pay and projected growth.
According to BLS data, sports broadcasting, operations, production, and support roles are projected to grow more slowly than general entertainment or media jobs.
The already finite amount of open roles available generally opens only due to periodic attrition, rather than expansion- particularly for full-time roles, making the odds of working in sports almost as infinitesimal as actually playing professionally.
But even if you land a gig, much like an NFL player, there’s no guaranteed money; career longevity is limited to a couple of years on average; and the only way to make the active roster is if someone else gets cut, which rarely happens in off-the-field roles.
MEDIABISTRO SPOTLIGHT
While there aren’t a ton of open jobs in sports media or production, the good news is that the latest openings and hottest jobs from across the industry get posted every day directly on Mediabistro.
So, if you’re looking to break into the business of sports, or just trying to figure out your professional game plan, head on over to Mediabistro.com to check out thousands of new job listings from across the entire media and entertainment landscape, too.
You Don’t Need to Be An Athlete to Work in Sports. Just an expensive degree.
The background of people working professionally in sports, from broadcasting to production to marketing and PR, is relatively consistent, even if their roles are anything but.
An analysis of full-time workers in the sports industry reveals some telling trend lines. Here’s how you score a spot at the career Combine:
Early access. Many professionals in sports started out as unpaid interns (like graduate assistants, in NCAA parlance) or in underpaid seasonal roles, such as event promotions or corporate ticket sales; these jobs generally pay only on commission or are limited to a few weeks or months a year.
According to BLS data, the entry-level salary in the sports industry is a whopping 22k a year (the silver lining is that’s so low it’s completely tax-free). Many professionals enter the industry before completing their education, so these roles are subsidized through college credits, student loans, or, most commonly, family support.
Let’s just say Media Row isn’t exactly crammed with first-generation college grads or people who need to be financially independent in their twenties.
Elite institutions. There are a handful of blue-chip institutions that, because of their proximity to networks and reputations, tend to act as pipelines to the pros. These include top-tier journalism schools like Indiana, Northwestern, Michigan, and Missouri, each of which has a disproportionate number of J-School grads currently employed in sports media.
They also include a handful of highly reputable, top-ranked sports management or sports business programs, such as UT Austin, UMass, Miami, and Rice – schools with prime alumni pipelines and trusted connections with the networks and leagues looking to hire.
Sure, you don’t need a college degree or academic pedigree to succeed in a sports media career, but it’s perhaps the most imperative factor in determining who gets hired for the few coveted openings on the market; referrals dominate hiring in this industry.
Where your degree came from, sadly, often matters more in the sports industry than what your reel looks like or what relevant experience you might have in related roles or industries.
Flexibility Jobs in sports are rare and highly competitive, meaning that talent often can’t afford to stick around in a single market. These roles reward those who can relocate on short notice, who have no expectations for work-life balance, who are open to the grind of constant travel, and who will live in the most expensive media markets for poverty-level pay without blinking.
If you want free time, a family, stability, or disposable income, this probably isn’t the right career for you in the first place.
Talk about trade-offs. So if you don’t check any of the standard sports industry boxes listed above, or are having trouble breaking in or landing a gig, don’t worry.
You’re probably better off doing literally anything else.
The Blind Side of Jobs in Sports
There’s no doubt that for many, sports is a fantasy job – the kind of gig you dream about your entire life. But the thing about fantasy sports is that it’s arbitrary, difficult to keep up with, and almost impossible to win, even with impeccable planning and management. And if you do beat the odds, well, the payoff is mostly pride (with a few bucks thrown in to make it interesting).
That “dream job” discount is real: early-career production assistants, editors, and reporters routinely earn less than their peers in corporate media or branded content roles; this trend continues even for more experienced positions. These roles trade mostly on prestige and passion, not pay.
As mentioned, the hours are brutal, and predictability isn’t an option. Neither is working nights, weekends, holidays, and a ton of overtime, just to keep up.
Unsurprisingly, burnout is common; live events compress stress, deadlines are tight, and public scrutiny is constant, intense, and ubiquitous. One mistake can be broadcast to millions of people, a pressure that’s constantly felt by everyone with credentials.
Stability is non-existent; rights deals shift, networks restructure, and entire production teams or sports departments can disappear when contracts move platforms or content switches to other providers. Freelancing is not a phase- in sports, it’s a structural part of how professionals make ends meet in between full-time gigs, which are mostly anything but.
Additionally, while competition for sports-related media roles is fierce, it’s even more intense for experienced professionals; the ladder narrows quickly, with many entry points leading to very few executive roles.
Advancement slows dramatically after the 3-year mark, according to Nielsen data, and the average sports media career lasts only marginally longer than that, around 4.2 years, according to the same report.
None of this is a secret; it’s just not the reality most professionals looking to break into the industry ever really hear before choosing to make the (somewhat suspect) jump.
WHY PEOPLE STILL DO IT: THE FUTURE OF JOBS IN SPORTS
Here’s the part that nobody puts in the training montage or highlight reel. Sure, there are some glamorous gigs in sports – mostly on-air roles like announcers, sideline reporters, or whoever gets to mop the lane after every NBA possession.
The former athletes with bad blazers and worse hot takes, and the professional broadcasters with great diction and bad toupees are iconic – and they’ll always exist. But the hiring curve isn’t exactly bending upwards for the aspiring Bob Ueckers or Chick Hearns of the world.
The real growth is happening off camera, off the air, and off the field. Every snap on Sunday, every pitch thrown by a journeyman pitcher making fifty million bucks, every hockey faceoff that no one really watches because, you know, it’s hockey – every one of these moments still requires a small army of support staff.
