Notes from the foggy frontline of the broadcast industry
There’s a special kind of silence that lives in the executive corridors of television and broadcast companies these days. It’s the silence after another strategy deck full of acronyms. The silence before the next quarter’s numbers are released. The silence you hear when no one in the room wants to admit they’re lost.
Let me just say this upfront: It’s okay to be lost. Really.
You’re not the only one. The grounds have shifted so often in our industry with a new kind of disruption, technology advancement and monetisation model that you are not even sure if you should listen when someone screams streaming, FAST, AI, generational shifts, advertising implosions, etc. Even seasoned executives are navigating now in this fog with either a broken compass or ten compasses spinning in every possible direction. Which, let’s be honest, may be worse.
So ,with this article today, I am not giving you a roadmap. I am writing you a letter of compassion.
A quiet moment of honesty. A small pause. A little room to breath. Just before we all head off for a few summer weeks pretending to relax while our phones keep buzzing and secretly monitoring the Linkedin Bubble discussions under the beach towel.
The Nature of Collapse
Collapse is rarely loud. It’s not one headline. Not one market shift. There’s no “moment.”
It’s the slow erosion of relevance.
It’s not the disruption headline or the declining share price. It’s the quiet erosion of what once made sense. Relevance seeps out slowly.
Your buildings are still standing. Teams still show up. Programming is still on-air. But something vital is eroding underneath: audience connections dissolve, your IP is training someone else’s machine, your role in the value chain gets eaten from both ends.
Collapse is the slow death of meaning masked by quarterly survival.
Most people wait until the roof caves in before admitting the house’ foundation is crumbling.
But you’re smarter than that. You’re reading this.
When the Maps Stop Working
Executives are trained to navigate with tools: dashboards, KPIs, OKRs, forecasts, charts. But the more uncertain the environment becomes, the more these tools turn into illusions of control. When we enter true unknowns, we don’t need more data. We need discernment.
In fact, the data deluge is part of the problem. We’ve become data priests: worshipping correlation while ignoring context. Making decisions because the dashboard blinked red, not because the situation called for action. And then we wrap it all in the language of transformation to avoid the deeper truth: we’re not evolving. We’re stalling.
But the more volatile the environment, the more these tools give us the illusion of control. When we enter real unknowns, metrics become less useful and often more dangerous. Because they keep us looking at numbers while the actual signals are buried elsewhere.
What Clarity Really Means
Clarity isn’t a percentage locked into your spreadsheet. It doesn’t show up in quarterly planning.
Clarity is that quiet conviction that whispers: this still matters. That instinct that says: this team, this person, this format – it’s worth fighting for.
Clarity isn’t about being right. It’s about knowing what feels true even when the rest of the room isn’t sure anymore.
It lives in the unmeasurable: trust, timing, gut feeling, emotional tension, that strange discomfort you feel when a move is wrong, even if it checks every box.
And yes, fear. Especially fear. Clarity often lives where the fear begins.
The compass we need now? It’s not magnetic. It’s moral. It points not to growth curves but to relevance.
Relevance as Compass
I’ve staked most of my work on this one deceptively simple question:
Are we still relevant to the people we want to serve?
Not: Are we AI-ready?
Not: Are we digital-first?
Not: Do we sound like we belong on stage at a media conference?
But: Are we still seen? Heard? Needed?
Because if the answer is yes, then everything else – your business model, your tech stack, your org chart – can be rebuilt. But if the answer is no, then no amount of optimization will save you.
Relevance is the ground beneath your strategy. Lose that, and you’re not transforming — you’re just rearranging furniture in a house no one visits.
What to Do When You’re Lost
If this resonates, if you feel like you’re managing a slow-motion collapse—pause. Don’t scramble for another shiny solution.
Instead:
Admit you’re lost. To yourself, and maybe even to your team. It creates space for real conversation.
Slow your pace. Fast decision-making in fog leads to cliffs. Clarity comes in stillness.
Find your signal. That one instinct, idea, or intuition that still feels true. Anchor to it.
Ask better questions. For me, it’s always: Does this move make us more or less relevant? You might find your own.
Choose evolution over transformation. Don’t perform innovation theatre. Build from who you already are.
Clarity won’t brush away the uncertainty in our industry. But it will feel like giving you some sense of orientation: a direction to focus on and that makes sense even if the view ahead is foggy.
Before You Disappear for Summer
This industry is full of brilliant people playing a rigged game with broken tools. Many of you are doing your best with bad maps, legacy systems, and stakeholder pressures that no AI model can optimize.
So let me leave you with this:
Clarity doesn’t mean fixing it all. It means seeing what matters.
Collapse doesn’t mean you failed. It means you’ve reached a turning point.
And leadership is not about knowing the path. It’s about stepping into the unknown waters, first. With enough humility to admit you don’t have all the answers. And maybe, with someone beside you who knows how to read the ripples on the ocean’s surface.
Have a good summer. A real one, if you can. Let the silence do its work.
When you’re ready, I’m here.
– Christian
PS: If this resonates with you, we should talk.
What I talk about above is not just theory. It is based on work we do here at Global Media Consult: helping broadcasters, media companies and the related industries to rethink their strategies, navigate complexity, and design models that reflect their values, audiences, and long-term goals.
We support teams who want to build something different. Something rooted. Something that lasts. Discreetly. Thoughtfully. Without hype.
