kevin dreyfuss looks into the future of media

Happy Friday, June 26th!

I’M ALSO LOOKING FOR MORE PEOPLE TO DO MINI INTERVIEWS like the one below :) Tips, thoughts, concerns, good jokes, bad jokes, tea, etc?

And finally, if you enjoy this newsletter and want to share it with your network (and/or your chronically online friends), or buy me a matcha, that would be so appreciated 🙏

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ONE OTHER QUICK NOTE: something you should know about me is… I’m never actually joking about merch. After this tweet got a whole, whopping 43 likes, I decided to take action.

SO, now these incredibly niche hats are available on Bonfire HERE! This is a good vibes venture, not a for-profit one (and also a drop-shipping one), so I made the cost as close to the actual production cost as I could!!! Ok, now on with our regularly scheduled programming…

Today, we have some texts from executive producer & video creative extraordinaire (and my former boss!), Kevin Dreyfuss – spoilers, he has very good movie takes. Enjoy!

LR: You’ve worked in Hollywood and in electoral/cycle politics… what are the lessons that you think that the entertainment world can learn from the politics world and vice versa? Bonus: which world is crazier?

KD: Can I assume baseline here is GOOD Entertainment World content and GOOD Politics World content? Plenty of terrible shit coming from both sides, made by timid untalented hacks, which I will ignore. With that in mind:

- Entertainment World 👉 learn to harness how genuine feelings of mission and passion can lead teams to create incredibly fast, high volume and high quality content at a scale beyond your imagination. You need a mission!

- Politics World 👉 learn from Entertainment World that individual talent does matter, and creative people aren't interchangeable -- there are unicorns out there when it comes to this work, and you need to recognize who that is and lock that shit in when you find it.

& which is crazier? I think people who CROSS STREAMS are the worst. Politicians who get into entertainment, or entertainment figures who get involved in politics, ugh. Dealt with both kinds -- fucking nutters. One H'wood bigwig involved in the Biden campaign was the absolute worst; we all just called him Gollum.

LR: Imagining we had a crystal ball and could look five years into the future, what do you think the media landscape looks like in 2031? What platforms, formats, or habits do you think are dominating – and what do you think has fallen by the wayside?

KD: I'm a big "yes, and" guy here. I think we are in for a media world that continues to fragment, but one without any "🏆 winner." Short-form algorithm-driven video is here to stay, and you can tell that because stuff like YouTube Shorts or IG Reels, which were meant for phones, are seeing huge growth on living-room TVs. But I also think old-school movies-in-theaters are here to stay. I saw OBSESSION with my kid a few weeks ago, and that theater was full of young people going fucking apeshit. And I think episodic TV is also here to stay. And I think audio podcasts are here to stay. I think you can catch my drift.

What goes by the wayside? I think AI slop won't win. It's just not gonna. AI tools getting infused in production processes? Sure. But actual finished-product AI "shows" at scale? No. I think video podcasting will live on somehow, but not in its current form, which feels awkward for all involved. My one big swing is that I think we are in for the death of binge TV viewing. Shows like THE PITT and others are reminding people how much they like experiencing a show together in real-time every week, and that show lasting for more than like 6 episodes, and that show not disappearing for years at a time.

LR: Along those lines, if you could design the media landscape for 2031, how would you build it? What do you think the best ways of communicating and storytelling are – or could be?

KD: Communal entertainment is the answer. People coming together in physical space to watch and enjoy things as one. Big spectacle IMAX movies, of course, we expect that. But we also see it for word-of-mouth horror movies like WEAPONS or SINNERS. Then for weird, upsetting movies by YouTube creators, like BACKROOMS or IRON LUNG or OBSESSION, which I mentioned, and which broke records by being the first movie to actually increase its audience in theaters for 4 weeks running since, like, ET (I think). And then we saw it for the aforementioned Knicks run in NYC, which was made triply special by the huge outdoor watch parties happening in the city, in Jersey, in the suburbs, everywhere. And then the World Cup comes along and does that internationally.