From digital producers to motion designers, from platform strategists to rights lawyers (the worst), from sponsorship analysts to partnership managers (here’s hoping they fired whoever blew the Farmer John’s-Dodger Dog deal), every moment of live drama requires decades of experience and dozens of skilled professionals. The broadcast is what the world sees; the real power and the real job opportunities stay squarely behind the scenes.
Sports is a business. And the bigger it gets, the more opportunities it should create, particularly for non-traditional platforms and creators who have more fans than the New York Jets (and are much happier, too). Sure, if you want a career in sports media, you’ve got to believe a little in the mythology of sports. Just understand that once the final whistle blows and the last piece of popcorn is swept off the concrete, the real work begins.
The business, and the paychecks, happen behind the scenes; people turning raw footage into narrative story arcs and short films, strategists mapping spot ratings and forecasting overnights, and data scientists mining stat lines for better predictions and deeper fan insights – a perpetual cycle that turns with every sports season.
Sure, it’s not nearly as romantic as everybody’s favorite gym teacher kissing everyone’s favorite English teacher after winning the Super Bowl (barf). But it’s also way more stable and far more future-proof, too.
It might be a bit cynical, but the thing is, industries run on infrastructure and scale, not nostalgia and emotional attachment. The future of sports careers has little to do with sports; instead, it belongs to the builders and creatives who understand the games are nothing more than content, a product that has to be distributed as widely and monetized as much as possible.
In other words, the business of sports media is increasingly just like any other business. It might not be glamorous, it isn’t exactly visible, and it’s not exactly stable or financially viable, either.
But for those who are willing to fight for their dream, it might not be easy, but if you build it, your sports career will come.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
4 min read • Published March 24, 2026
Welcome to the first edition of Mediabistro Weekly Drop. I’m Matt Charney, and I’m thrilled to introduce myself as the new Executive Editor of Mediabistro. If you work in media, publishing, production, journalism, design, content, or any other corner of the creative class, we’ve got you covered.
Each week, we’ll cut through the career chaos to bring you real news that actually matters in media – new jobs, industry shifts, emerging trends, and honest commentary you won’t find in a press release.
Our goal is simple: to help you survive, thrive, and stay inspired as a creative professional in an industry that’s changing faster than your inbox can keep up.
The Future Is (Un)scripted: Hollywood Quietly Fires 41,000 While Cloning the Stars Who Remain
AI isn’t coming for Hollywood. It already moved in, took the best parking spot, and edited itself into the credits. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Los Angeles County has lost over 41,000 film and television jobs since 2020. That’s one in four entertainment workers gone. At Creative Artists Agency’s Vault program, A-list actors are paying six figures to 4D scan themselves and preserve their vocal patterns for future licensing. Meanwhile, Amazon’s internal roadmap outlines plans to automate 75 percent of its operations workforce, already cutting thousands from Prime Video and MGM (full story: The Ankler) Google’s Veo 3 can generate 8-second, VFX-quality clips instantly. Netflix is using AI pipelines for projects like El Eternauta. Apple’s partnership with the South Park creators produced a demo of real-time de-aging – no makeup chair needed (full story: LA Times)
A FilmLA executive recently told me that 2025 is tracking worse than 2024, which was already the worst non-COVID year on record – and he expects 2026 to be even worse. Studios aren’t making content anymore; they’re making code. The message is simple: if you can’t outshoot the algorithm, you’d better learn to feed it (full story: Variety)
California Bets $750 Million on a Hollywood That’s Already Gone
California lawmakers have passed a $750 million annual production tax credit package—more than double the prior cap.
The problem? The math doesn’t work. Soundstage occupancy in the Los Angeles area is down to 63 percent. More than 70 percent of productions rejected from the program end up filming elsewhere, often in Georgia, New York, or Canada.
Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra summed it up well: “Even with subsidies, California just doesn’t make sense.”
That’s always been part of its charm, but apparently, not everyone feels that way. FilmLA reports the city lost 1,500 shoot days in the last quarter. That’s not a slowdown. That’s an evacuation (or another WGA strike). Full Breakdown
Silver Linings Playbook: How A UK Production House Is Using AI For Scaling Its Business
“AI didn’t replace our team. It saved it.”
That’s the takeaway from Black Spot Media Group, a London-based production house that turned to the AI-driven content-discovery platform CaraOne to get unstuck from the scramble of legacy workflows.
By adopting CaraOne, which uses natural-language search, emotion/context detection, and asset indexing across deep archive libraries, Black Spot didn’t just speed up its work. They avoided laying off freelancers and instead doubled down on creative expansion.
Founder John Laskas puts it simply: “We haven’t pitched a single job since March that didn’t involve CaraOne … it multiplies the creative power of our team and gives us a real competitive advantage by letting us do things we simply couldn’t do before.”
They were freed from endless footage triage, redundant searches and manual metadata tagging; the AI did the heavy lifting so their team could focus on storytelling, client engagements and new revenue streams.
Takeaway: If your job’s worth doing, it’s worth augmenting. The goal isn’t to compete with the algorithm; it’s to make it handle the tedious so you can work on the meaningful.
Want to be featured in the next Creator Spotlight? Share your story with us -especially if you’re experimenting with AI, building niche audiences, or rewriting what it means to have a career in media. editor@mediabistro.com
And Now: Your Moment of Zen
If you think your week was bad, or you didn’t make nearly enough money to justify all that hard work, try being Sydney Sweeney RN.
Every time the industry automates another function, it promises new efficiencies and new opportunities. But if history is any guide, efficiency in Hollywood rarely benefits the people doing the work. This week’s headlines prove it: jobs are vanishing, incentives are inflating, and AI is producing faster than most writers can edit.
