In 1983, M.A.S.H.’s two-and-a-half-hour finale drew in an estimated 125 million viewers, breaking the record for a television program’s ratings and marking a time in popular culture when a single show could capture the attention of American—or global—audiences.
Legacy media veterans say this era of monoculture is dead, but they’re far from mourning it.
The proliferation of often-niche online communities has presented media outlets and studios with opportunities to stumble upon outside-the-box ideas and reach previously untapped audiences, Kathleen Grace, chief AI officer of Lionsgate, explained at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Santa Barbara, California, on Monday.
“While there’s no single monoculture, there’s lots of these little cultures,” Grace told Most Powerful Women Editorial Director Ellie Austin. “We’re helping elevate and support and make these worlds bigger for these creative people that have discovered these great communities that they’re making stuff for.”
Last year, Lionsgate released the psychological thriller The Housemaid adapted from author Freida McFadden’s book of the same name. Grace’s colleague found the book via BookTok, TikTok’s “really rapid” reading community. The film studio’s talent agency 3 Arts Entertainment represents Kane Parsons, the filmmaker behind Backrooms, which Parsons said was inspired by online images of a bare conference room, which were originally posted on the forum site 4chan in 2019. The film has tallied more than $400 million at the box office globally, making it A24’s highest-grossing film.
“In the case of Kane Parsons, it’s a really compelling filmmaker who then kind of got elevated through 3 Arts through this partnership with his manager, finding the right place for that,” Grace said. “There’s so much work out here.”
NBC News benefited similarly from the breakdown of the monoculture, according to NBC News anchor and correspondent Savannah Sellers. Because social media platforms change so quickly, young people are often experts at connecting with audiences on those sites. Rather than being a news authority found only on television, NBC News has gained new audiences by spreading through social media and finding new talent among young people outside the traditional news landscape.
In 2018, NBC News launched the Snapchat show “Stay Tuned” with Sellers as its co-host, and the short-form news videos have since migrated to TikTok and Instagram, where it has a total of 1.8 million followers.
“For us at NBC, we’re the total legacy organization to really get in the game,” she told Austin. “And now we’re the No. 1 U.S. news organization for TikTok engagements.”
The news platform now hires its talent in part based on the ability to connect with audiences through these decentralized avenues.
“I don’t think that there’s like this convened power anymore,” Sellers said. “But I think it makes it kind of an interesting time to do what we do.”
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