And just to go off on a tangent, I think we should all just acknowledge that sports isn't just popular because of the games themselves, or the players, or the gambling (although, yeah). It's because they create content worlds in and of themselves. The Knicks magical run, the World Cup, Fantasy Football, F1 -- they show how these worlds can support an entire storytelling universe. The games, the reactions to the games, the stories about the games, the videos about the games, the videos of the reactions to the game videos... I heard someone call shit like Fantasy Football essentially reality TV for dudes who can't admit they like the Real Housewives, and I think that's correct.

At any rate, communal experiences with real humans -- this is the way.

LR: What is your favorite app that is NOT a media app?

KD: Is Letterboxd a legit answer, or is that cheating? I mean, it's an app ABOUT media, so dunno. But I love how many things it does at once -- it helps organize the voluminous amount of stuff I watch all the time and gives me a reason to log it and share thoughts for myself to remember later, since my brain no work good. And then it provides access to the thinking of all sorts of other people, non-famous, famous, professional critics, friends and family members. The amount of new stuff I explore because I see it on Letterboxd is ridiculous. And THEN it throws off a ton of video stuff onto Instagram and elsewhere that is super-fun just on its own. It's basically an app that brings John Cusack's rant from HIGH FIDELITY to life in digital form.

LR: What’s one piece of new content that you think absolutely everyone needs to consume?

KD: WIDOW'S BAY WIDOW'S BAY WIDOW'S BAY. It's so goddamn funny, it is legitimately scary. And it springs from the brain of the same woman who posted one of the funniest Tweets from the Before Times, Katie Dippold, when she accidentally went to a casual Halloween party in full Babadook makeup. In fact, that Tweet is the vibe of the show. 

A June Economist/YouGov poll found Trump’s net approval (those who approve minus those who disapprove) among Americans aged 18 to 29 at minus 45, the weakest reading for that group in the survey’s tracking series. (Newsweek, 6/25)

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday said the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon would have been a blip in today’s news cycle, and he drew parallels between Nixon and President Donald Trump — arguing that both were targeted by “deep state” forces. (AP, 6/26)

Scrolling through Instagram’s discovery page is something to do while you’re bored and already swiping through your phone. It’s easy to fire the app up and send videos to friends while you’re commuting, waiting for an elevator, or using the bathroom. But Instagram’s latest pivot is geared toward a more stationary experience that’s meant to be shared with people in the same room. This is a big bet. (The Verge, 6/25 – free version)

These generative artificial intelligence products—made possible by the publishers’ work—have made billions of dollars in market value for the defendants, and not “a cent of it has gone” to the publishers, according to a complaint filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. (Bloomberg Law, 6/24)

One major contributor, according to the Census figures: The population boom in “outlying counties,” or those that sit adjacent to major metro areas and often are home to feverish development and armies of commuters. (WaPo, 6/25 – free version)

According to the 2026 Cash Poor Report, nearly half of the U.S. population (44%) identify as being cash-poor with less than $200 in their savings account and two-thirds reporting their financial situation is worse than expected. The proportion of cash-poor Americans unable to pay an unexpected expense increased nearly 17% since our first report in 2023. (Fast Company, 6/24)

DeRose identifies as a “floater friend,” a concept that, along with that of the “filler friend,” has been increasingly discussed online in recent years. Across social media, both men and women have opened up about “the very specific pain” that these individuals endure in lacking a core group of friends. (Bustle, 6/23)

Vermont has become the first U.S. state to ban paraquat, one of the most commonly used herbicides, with lawmakers citing a possible link between the weed killer and Parkinson’s disease. The ban has been widely celebrated by advocates who hope Vermont’s move will prompt similar action in other states to prevent the neurologic disease that robs people of control over their movements and affects about 1 million Americans. (AP, 6/25)

Sebastian's emergence as a gay icon can be traced back to the culturally transformative Renaissance period of the 14th to 17th Centuries, when prominent artists including Guido Reni, El Greco and Sandro Botticelli depicted his arrow-pierced body with a smouldering homoerotic subtext. (BBC, 6/24)

On Wednesday, the mystery of the free-roaming mammal’s odyssey deepened further, when a local sheriff disputed an account that it was reportedly found safe a “little farther out than expected” from its hill country home, and said the search was most definitely still on. (The Guardian, 6/24)

Extra Credit 🤓

The hot-or-nots going into this weekend:

HOT:

NOT

That’s all for now – I’ll see you next week!