The future isn’t coming; it’s been greenlit. The question is whether there will be anyone left to roll the credits.
See you next week, unless the algorithm decides to co-host, in which case we’ll both be here.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
6 min read • Published March 24, 2026
Design is one of those jobs that everyone claims to need – at least, until budgets tighten or hiring freezes. Then, suddenly, the professionals responsible for making products more usable, brands more recognizable, and interfaces more intuitive – well, suddenly, design goes from mission-critical to commoditized and disposable.
The past few months, judging by the numbers, have been a perfect reminder of this job market dynamic. While designers were largely decimated in the wake of recent tech layoffs, hiring for these roles seems to be slowly creeping back.
This is undoubtedly good news, but tempering this uptick is the fact that designers today face a very different job market than the one most experienced during the post-pandemic boom years.
Aesthetics and Adobe acumen are no longer enough to land a gig; portfolios instead need to demonstrate real business impact and bottom-line results. AI literacy is increasingly creeping into job descriptions, and despite the overall uptick in openings, junior-level roles are disappearing faster than Flash developers.
If you like this, hit subscribe or recommend. If you didn’t, we’ll try harder next week.
And yet, strangely, design has proven to remain one of the most resilient roles in entertainment and media. UI and UX roles remain among the most in-demand (and fastest-growing) digital professions through the end of the decade, according to BLS data.
In other words, design, as a profession, isn’t dying – it’s evolving. This means a ton of designers who felt that their Figma designs would change the world feel like they’re being personally attacked.
That’s why, this week, we’re taking a look at design career data to see the state of the design job market today, where it’s headed, and what it means for your job if your job involves pixels, prototypes, or trying to get PMMs to sign off on iconography.
Lead Story: Careers by Design
For most of the last decade or so, UX/UI design had, by all appearances, a pretty sweet deal going. When tech companies were essentially printing money, product teams were expanding exponentially, executives were all too happy to hire designers in what became a veritable arms race for “intuitive” interfaces and best-in-class user experiences (both high on the SaaS priority list).
The bad news: that design honeymoon phase is over.
After several years of hiring freezes, layoffs, and the existential threat posed by the rise of AI, design seems to be stabilizing – with slight increases in job openings and hiring events YoY, according to BLS data.
With the function back in growth mode, the most significant change for designers is a shift in employer expectations and role-related responsibilities. The shift is fairly straightforward: designers are no longer judged by how “good” their products or portfolios look. They’re judged by how their work aligns with bigger business and bottom-line results.
That might seem pretty obvious to anyone who’s tried justifying design expenses to finance, but in practice, this represents a seismic shift in focus, from making designs “pretty” to making them profitable.
What it means for your career:
With design tools becoming standardized, and AI increasingly capable of generating decent interface patterns, visual polish is no longer a differentiator; now, designers are expected to contribute to strategy, product direction, and measurable outcomes.
That means fewer conversations about typography and more about conversion rates. Designers have finally found a seat at the grown-up table – for better or for worse.
The Design Job Market Is Back (Sort Of)
Data from talent analytics platform Revilio Labs shows design hiring steadily rebounding in the wake of last year’s widespread tech layoffs. Design openings rose modestly from last year’s lows, although they remain far off their post-pandemic peak.
Design Jobs Rising Moderately
At the same time, the number of designers seeking work has skyrocketed, so every job posting attracts a small army of active applicants. The result is a labor market that economists generally refer to as “competitive,” and the rest of us refer to as “good luck.”
Remote work is also becoming much more prevalent for designers; remote-only or hybrid design roles, increasingly rare in the past, have settled well below their pandemic-era highs, but remain a much more prevalent – and presumptively permanent – part of the job market.
What It Means for Your Career
For all the AI tools and technologies that have emerged within the design space, there’s still a fairly robust market for design jobs; the only issue is that they’re much more competitive than ever before, due to candidate supply far outpacing employer demand.
Real talk: if you’re a designer who’s on the market, your portfolio is competing with hundreds of others, which means that talent and experience are no longer enough. Neither are generic case studies nor purpose-built portfolio samples.
AI Is Not Replacing Designers. It Is Rewriting the Job Description.
A few times a day, some self-proclaimed “thought leader” on LinkedIn announces the work apocalypse. Designers, marketers, analysts, you name the job, there’s some pundit out there positing that AI has already replaced them.
Research from the UX Design Institute, however, takes a different tack: it examines real labor market data rather than sweeping generalizations and clickbait hot-take headlines that dominate online discourse.
Their findings are pretty simple: the narrative about AI killing jobs is great for PR (and VC-backed AI vendors), but the actual empirical evidence remains conspicuously absent from the conversation.
In reality, research suggests that only 7-10% of all employers have deployed enterprise-wide AI initiatives at scale; with limited early adoption, employment in many of the professions most “exposed” to AI has not experienced any meaningful cutbacks or collapse.
This includes design: as the article notes, less than 10% of all US companies use any form of AI in UI/UX workflows, and those that do tend to augment existing design headcount rather than replace it entirely. For companies questioning whether to continue investing in design, however, the economics remain compelling.
What this means for your career:
Research into digital product design shows that UX/UI improvements can deliver consistent, significant financial returns, with studies estimating that every dollar invested in design yields between $2 and $100 in value, depending on the use case and context.
That sort of ROI tends to get executives’ attention – especially when sales slow, and companies move from looking for growth to looking for efficiency gains. The real career challenge facing designers? Proving that impact in a way that executives actually appreciate.
The Bottom Line: Design Is Still One of the Fastest-Growing Creative Careers
As we’ve already covered, the design profession isn’t dying – it’s evolving. In the new normal, the most successful designers will understand more than interaction patterns or layout grids – they’ll be equally adept at interpreting user behavior, product metrics, and business strategy.
