The 'legacyfication' of new media and other stories as tech cuts both ways

The new is beginning to resemble the old, tech is playing both hero and villain, and cinemas are starting to get their sheen back

Amazon Prime Video introduced advertising on its pay service. YouTube is advertising itself as the new television. Netflix is locked in battle with Paramount for the rights to acquire one of Hollywood’s oldest studios. 

YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video are among the brands that define the new media world of internet and streaming. Each of them has disrupted what television, film, newspapers, and other legacy media were doing. Now, as they attempt to scale up, they are all becoming more like the companies they took on. This ‘legacyfication’ of ‘new’ media is the first and most significant thing to note about the media and entertainment business in 2025. 

It is the culmination of three decades of the internet, and the rise of both video and audio streaming over more than a decade. These events democratised the media, and helped niches and long tails. But they also consolidated distribution and audiences to a point where it is near impossible to succeed if your show or story doesn’t work across audience clusters globally. 

The companies that own the largest distribution platforms — Google with YouTube; Meta with Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp; Amazon with Prime Video/Music; and Apple — are the ones that will rule the media game. Note how gargantuan these firms are to understand what is at play here. 

Google had a revenue of $350 billion in 2024, and it has almost 5 billion users. Amazon’s revenues touched $638 billion that year, and it has 300 million shoppers. Meta is at $164 billion in revenue, and has about 3.5 billion users globally. 

Now zoom in to Netflix: It has 302 million subscribers globally and had a revenue of $39 billion in 2024. How does it grow from here? By finding new users across markets and ways to increase engagement (time spent). Hence the move to introduce advertising (in 12 markets so far) and WWE, and the bid to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. It is the same size as Netflix, has a popular streaming service in HBO Max with 128 million subscribers, and studios that have churned out the Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings series, and more recently, Barbie. 

India reflects the same evolutionary wave. In 2024, the entire streaming video business was worth about ₹35,600 crore. It spent over ₹18,000 crore on making shows and buying films. Not surprisingly, no service, except perhaps YouTube and SonyLIV, made money. 

As streaming moves to the next phase of growth, it is becoming exactly like broadcasting. Growth is about more languages, massy programming, cheaper product variants, sports, lots of free stuff, and, of course, mergers and acquisitions. Some, such as Star India and Viacom18, have already merged to create JioStar. Their streaming baby, JioHotstar, is commissioning shows with hundreds of episodes, a la TV. The Sony and Zee merger fell apart, but the trend of consolidation and trying to build mega-scale will continue, globally. 

It is imperative because the business now is more global than ever. The battle is for audiences and their time – irrespective of country, language or format. 

Also because the amount of expensive tech at play, not just in distribution but in all aspects of the business, including content, will continue to rise substantially, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). 

AI and the soul of the media business 

This was the second thing 2025 saw: The mainstreaming of AI into the media and entertainment ecosystem. 

Some of the initial uses, whether with AI news anchors or dubbing, have been encouraging. Nowhere is this more evident than in micro-dramas — those 30-50 episodes of 1-2-minute each. From creating episodes, dubbing and subbing them, and licensing them all over the world, AI has helped propel micro-dramas from being a Chinese quirk to a $8 billion market globally. 

It has also posed a huge challenge across the business. For instance, from June 2024 to June 2025, the top 10 English language publications in India alone lost 20-30 per cent of their online audience, according to Comscore. Overall, people seeking news/information online have dropped by about five per cent in 2024 over 2023, while time spent on news dropped by a third. People don’t go to the source of the news because Google’s AI summaries, OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Perplexity give information gleaned from existing information or media sites. 

However, none of this gleaning and training of AI models on existing information came with any compensation, let alone acknowledgement for the original news/information providers. There is, in fact, complete denial of the fact that AI is being built on existing copyrighted data. So far, there has been near zero action on this from governments or businesses. This is particularly worrying for writing, films, dance, music, acting — in fact, for anything where original thinking and creativity are involved. 

Big screen picture 

That brings us to the third thing about 2025. 

Film, which powers almost every other part of the media and entertainment ecosystem, and creates intellectual property with the maximum value, is finally creeping back to health. According to film tech firm Gower Street Analytics, the global box-office rose by 5 per cent in 2025 over 2024, to hit $33.5 billion. In the coming year, it is expected to rise to $35.58 billion. That is still far from the 2019 high of over $42 billion, but it is getting there, courtesy the supply pipeline returning to normal after the pandemic and the writers strike. 

The North American box-office will see a 10 per cent growth. In India, the box-office is estimated to rise by about 8 per cent over 2024 this year. One-fourth of all TV viewing, a third of OTT, and three-fourths of all music consumption is film related. There could be no better news to end the year with.