Media Stack, Ownership, and the New Rules of Media
System Alerts: AI Infrastructure, Incentives & the Shape of What’s Next
While most coverage still focuses on shiny AI features or end-user apps, this week’s signals are coming from deeper in the stack. What’s emerging is a noticeable shift toward AI-compatible media infrastructure, alongside efforts to protect its economics and reset who holds the power.
This edition covers four key developments: a new control layer, a TV-native AI stack, a commercial firewall, and a remapped view of the media business itself.
SMPTE Introduces Catena: An AI-Ready Control Layer for Media
SMPTE, the standards body behind foundational specs like ST 2110 and MXF, has just introduced the draft suite for Catena. It’s a control plane built for modern media workflows and it’s designed to replace the tangled mess of proprietary protocols currently used to connect media systems, offering an open, vendor-neutral standard that works across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments.
Catena is built to support AI-driven coordination: it allows systems to issue commands, manage state, and communicate with both physical devices and cloud-based services using well-known APIs (like gRPC and REST).
Why this matters: If AI agents are going to operate behind the scenes in media workflows (rendering, packaging, routing) then they need a reliable way to communicate with tools and systems. Catena can give them that voice. It won’t grab headlines, but it could quietly become a new baseline.
YouTube Shows What AI-Native TV Actually Looks Like
While most streaming platforms are trying to retrofit AI into legacy pipelines, YouTube continues to operate as if it were built around it from the start. In a recent breakdown from nScreenMedia, YouTube’s feed is described not just as a recommendation engine, but as a dynamic, personalized channel builder. It adapts in real time based on your viewing behavior, time of day, and ongoing interaction.
Advertising is just as flexible. Tools like BrandConnect and Open Call let marketers post briefs and let creators pitch campaigns, drastically speeding up how branded content comes together.
(P.S. - I have known Colin Dixon, who runs nScreenMedia for almost 20 years now and there are few people who’s opinion I respect more for analysis of the media space. If you want to follow the space, please consider signing up for his news letter or podcasts)
Why this matters: This isn’t a cosmetic change. YouTube is showing what it looks like when personalization, monetization, and discovery are all built on machine learning from the ground up. It’s not a video platform with AI—it’s a platform that runs on it.
Cloudflare Declares War on Unpaid AI Scraping
Cloudflare, long seen as essential internet plumbing, is now stepping up to defend media creators from the latest threat: AI crawlers harvesting content without permission or payment.
New features include:
Default blocking of known AI bots for new customers
In-development “Pay Per Crawl” protocols that ask AI models to pay for content access
AI Labyrinth, a honeypot trap for rogue scrapers
Authentication tools to help sites identify which bots are crawling and why
CEO Matthew Prince put it bluntly: “If the internet is going to survive the age of AI, we need to give publishers the control they deserve.”
Why this matters: The threat AI poses to consent and compensation may be greater than its disruption to jobs. Cloudflare is proposing a new default, one where creators opt in, not out, of having their content repurposed by models. If it catches on, it could reshape the economics of the open web.
Shapiro’s Media Map: AI and the Creator Economy Move to the Center
Every few months, Evan Shapiro releases his widely circulated Media Universe Map—a snapshot of who holds power in the media ecosystem. His latest edition, published just days ago, brings a major shift: AI-native tools and creator-driven platforms now sit at the center of the chart.
New entries include Runway, Synthesia, Kajabi, Substack, Spotter, and Patreon—joined by returning giants like OpenAI and YouTube. These aren’t side players anymore. They’re gravitational bodies.
“Pull is the new Push. Community trumps Audience. Flywheels eat Products for breakfast.”
Why this matters: Watching these maps evolve is like watching the industry move in time-lapse. Shapiro isn’t just updating logos—he’s tracking a real shift in momentum. If your strategic plan still places the old players at the center, you’re working from a map that no longer reflects the terrain.
Closing Note
From Catena’s spec to Cloudflare’s firewall, the media stack is changing fast. These are structural shifts, which are needed if we expect to keep seeing new innovations. Together, they signal a broader move: AI isn’t just something we use to create media. It’s starting to shape how that media gets organized, protected, and valued.
Some of this work is happening out of sight. Some is being baked in by default. And some is being made visible in new maps of the ecosystem. But all of it points in one direction: an AI-native media infrastructure is taking shape.
More soon.