Despite the turbulence, the long-term outlook for designers remains surprisingly strong. Workforce analyses and labor market data continue to rank design among the fastest-growing creative professions through 2030, with an estimated 7-10% annual growth.
That means, in the US alone, over 100,000 new design jobs should be created by 2030, with 20-25,000 net new design jobs opening every year, numbers that are something of an anomaly within the creative and media industries.
The reason behind this growth is simple: software keeps eating the world – and someone has to make that software something that normal humans can actually use. The tools may be changing, AI may be evolving, but the job remains more or less the same.
That means the future of design is less about making things beautiful and more about making them work. The good news is that there’s plenty of work – and even more opportunities – to be done.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
15 min read • Published March 24, 2026
You’ve got to love the Oscars, the biggest night in the entertainment industry, where the red carpet gets rolled out over the detritus and waste of Hollywood Boulevard.
There, for a single night every year, the celebrity impersonators, strung-out junkies, and Midwestern tourists give way to the biggest night in Hollywood, which, if you’ve ever actually been to Hollywood, isn’t really saying much, particularly after the tragic closure of the last Kenny Rogers Roasters location in the US.
On Oscar night, the biggest celebrities in the world show up at a mid-tier mixed-use shopping mall anchored by a DSW and a California Pizza Kitchen for a night of self-congratulatory speeches, overpriced drinks (the Golden Globes would never), and awkward Melissa Rivers encounters.
The real reason for the Academy Awards is as much about perpetuating the myth of “Hollywood” (which features exactly 0 studios or major production companies, although it does have the world’s busiest Chick-fil-A and Jimmy Kimmel) as the actual awards themselves.
Of course, occasionally, reality shows up and ruins the entire evening faster than you can say “Weinstein.”
The 2026 Oscars were no different. The industry’s biggest night delivered the usual parade of gowns, speeches and emotional montages, but the subtext hanging over the Dolby Theatre felt a little darker than usual – which is kind of surprising, given that Sean Penn decided he had better things to do (much like viewers, apparently, as ratings across platforms hit a 4 year low (the year a movie in sign language distributed by Apple won Best Picture).
The Oscar apathy has been building for some time, a result of the same things that should give everyone in the industry existential angst: fragmented audiences, “multi-device viewing,” and the fact that when most people want to see the rich and famous call out their designers and accessory brands, they just go to TikTok. Ditto one-off Conan O’Brien bits, as his @TeamCoco TikTok (high recommend, fwiw) has close to a million followers.
For comparison, the average audience for his stint hosting the Tonight Show – a prestige brand on a broadcast network, back when TikTok was called Music.ly and YouTube was still in its Chocolate Rain/Charlie Bit My Finger days – was around 3 million. This might have been why he was replaced so quickly, but at least he’s finally beating Letterman in the ratings (who has less than 200k TikTok followers).
The real winner here? Probably Larry Ellison, who now owns both the Oscars and TikTok (we dedicated a whole newsletter to his Lex Luthor reboot last week). But for AMPAS, even the winners are starting to look like losers, except for Michael B. Jordan, because no one loses when there’s a double-double involved.
The point is, the Academy Awards this year were a celebration with the same vibe as people must have felt listening to the musicians on the deck of the Titanic during their impromptu jam session. Studios are merging (congrats to Warner Bros. on its last Best Picture award as an independent entity), layoffs continue to ripple throughout the industry, and content creation has shifted from vertical integration to commoditization over the past decade.
The Oscars have always been way too self-congratulatoryand self important, but this year, it felt more performative, with the nagging question that kept surfacing in the coverage from the trades: if this is the golden age of content, why does if feel like even the people who are working and being recognized as the literal best in the business all look so nervous about their job prospects?
The fact that they invented a category for Best Casting almost seemed like an implicit shout-out to the people responsible for helping them get gigs (interestingly, agents and managers seemed to get far fewer acceptance speech thank yous this year). Because as everyone working in this industry knows, even winning an Oscar doesn’t necessarily make getting paychecks any easier – just ask Cuba Gooding, Mo’Nique, or Harvey Weinstein.
It really has been the year for One Battle After Another in the industry.
One Battle After Another Proves Originality Isn’t Dead, Although Subtle Titles Might Be
Look, there’s nothing about Paul Thomas Anderson’s career that’s really a great lesson in how to work your way up the ladder (see: Adam Sandler and Healthy Choice jello as a major plot device). But the fact is, his latest exercise in esoterica swept the night, with six more wins than the Timothee Chammolet ping pong period piece.
That those were the two leading contenders proves the growing divide between industry and audience preferences – and there’s never a happy ending for industries or brands that fail to evolve along with changing consumer tastes.
Sure, network news remains editorially independent and has journalistic cache, but who needs Tony Dukopil for news when you’ve got X or Reddit?
The Academy Awards are, like the Masters, a tradition unlike any other. Also like the Masters, those traditions seem about as irrelevant to audiences today as the Eisenhower era, when both were arguably at their apogee.
True originality and creative vision continues to play an outsized role in influencing industry tastes and trends, even in an era that’s dominated by franchises, algorithms and IP valuations. There’s never been more filmed content flooding into the market, but if you have a distinct voice and enough determination, eventually, you’ll find recognition, respect and validation – if not a first look deal or a streamer exclusivity contract.
You just might have to survive five development hells, a lot of high concept prestige pilots for streamers that never get picked up for full runs, and having to buy groceries with money you made from Substack subscriptions and one-off content marketing gigs in between.
That’s incredibly encouraging if you value the craft – but highly frustrating if you also value craft services (and some semblance of stability).
