Channels with Peter Kafka

It feels like 2022 all over again: Netflix has hit a wall, and is scrambling to respond. That means layoffs, a purge of its top content people and… what else?

Then Derek Thompson — one of the guys Barack Obama reportedly reads to keep on top of tech —  gives me his blunt summary of Substack economics: “Dimes for analysis, dollars for facts, and Benjamins for facts about AI.” We talk about why the US is building data centers but not houses, why podcasts are turning into TV, and why the screens that fill our free time may also be making us more antisocial.

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Most of us stopped watching traditional TV a long time ago. Political campaigns, meanwhile, still spend most of their ad money there.
Rob Flaherty has been trying to change that from inside Democratic politics. He’s been the digital guy for Hilary Clinton, and then Joe Biden, and then Kamala Harris’  2024 campaign. (Here’s his post-mortem of that one.) Now he runs a political shop of his own.

We talk about why campaigns are still built around TV ads; why campaign consultants have financial incentives to keep buying them; and what it takes to reach voters who live on TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, group chats, and algorithmic feeds instead.

We also talk about the difference between paying creators and earning their attention, why some candidates can make social media work without becoming AOC or Zohran Mamdani, and why the next real wave of political innovation may come from the 2028 primaries.

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Larry Ellison bought his son a media empire. What does he want from it? Vanity Fair’s Tom Dotan joins me to talk about the billionaire behind Paramount and Warner Bros., his connection to TikTok, and his politics. Tom’s reporting suggests there may be less of a master plan than you’d think. We also discuss why even Ellison’s enormous fortune has limits—and how his media bets are tied to Oracle’s AI gamble.
Then, Kevin Roose joins me to discuss his new book, The AGI Chronicles, and a question I keep coming back to: Why did people who think AI could destroy humanity work so hard to build it? We talk about whether those same people can be trusted to slow things down, and I push Kevin on the gap between AI’s promises and what most of us experience. Plus: Why he left The New York Times to build a media business with Casey Newton.

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David Ellison has won Warner Bros. Discovery. Now he has to figure out what, exactly, to do with it.

LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield joins me to talk through the next version of the Paramount-Warner empire: Why Ellison wants to be Netflix; why CBS and the NFL still matter so much; and why simply bolting Paramount+ onto HBO Max won’t magically create a winning streamer.

Then we zoom out to the much bigger problem for Hollywood: AI is making it easier and cheaper to create video, which could mean an explosion of stuff to watch — and a real challenge to the value of giant movie and TV libraries. Rich thinks the winners will need to become platforms, not just studios. We also talk about Meta’s Muse, and why Rich thinks it could be a much bigger deal than people realize.

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I went to Meta’s Silicon Valley headquarters to try Mark Zuckerberg’s newest face computer: a $1,300 pair of virtual-reality glasses that are much lighter and cheaper than Apple’s Vision Pro, and still make you ask a very basic question: What am I supposed to do with this thing?
So I asked my pal Mike Isaac, the New York Times tech reporter and longtime Meta watcher. We talked about why Meta keeps spending billions trying to put computers on our heads, why this version might have a better shot than the last ones, and where Meta’s fast-growing Muse AI agent fits into the company’s plan.
Then we turn to the much bigger—and darker—AI story Mike has been reporting on: The fight over whether the companies racing to build more powerful AI systems can actually control them. What are the real risks? Who gets to decide what counts as “safe enough”? And what happens when the people building this stuff say they can’t afford to slow down?

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AI companies have spent years telling us that we’ll be able to use them to go shopping for us, or book us airplane tickets, or get us awesome restaurant reservations. None of that ever materialized.
But in the last few weeks, services like Instinct and Meta’s Muse have made that promise feel much less theoretical.  Are they actually ready? What’s holding them back? And, crucially: Do we even want them doing this stuff for us?

My pal Jason Del Rey, a longtime journalist who now writes The Aisle newsletter, spends all his time learning and thinking about this stuff. We talk about what “agentic shopping” really means, why it’s been harder to build than Silicon Valley expected, and what happens if it finally works: Who wins, who gets cut out, what happens to advertising — and why Amazon may have more to lose than almost anyone.

And since you’re here: Channels listeners can start a 30-day free trial of The Aisle here. Or if Jason already sold you, subscribe today.

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Nicholas Thompson runs one of the few media companies that can say things are going pretty well: The Atlantic is profitable, growing, and boasts 1.6 million subscribers.
But that's today. What comes next is the bulk of our conversation: Thompson — a big AI guy — tells me what The Atlantic's deal with OpenAI has and hasn't delivered,  why he thinks publishers may need to make money from a web increasingly run by bots and agents, and what he thinks his actual human readers want.
Also on the docket: What it means to work for a media company owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs; why he’s making his own sponsored videos and podcasts while running a 168-year-old magazine; and what The Atlantic learned from its first attempt at "let's work with Creators strategy" a few years ago.

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Not long ago, most Americans had never heard of data centers. Now most Americans are actively opposed to them.
It’s a head-snapping change — one that is befuddling tech bosses, and forcing some politicians to quickly change their tune.
It’s the second part that I wanted to talk to David Weigel about. Weigel has been covering politics for years — he’s at Semafor now — and has a well-earned reputation for on-the-ground reporting, around the US. So I wanted his point of view on why the anti-data center movement — and the anti-tech movement in general — has sprung up, and how it is scrambling elections around the country.
Plus: Elon Musk’s return to midterm politics, the growing revolt against Flock cameras, and what it takes for a political reporter to figure out whether an online argument is real in the first place.

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Microdramas are the new phone-first soap operas: stories chopped into dozens of one-minute episodes: Low-budget productions filled with romance, werewolves, secret babies, and cliffhangers—and, eventually, a request that you pay to keep watching. Surprisingly, lots of people do.
So how big is this business? And is it sustainable?
I talk with Ali Albazaz, the CEO of Inkitt, which runs the CandyJar microdrama app, about turning web fiction into video, why he thinks CandyJar can be the HBO of microdramas, and why he is now making AI-generated action and superhero shows for men. Then I talk with Hernan Lopez of Owl & Co., whose new report estimates microdramas are already a $4 billion business outside China. We also talk about the obvious looming question: What happens when TikTok decides it wants to own this business itself?

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Sports teams keep selling for more money because, in theory, their media rights keep becoming more valuable. But the companies that actually pay for sports TV are starting to push back.

John Ourand of Puck joins me to break down Bob Iger and Josh Kushner’s $12.5 billion deal for the Los Angeles Lakers— and whether the number makes sense if local and national TV money is no longer guaranteed to keep rising.

Then: the NFL wanted its TV partners to reopen their current rights deals early and pay more now. Fox’s Lachlan Murdoch said no, and John explains why NBC, ESPN, Amazon, and everyone else seems happy to let Fox take the heat. Also discussed: Apple’s very different bets on MLS and Formula 1, why ESPN let F1 go, and whether the WNBA is wisely spreading its games across many networks—or making fans hunt for them.

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