This essay was contributed by ErinRose Widner, a media and emerging technology strategist. Driving meaningful partnerships, impactful opportunities, and innovative solution offerings to maximize business value and market relevance.
Last month something happened to me that hadn’t happened to me in years. It hadn’t happened to me in, dare I say…a decade.
I realized there were four shows I was looking forward to every single week. Not four seasons waiting for me to binge over a weekend, but four different shows, on four different platforms, dropping episodes weekly. (HINT: one of them was The Pitt). And I was so eager to watch these shows as soon as they were released that I actually mapped out their drop schedule so I could keep track of which show was available on which day. I’ll tell you, dear reader, I was just as shocked as you are.
But this experience also brought into focus for me two major shifts that are happening in the media space.
The Return of Anticipation
This first shift is what I’m going to call Days of Yore. It’s similar to the viewer experience during the prime TV era of the 90s and early aughts, but with a bit more technology and awareness. The second shift, because we’re in the media business and because it’s insanely relevant, let’s call Back to the Future, where many of the innovations we’ve long talked about are finally coming to fruition.
To be clear, in the Days of Yore shift, I’m not talking about the story reboot era that has taken over in recent years, but rather how and what we are consuming for entertainment. I’m talking about that brief magical era when appointment TV and streaming were still figuring out how to work together, when bingeing wasn’t yet the default, but you could still watch your show on the broadcaster’s app right after it aired without having to worry about setting your TiVo. See why my mind was so blown when I was trying to figure out the schedule for The Pitt? Or remember all of those nail biting standalone live events? Like when in 2013 we anxiously watched and waited for a spectacular, one-of-a-kind moment, like the night Nik Wallenda crossed the Grand Canyon on a wire and we genuinely didn’t know if the wind was going to knock him off his wire or he was going to be victorious (spoiler: he lived!!).
From Experiment to Strategy
Which brings me to the Netflix Skyscraper Live special, which, in full transparency, I watched on replay. Even so, it still made me think about how, over the years, we’ve watched Netflix, along with other streamers (hi, Apple!), dabble in live programming. But Skyscraper Live felt different. It suggested that Netflix is no longer simply experimenting with live content, but is thinking more strategically about how event-based programming can draw in audiences and keep them engaged over time. Yes, they already have major partnerships and agreements in place for large-scale sports and live entertainment, but their willingness to lean further into live events and test different formats suggests this is no longer a side project. It is becoming a real commitment to the audience and a meaningful part of Netflix’s long-term strategy.
Now, while it’s tempting to say this Days of Yore shift is simply about what audiences want in their heart of hearts, a more realistic take is that content providers are returning to tried-and-true models in order to stretch out programming, maintain conversation around a title for longer, and reduce subscriber churn. In other words, they are slowly walking back the binge era that dominated for so long. But whether that shift is driven by strategy or nostalgia, the result is the same: viewers are once again being asked to anticipate, to wait, and to return.
Back to the Future, For Real This Time
Now let’s get to the second shift, Back to the Future.
In some ways, it is the more nuanced shift, one that is still playing out and shaping itself. But as a technologist and a TV lover, it is the one I’m especially eager to watch. Ever since Back to the Future Part II debuted in 1989, many of us have wondered how closely our own media future would match the one depicted in the film. From multiview television to video calls, art on our TVs, wearable devices, and yes, even the ever-present fax machine, the movie offered a version of tomorrow that felt both outrageous and oddly plausible. And while it’s safe to say that fax machines did not remain central to our day-to-day lives, I would argue that much of the broader vision aligned surprisingly well with the way mobile devices and television evolved to complement one another over the years.
But now with technology advancing around us, we are getting even closer to that actual imagined reality. Maybe we missed the film’s 2015 deadline, but in the next few years we may very well surpass the film’s original vision (although I can’t commit a timeline for flying cars).
The multiview experience though is a great example of something that has been promised for a long time, but the technology and user behavior just haven’t quite lined up enough to make it feel seamless or essential. This year, however, YouTube seems intent on changing that. Similar to how Netflix has dabbled in broadcast, YouTube has been experimenting with multiview since 2023, but now appears to be placing renewed emphasis on that feature. This will be particularly interesting to see how impactful it is alongside the FIFA partnership later this year.
But it’s not just multiview that is making a play for our attention. What feels more significant is that several long-discussed layers of the media future are starting to mature at the same time. Distribution is becoming smarter. Devices are looking to create a better viewing experience (personally I’m hoping the Samsung Vision AI can actually cut down on content discovery time). Apple’s recent talk of smart glasses along with Meta’s Raybans, makes it seem like wearables might finally start shifting from novelty to interface. And while I’m not particularly excited about living in an episode of Black Mirror, I do appreciate that our wearables look a lot sleeker than the ones in Back to Future II. And of course, AI. AI everything: companionship, personalization, localization, sports analytics, shoppable content. There is so much being touted, but we’ll have to see if it can be meaningfully adopted.
The Convergence Layer
For years, many of these developments felt adjacent rather than connected. Now due to rapid-changing technology, low-latency connectivity and the advancement of compute power, media is converging in an incredibly smart way. For better or worse, we are inching closer to the ambient, always-on, screen-rich future that Marty McFly once stumbled into, only now paired with our own AI-powered reality.
And with these two shifts happening simultaneously, we’re entering a world where experiences are being shaped to engage audiences in more intentional and more immersive ways at the same time. But what fascinates me the most is that these shifts are not actually in conflict. They are complementary. One is about reclaiming the emotional rhythms that made television feel communal and eventful in the first place. The other is about using new technology to expand where, how, and with what depth those experiences can happen.
The companies best positioned for what comes next will be the ones that understand that technology alone is not the advantage; the advantage is knowing how to use it to connect to the audience, how to connect to the humans.
So while we may not be completely returning to Days of Yore or going Back to the Future, we are absolutely incorporating both as we create our New Old West. Doc would be the first one to remind us to be thoughtful about this future we are creating because, “Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one.”