Genre Projects Have Always Made Money. Now They’re Finally Getting Some Respect.
Genre works, like horror movies or sci-fi, have always been relatively easy to produce and consistently profitable. The first-ever narrative film, in fact, combined sci-fi and stop-motion animation, two genres that remain entrenched in the industry firmament. But (cue bad Rodney Dangerfield impersonation), they get no respect. Suddenly, though, they’re driving the few growth businesses in media and entertainment (see: A24, Crunchroll, Korean limited series).
Suddenly, though, the genre is winning Oscars. Sinners, a supernatural blaxploitation period piece featuring vampires and the storytelling conventions of The Parent Trap, became the most nominated movie of all time (and Amy Madigan won a well-deserved first award for the campiest Oscar performance since Gloria Swanson in yet another high genre, low budget horror film).
Even the latest iteration of Frankenstein, a story that’s inspired an estimated 450 feature-length films – one opened as recently as last week, and apparently, Maggie Gyllenhaal should stick to acting – walked away with multiple awards, including production design, makeup design, and costume design.
There used to be a hierarchy between “legitimate” entertainment and genre projects that was fairly rigid, even though the box office and Nielsens have always been about even when comparing “serious” and “popcorn” projects (the latter holding a slight edge since the late 70s).
Now, that delta is collapsing, and genre storytelling is finally seen as a path to prestige, even though most are, in fairness, crassly commercial – which today, isn’t the worst thing in the world.
The lesson here is pretty obvious: the categories that used to limit your career or make you professionally irrelevant are now what’s getting produced and funded – and often are where the most interesting and innovative work happens. Finding a niche often means finding an audience, but there’s no longer a trade-off between selling tickets or selling out. If you can’t do both, you should probably find another line of work.
In today’s era of personal brands, influencer marketing, and extreme segmentation, specialization, and reputation go hand in hand. Doubling down on a single genre, even a seemingly obscure one like, say, K-Pop Anime, is likely a better strategy for building a sustainable career than diversification and generalization, above and below the line.
The good news is, in today’s entertainment and media landscape, you no longer get shunned for doing so – you get celebrated. Hell, Ed Wood could probably get an anthology series greenlit by Peacock these days, so if you end up stuck in a single genre, chances are, you’re gonna crush it.
Disney CEO Quickly Becomes Favorite Studio Exec for Every Creative in Town
Speaking of the Oscars, Disney didn’t walk away with Best Animated Feature for a fourth consecutive year, winning only one Oscar: Best Visual Effects for the most recent Avatar reboot. What must be particularly galling to The Walt Disney Company’s leadership is that, for the first time ever, Netflix walked away with the award in a category whose genre Disney literally invented.
This is sort of indicative of larger problems at the House of Mouse – because, surprise, surprise, Disney is in a reinvention cycle. Again. If you’ve been paying attention, this means someone expensive broke something, so a little rebranding exercise is in order.
True to form, longtime chief Bob Iger’s newly minted replacement, Josh D’Amaro, is doing exactly what you’d expect from an incoming exec inheriting a company that’s simultaneously the most recognizable brand on earth and quietly hemorrhaging audience trust: leaning on storytelling and creativity as Disney’s North Star, paired with some obligatory gestures toward technology.
Translation: fix streaming before they burn through another few billion dollars finding out what doesn’t work.
For anyone who’s followed Disney for longer than a fiscal year, this should sound pretty familiar by now.
Disney has long positioned itself as a storytelling company, even while the actual revenue engine drifted toward theme parks, licensing and IP deals and basically milking Marvel and Star Wars until both brands were so diluted that audiences kinda stopped paying attention.
Disney Parks & Resorts, which D’Amaro ran before this promotion (his last was a 2 for 1 on clearance mouse ear hats) has been carrying the financial weight while the media business dealt with declining linear TV and uneven streaming results.
So what you’ve basically got now is an operations guy running a creativity company, with a chief creative officer installed as a kind of institutional conscience – a negotiated cease fire between art and earnings.
That means while the content of his remarks will grab headlines, it’s the subtext that truly stands out.
When a CEO starts talking about creativity this loudly and this publicly, it usually means the content pipeline has gotten stale. This isn’t news to anyone who loves film – or anyone who loves Disney, for that matter. Franchise fatigue is real, data suggests it’s accelerating, and audiences in 2026 have more options than most studios want to admit in public.
That’s the actual problem underneath all the “unified storytelling” language. The old model, where IP alone was enough to guarantee a theatrical opening weekend, is cracking. You can reboot the same story a certain number of times before even the most nostalgic fans start to feel like they’ve been had. Research on franchise fatigue has been circulating in the trades for a few years now. The box office is just making it undeniable.
The headline is simple, even if everyone around it insists on making it complicated. Creativity is back in fashion because mediocrity stopped paying at scale.
If you’re anywhere near content, development, or production, the bar is quietly being raised while the job description stays exactly the same. Tolerance for “good enough” has dropped. It had to. Audiences aren’t as loyal to platforms or studios as they used to be, more or less out of habit. They’re loyal to things worth watching. That’s a different contract entirely.
This renewed emphasis on storytelling isn’t some romantic return to filmmaker-driven cinema. It’s still a business. The people who actually thrive here are the ones who can hold both things at once, which is the creative instinct and the distribution logic, without insisting one is more legitimate than the other. The ones who treat data like the enemy of art usually aren’t working at the level they think they deserve.
There’s also a structural signal here that’s easy to miss. Disney reorganizing around storytelling that spans film, streaming, TV, and gaming isn’t just a reshuffle. It’s an indication that medium-specific expertise is becoming less of a moat.
