Making Media
Episode 36 More with Less Media
Making Media

Episode 36: More with Less Media

Making Media

Episode 36

More with Less Media

Brian Morrissey is a long-time media executive and the author of The Rebooting. We cover the Barstool/Penn breakup, Brian's personal experience starting his media company, and his assertion that the media is experiencing a "more with less" era.

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(00:03:23) - (First question) - How media is adapting to the "more with less" era amidst challenges

(00:06:08) - Efficiency's impact on media brand identity and content quality

(00:08:21) - The benefits of niche focus in media for building sustainable brands

(00:10:25) - Media companies' failure to adapt and the impact of misaligned incentives

(00:13:30) - The power law effect on media business size and advocating for lean operations

(00:16:22) - Starting narrowly versus broadly in the media business

(00:18:57) - Leaving Digiday to build a personal, autonomous, trust-based media brand in The Rebooting

(00:22:27) - Using his year away from work to strategize personal media product creation

(00:23:52) - Leveraging connections to sell ads, avoiding paywalls to grow faster

(00:28:12) - Understanding the essence of sales and the role belief plays in it

(00:30:41) - How niche markets and personal connections can serve as media business moats

(00:33:43) - Valuing passion and expertise over market trends when starting a media business

(00:36:53) - Why questioning industry norms can be beneficial

(00:37:52) - Creators using autonomy and audiences for better deals

(00:40:57) - Pat McAfee's leverage as an entity, not just talent

(00:42:56) - Analyzing the Barstool-Penn breakup and its implications for the media business

(00:46:27) - Why ad agencies continue to survive despite being dysfunctional

(00:50:23) - Debrief

(01:01:17) - Live Event

 

More with Less Media

Introduction

Matt
Welcome back to Making Media. Today, we're sitting down with Brian Morrissey in this episode. It gets back to the guts and glory of the media industry. We have some guests from time to time who are tangentially related to media, not the case here.

In 2021, Brian founded The Rebooting. This is a newsletter publication focused on the mechanics of building sustainable media businesses. Can you understand why that speaks our language? And prior to The Rebooting, he spent a decade building Digiday and had a nice stint as editor at Adweek prior to that.

For this conversation, we get into Brian's own experience on launching his business, his view that we're in a more with less era in media, and then we rapid-fire through some fun topics, lessons from the Barstool, Penn breakup, Pat McAfee and ESPN and ad agencies. Mostly fun topics, maybe ad agencies doesn't fall into that. We have links to all of Brian's properties in our show notes. We are readers and listeners. So take that as testimonials and please enjoy this conversation with Brian Morrissey.

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