By Andre Christensen, Co-Founder and CEO, Quickplay
For years, the headlines were relentless: Broadcast is dying. Audiences are gone. Platforms won.
Then 2025 happened and every emerging trend we’d been tracking suddenly became the new reality:
- Streaming surpassed linear in global viewing hours.
- Creator-economy ad spend will eclipse traditional media this year.
- Social media platforms became the top news source.
- Short-form clips overtook long-form storytelling in total monetization.
But here’s what the naysayers missed: this isn’t broadcast’s decline—it’s the largest market realignment potential in decades.
Broadcasters open to rewriting their gameplan will be a part of the biggest upswing moment in our industry’s history.
The New Majority Has Arrived and they are 3x more valuable
Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha comprise about 70% of the global audience. Unlike the Boomers and Gen Xers before them – they’re not connected to their “clicker” or proud subscribers of TV Guide. They’ve swiftly rewritten each and every rule traditional broadcasters thought they knew about media consumption. Despite that, they’re spending 1.5-3x more than older generations on digital subscriptions, content, and e-commerce.That represents an unprecedented potential for broadcasters willing to engage and monetize following the new rules of the game.
The audience didn’t shrink…it multiplied in value.
These viewers didn’t abandon premium content. They simply find it differently. They’re omnipresent – consuming across linear, OTT, social, and mobile – and they’re more reachable and monetizable than ever before. The challenge isn’t reach. It’s relevance.
The Money Followed the Attention
Today’s reality is:
- 43% of Gen Z prefer platforms like YouTube or other social platforms to consume video while only 12% prefer traditional outlets, according to Activate Consulting’s newest report.
- Social platforms are now the primary news source for over 54% of Americans.
Broadcasters should also capitalize on the explosion of short-form content and leverage it as a front door to growth strategies. Short-form drives discovery, funnels viewers into longer-form, and fuels commerce along the way – making every second of content monetizable, across all platforms and formats.
In the creator era, active relationships are the real currency. Success is no longer solely measured by reach or gross ratings points. It’s about engagement depth, repeat behavior, and lifetime value.
Broadcasters Hold a Winning Hand
While everyone else fights for clicks and chases viral moments, broadcasters still own the rarest and most defensible currency in today’s digital economy: trust, rights, and authentic content.
Broadcasters have become an institutional authority over the decades as the “go-to” destination for live sports, local news, deep content libraries and so on. They also have the scale to cut through the clutter. Couple that with AI and distribution agility, and they’ll be the most powerful growth engine in media.
AI: The Great Equalizer
AI enables broadcasters to operate like creators: fast, data-driven, and omnipresent.
With AI, broadcasters can:
- automate the content-to-audience flow across every screen and platform,
- deliver “one story, multiple formats,” powering true cross-platform storytelling that meets audiences wherever they are, however they want to consume,
- bring decades of archives back to life for new audiences, fueling a new growth engine,
- personalize discovery and monetization at scale with newfound agility.
AI-powered tools and workflows empower broadcasters to match the relevance and velocity viewers expect with the trust and reputation only they have.
The Bottom Line
The New Majority + Premium Content + AI = The Largest Monetization Unlock in a Generation.
2025 isn’t the end of broadcast. It’s an inflection point. The broadcasters who act decisively, who embrace platform-native distribution, who leverage AI to operate across all ecosystems (i.e, linear/ OTT/Social), will lead the next decade.
The audience is here. The technology is proven. This is our moment. Let’s build it.
Download this whitepaper for more on how broadcasters can stay ahead of their new competition and capture value in new paths to distribution, measurement and monetization.