Knowing how to make a movie, or a limited series, or a game is less valuable on its own than knowing how to build something that works across all of them: franchises, ecosystems, the audience journey, etc. – not just putting another generic project in the can and calling it a day.
Then there’s the trust problem, which is harder to fix than any of the operational stuff. Disney’s brand was built on emotional consistency.
Once that slips, no amount of IP acquisition gets it back quickly. That puts a real premium on people who understand why audiences feel things, not just how to green-light content that fits a release calendar.
The irony of “storytelling and creativity” being the strategic priority is that they sound like soft skills right up until they’re the most valuable and hardest-to-hire capabilities in the building. Sequels are easy, but making something people feel compelled to watch is pretty hard. Trust us, we write a weekly newsletter.
Disney is betting that going back to its roots will solve a very modern problem. If you’re building a career here, you don’t get that same luxury. Nostalgia isn’t a strategy, and you can’t keep your castle secure without building a moat.
The Consolidation Story Everyone’s Watching Isn’t the One You Should Be Worried About
The Oscars aren’t the only awards in town, obviously; Emmy season is technically still months out. Nominations drop in July, the ceremony’s on September 14. But the industry’s real storyline for 2026 isn’t going to be about which streaming drama sweeps or whether Zendaya finally becomes a dynasty.
It’s about who won’t be around to watch.
While award season coverage fixates on prestige cable and whatever HBO Max is doing with Sunday nights, the FCC just quietly handed local television to a single corporation.
Nexstar’s $6.2 billion deal to acquire Tegna cleared both the FCC and the Justice Department this week, creating what would become the largest operator of local TV stations in the country.
And the way the agency got there is worth pausing on. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr simply waived the cap that had, for decades, prevented any one company from owning stations reaching more than 39% of American households. One signature and a decades-old safeguard is just gone.
The combined entity will own 265 television stations across 44 states, most of them local affiliates of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. At that scale, you’re less a media company than a utility, and one with very little regulatory friction left to worry about.
The Oscars spent a good chunk of this past awards cycle worrying about what studio consolidation means for the film industry. Fair concern. But the Emmys, if anyone’s paying attention, are about to roll around against the backdrop of something more consequential.
This merger absorbs the local news ecosystem into a single balance sheet, and it was already producing casualties before the ink was dry.
Nexstar laid off KTLA’s Mark Kriski, an eight-time Emmy winner who had been a fixture of LA morning television since 1991, along with midday anchors Glen Walker and Lu Parker, as part of nationwide cuts that also hit WGN in Chicago and WPIX in New York.
At WGN, Sean Lewis, a nearly two-decade veteran and the station’s first openly gay anchor, found out he was being cut while sitting in on a meeting to support a colleague who was also being let go. That’s the kind of detail that doesn’t fit neatly into a synergy slide deck.
SAG-AFTRA condemned the layoffs, with president Sean Astin saying Nexstar was “eroding the resources and talent that local communities rely on for trusted news.” The union also noted that Nexstar was simultaneously pushing to gut severance in active contract negotiations, so the cost-cutting was running in both directions at once.
Now here’s the part that should make anyone watching the Paramount-Warner Bros. situation very nervous. Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to close sometime in Q3 2026, pending regulatory clearances.
The conventional wisdom was that federal approval was likely given the political climate. What happened with Nexstar-Tegna this week reinforces that read pretty decisively. If the FCC will waive a decades-old ownership cap for a local broadcasting deal with this little public process, it’s not hard to extrapolate what happens when two of Hollywood’s most iconic studios come knocking with a friendlier political tailwind.
The uncomfortable throughline connecting all of this is that synergies tend to land on the same group every time: working journalists, local anchors, the producers and technical directors who built careers at stations that now belong to holding companies focused on household reach rather than actual reporting.
The Emmys celebrate the best of what television can be, while the merger wave systematically hollows out the infrastructure that makes most of television function. Both things are happening at the same time, and the industry has gotten very good at only paying attention to the one with a red carpet.
The Emmys will still happen in September; the speeches will still land well. But the television industry (as we know it), celebrating itself in that room, will be considerably smaller than last year’s audience.
Fade Out
The Oscars have always been better at eulogizing an industry than actually representing it.
This year’s ceremony was pretty impressive, if we’re being honest. The films were ambitious, genre storytelling finally got its due, and there were enough genuine surprises to keep the discourse going past Monday morning.
But the acceptance speeches and the after-party coverage still aren’t enough to distract from what’s actually happening to the business underneath all the celebration.
Hollywood in 2026 is mid-merger, mid-layoff, and mid-identity-crisis, all at once. The Paramount-Warner Bros. deal is still winding through regulatory review; local television just got handed to Nexstar after the FCC waved away a decades-old ownership cap like it was a parking ticket.
Streaming still hasn’t figured out how to be profitable at scale without either raising prices or cutting the kind of content that won awards last night – the math doesn’t work yet, and everyone knows it, and no one at the podium is going to say so.
That’s the actual tension that’s going to become the most acute. The creative side of the industry is genuinely doing interesting things. The business side looks like a Jenga tower, three moves from collapse. Both of those things are true at the same time, and the people who tend to do well in this environment are those who can hold both realities without needing one to resolve first.
The industry has always been one battle after another. The current one just has more lawyers.
Media Strategy and Visual Storytelling Roles Hiring Now
Senior leadership positions at streaming platforms, legacy publishers, and independent newsrooms signal where media budgets are actually flowing in 2026.
The Mediabistro editorial team draws on 25 years of media industry expertise to cover jobs, careers, and trends shaping the industry.
