Dak’s Take: The year when predictions stop making sense

It’s that time of year when every analyst becomes a pundit and produces a list of forecasts that age faster than a linear primetime schedule.

We do this annually. Consultants polish their decks. Executives make confident proclamations at conferences. Trade publications — yes, including this one — compile roundups of what’s coming next. And then the industry proceeds to ignore all of it, careening in directions nobody saw coming.

But 2026 feels different.

Not because the predictions will be wrong — they’re always at least partially wrong — but because the media business is now moving faster, and in stranger directions, than any prediction cycle can possibly handle.

Few saw even half of what 2025 delivered. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, that should give us pause before making any confident declarations about what comes next.

When the unthinkable becomes the obvious

Consider the Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition by Netflix (or maybe Paramount?).

A year ago, that sentence would have read like fan fiction in a HBO drama about the media business. Why would Netflix need to own another studio when it already produces films and television at scale? 

So, if that’s on the table, what isn’t?

Advertisement

What does it say about the state of the business when the biggest players are playing musical chairs with entire studios? When companies that were supposed to be the future of the industry are suddenly shopping themselves or being shopped?

Consolidation was always coming. Everyone knew that. But this level? This speed? It exposes just how broken the old strategic models truly are. The predictions missed because they assumed a certain floor of stability — a baseline that simply doesn’t exist anymore.

The ground keeps shifting beneath us.

Demolition and reconstruction, simultaneously

The larger story here is structural. The old silos that defined the industry for decades — broadcast vs. cable vs. streaming, local vs. national, platform vs. distributor — are being torn down in real time.

And new silos are forming just as quickly.

FAST vs. premium streaming. Global production hubs vs. regional content strategies. Automated workflows vs. traditional creative pipelines. Every part of the stack is reshaping itself: distribution models, newsroom structures, corporate ownership, viewer expectations.

We’re not watching evolution. We’re watching demolition and reconstruction happening simultaneously.

This creates a fundamental problem for anyone trying to predict what’s next. You can’t forecast the future shape of an industry when you can’t even be sure which pieces will still exist by the time your forecast publishes.

The audience is screaming for simplicity

Meanwhile, viewers are exhausted.

Too many subscriptions. Too many platforms. Too many decisions about where to find what they want to watch. The promise of the streaming era was personalization and control. The reality became complexity and decision fatigue.

FAST’s growth isn’t just about ad-supported viewing. It’s about audiences choosing simplicity over infinite choice. They want predictability. Low friction. Something that just works without requiring a spreadsheet to manage their monthly entertainment budget.

The more complex the ecosystem becomes, the more viewers fall back to comfort food they can find easily and cheaply.

Advertisement

Here’s the paradox: fragmentation is pushing audiences toward a post-bundle rebundling phase. Everyone in the industry knows this. But nobody has figured out what that bundle should look like, who should control it or how to build it without cannibalizing existing revenue streams.

So we drift forward, adding more services and more complexity, even as the audience signals get clearer and louder.

We know the shape, not the order

There are things we can predict with reasonable confidence.

More consolidation across studios, tech vendors and local broadcasters. More M&A among local station owners. Continued shifts in how national news brands define themselves in a post-Paramount/Skydance world, or whatever comes after the next deal reshapes the landscape again.

But here’s what we can’t predict: whether that consolidation restores clarity or accelerates audience erosion. Whether major brands find new audiences or lose the ones they have. Whether the platforms that survive are the ones with the biggest libraries or the simplest interfaces.

We know the general direction. We just don’t know which version of the future we’re headed toward — or how fast we’ll get there.

Build for any future, not one future

So what’s the real takeaway for 2026?

Forget predictions. Build adaptability.

The smartest players won’t waste energy trying to predict which specific scenario unfolds. They’ll build systems and structures that can survive any version of what’s coming. Break down legacy workflows. Reduce friction, not add to it. Align platforms around discoverability and simplicity. Embrace cross-functional, non-siloed operations.

The old ways of operating won’t survive another year of this.

Advertisement

Scale used to be the moat. You got big enough, you could weather anything.

But scale without adaptability is just a bigger target. The companies that thrive won’t be the ones that saw the future most clearly — they’ll be the ones that could pivot fastest when the future arrived differently than expected.

This isn’t a call for chaos or recklessness. It’s a call for honest assessment of what actually matters when the playbook keeps getting rewritten mid-game.

The year ahead will likely be another wild year in the world of media.

Predictions aren’t useless — they help us think through possibilities and prepare for multiple scenarios. But they’re fragile. They break the moment something unexpected happens, which in this industry is approximately every six weeks.

The only certainty is uncertainty. And the industry’s ability to adapt will matter more than anyone’s ability to predict.

We’re not really forecasting the next phase of media… we’re just buckling in for the ride.

Dak DillonDak Dillon is the Editor in Chief of NewscastStudio, where he has been covering broadcast technology, engineering and design for over 15 years. With practical industry experience, Dak's broadcast work has earned a Promax Gold Award and multiple regional Emmy nominations.

A journalism graduate from the Missouri School of Journalism, Dak has also been recognized by the Hearst Journalism Foundation.