4 min read • Published March 24, 2026
Media Companies Are Betting Big on Strategy and Visual Leadership
Scroll through today’s Mediabistro listings, and a clear pattern emerges: companies are investing heavily in the people who decide where money gets spent and how stories get seen. Three of the most compelling roles posted right now sit at the intersection of strategic thinking and visual execution, each at a different scale but all pointing in the same direction.
What’s striking is the range of organizations making these hires simultaneously. A conscious streaming platform, a regional lifestyle magazine, and an independent Jewish newsroom all need senior talent who can connect audience data to creative output. These aren’t entry-level content mills, but rather leadership positions where your decisions shape how millions of people encounter a brand.
The other signal worth noting: compensation transparency continues to improve across the industry. Several of today’s featured roles publish specific salary ranges, giving candidates real numbers to evaluate before investing time in an application process.
Today’s Hot Jobs
Social Video Producer at The Forward
The case for this role: The Forward has been covering Jewish news and culture since 1897, and this hire reflects how even the most storied publications are restructuring around video-first distribution. The Social Video Producer will collaborate directly with reporters and editors to create platform-native video content that drives audience growth. One detail worth highlighting: they’re open to candidates who prefer staying behind the camera, not just on-camera talent. The emphasis is on mentoring colleagues and using analytics to shape editorial decisions, which makes this a producer role with real institutional influence.
What they’re looking for:
Proven track record producing social-first videos that have reached large audiences on major platforms
Experience producing video in connection with journalism, not just branded content
Comfort using platform-native analytics to inform audience development strategy
Ability to write scripts, integrate graphics, and edit video with speed and accuracy
What makes this one special: Regional magazines rarely offer this much creative autonomy. Virginia Living is an award-winning lifestyle publication covering food, culture, homes, and destinations, and their Art Director role comes with true ownership over the visual identity across print and digital. You’ll direct photo shoots, commission illustrators, and shape the look of every issue. If you’ve been grinding at a larger publication where creative decisions get filtered through three layers of approval, this is the kind of hands-on leadership role that lets you build a distinctive portfolio.
Skills and experience they need:
Seasoned design leadership with experience across print editorial and digital platforms
Strong art direction skills, including photography direction, illustration commissioning, and typography
Ability to manage freelance photographers, illustrators, and stylists including fee negotiation and contracts
Proficiency with layout and design tools and a portfolio demonstrating cohesive visual storytelling
Paid Media Manager at Avalon Consulting Group (Nonprofit Fundraising)
The angle here: Avalon runs fully remote and specializes in fundraising for nonprofits focused on environmental conservation, social justice, and cultural arts. This Paid Media Manager role spans Google Ads, paid social, CTV, and programmatic channels, all in service of organizations that depend on donor acquisition to survive. If you’ve been running paid media for commercial brands and want your optimization skills to fund something you care about, this is a meaningful pivot point.
It’s also worth noting that hiring managers across the industry (we’re not referring to this particular employer here!) routinely review candidates’ social media presence, so make sure your profiles reflect the mission-driven orientation this kind of role demands.
Qualifications that matter:
Hands-on experience managing campaigns across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, paid social, and programmatic platforms
Ability to build keywords, audiences, ad creative, budgets, and bidding strategies aligned to media plans
Strong analytical skills for monitoring campaign performance and uncovering optimization insights
Collaborative mindset for working across digital, creative, analytics, and client service teams
Why this role deserves your attention: Gaia is a publicly traded streaming platform focused on yoga, meditation, and consciousness content, and this position owns the entire media strategy that drives subscriber growth. The $145,000 to $165,000 base salary plus incentive plan reflects the seniority here. You’d be architecting full-funnel media plans across brand and performance channels while partnering directly with data, creative, and publishing teams. For anyone who has wanted to move beyond pure performance marketing into genuine strategic leadership, this is that role.
The core requirements:
10+ years of experience in media strategy, planning, or buying across brand and performance channels
Deep expertise in full-funnel media planning including programmatic, paid social, search, CTV, and emerging formats
Experience translating business objectives into privacy-safe, data-informed media plans
Proven ability to manage agency relationships and hold external partners accountable to performance targets
Today’s listings reveal something specific: media companies are consolidating strategic and creative authority into fewer, more senior roles. The Director of Media Strategy at Gaia owns the full funnel. The Art Director at Virginia Living manages the entire visual identity. The Social Video Producer at The Forward shapes editorial decisions through analytics. These are jobs where you help define the vision, which is empowering.
If you’re applying for roles at this level, your portfolio and cover letter need to demonstrate decision-making, not just execution. Show the campaigns you architected, the creative direction you set, the audience strategy you built from scratch. Hiring managers filling these positions want evidence that you can own outcomes, not just complete tasks.
When Presidents Repost Satire and Ad Giants Merge Out of Fear
By
Mediabistro Team
6 min read • Published March 24, 2026
By
Mediabistro Team
6 min read • Published March 24, 2026
Donald Trump reposted a sketch from the premiere episode of Saturday Night Live UK on Sunday morning. The sketch depicts UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer awkwardly attempting to break up with the American president via voice note after Trump allegedly started World War III.
Trump shared the clip on Truth Social without comment, selecting only the portions that portray Starmer as weak and desperate to maintain the relationship. He left out the part where the sketch accuses him of starting a global conflict.
This is a content distribution story (a story that Trump has always been particularly clever at drafting to his advantage).
A sitting president with 8 million Truth Social followers voluntarily amplified a brand-new foreign comedy show that mocks him, because he understood instinctively which narrative elements served his purposes. Variety reported the details, noting that American viewers had to work through time zones and streaming geographies to watch the original broadcast. Trump solved that problem for them.
Three threads this roundup, connected by how borders work (or don’t) in media now.
When the President Does Your Marketing for You
Saturday Night Live UK launched on Sky Max and the streaming service Now. British comedian Josh Widdicombe plays Keir Starmer in the cold open, struggling to navigate a politically toxic relationship with the American president.
Trump’s repost gave the show more reach in the United States than its UK broadcast likely achieved domestically. Deadline noted that Trump, a longtime critic of the original NBC Saturday Night Live, appears unbothered by international versions of the franchise as long as they provide useful narrative material.
Distribution Reality: Sky Max did not buy a single ad impression in the United States to achieve this outcome. The president did their marketing for free.
Meanwhile, John Oliver used his opening monologue on Last Week Tonight to address what he described as the Trump administration pushing “truth to breaking point” with claims about the Iran War. Oliver said the lies are “getting pretty flagrant here, even by this president’s standards,” after cuing video of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump himself making contradictory statements about the war’s progress.
Oliver’s segment functioned as something closer to press accountability journalism than entertainment. Newsrooms quoted it, embedded the clips, and used it as a reference point for subsequent coverage of the administration’s Iran statements.
Comedy shows as parallel editorial infrastructures is not new. What has changed is the speed. Oliver’s show airs on HBO late Sunday night. By Monday morning, political reporters were citing his fact-checks in their own pieces.
The president reposts the sketch. The late-night host fact-checks the war claims. Newsrooms cover both. Entertainment, journalism, and political messaging are operating simultaneously in the same content ecosystem.
The professionals who understand how to navigate that simultaneity have an advantage.
The Buyers Are in Lille, and the IP Is From Everywhere
Series Mania’s Buyers Upfront takes place in Lille, France. Two projects debuting there show how mid-budget international drama gets financed and sold in 2026.
Both are period pieces. Both are co-productions involving multiple territories. Neither is a global tentpole, but together they reveal the infrastructure that makes non-English-language scripted content commercially viable.
First: The Traitor Within, a WWII thriller based on the true story of Norway’s most notorious Nazi collaborator and the man ordered to kill him. Variety published exclusive behind-the-scenes images ahead of the upfront presentation. The visual style leans into period thriller aesthetics rather than prestige war drama, positioning it for broader genre distribution rather than festival circuit circulation.
Second: Death of a Diplomat, a thriller series based on the debut novel by Eliza Reid, the former First Lady of Iceland. Deadline reported that Karine Vanasse, star of the Canadian series Cardinal, has boarded the project. Canadian streamer Crave and Iceland’s Síminn have both acquired local rights. Blink49 Studios structured the deal as a multi-territory co-production with pre-sales locked before production.
This is the model that makes international drama work at the mid-budget level. You do not wait until the show is finished to find buyers. You build the financing around confirmed local acquisitions in key territories, then use the buyers upfront circuit to layer in additional markets.
Reid’s novel gives the project built-in credibility and a promotional hook. Vanasse has Canadian broadcast recognition, which secured Crave. The Icelandic setting and author connection secured Síminn. The upfront presentation in Lille is where you find the third, fourth, and fifth territories that turn the project from breakeven into profitable.
Financing Reality: Neither of these shows will dominate global streaming charts. They are designed to operate profitably within a specific segment: historically grounded drama with strong local identity and enough universal genre appeal to travel.
If you are evaluating a job offer in international content acquisition or co-production, these are the deal structures you will be building.
Spiders in a Jar
The legacy advertising industry is consolidating at a rate that invites a blunt question: does this produce stronger competitors or just fewer weakened ones fighting over shrinking budgets?
The structural problem is straightforward. Ad spend is migrating to platforms that bypass traditional agency models. Google, Meta, Amazon, and TikTok offer direct-buy ad products with attribution and optimization tools that reduce the perceived value of agency intermediation.
Holding companies have responded with consolidation, merging agencies to achieve cost efficiencies and scale. The bet: larger combined entities will have more negotiating leverage with platforms and clients. The counter-argument is that consolidation in a declining market does not reverse the decline. It concentrates the damage.
Merged agencies lose redundant roles, which means layoffs. Remaining staff inherit expanded portfolios without equivalent increases in resources or compensation. Client relationships that relied on specific team chemistry get disrupted when agencies fold into each other.
If you are a media planner, strategist, creative director, or account lead at a holding company agency, this is not abstract. It is a direct threat to your job security and career progression.
The roles that survive are the ones that platforms cannot automate and clients cannot bring in-house. Strategy that requires deep cultural or category expertise. Creative that drives brand differentiation. Client relationships built on trust and history rather than contract terms.
If your primary value is executing media buys that could be handled by a platform’s self-service tools, you are vulnerable. If your value is judgment and context that platforms do not provide, you have leverage.
What This Means
First, satire is a transatlantic content category with unpredictable distribution dynamics and genuine editorial influence. If you work in comedy development, political media, or news programming, you are in a space where the president might repost the sketch and the late-night host might set the news agenda by Monday morning.
Second, international drama operates on financing models that prioritize pre-sales and co-production structures over post-production acquisition. If you are evaluating career moves into scripted development or international content, learn how these deals work. The buyers upfront circuit is not a festival. It is a sales infrastructure.
Third, ad industry consolidation is here, and the roles that survive deliver judgment and context that platforms and clients cannot replicate internally. Position accordingly.
If you are hiring for roles that require these skills, post a job on Mediabistro. If you are looking for your next role in a market that rewards people who see the threads before they become obvious, browse open roles.
This media news roundup is automatically curated to keep our community up to date on interesting happenings in the creative, media, and publishing professions. It may contain factual errors and should be read for general and informational purposes only. Please refer to the original source of each news item for specific inquiries.
