THB #564: Show Biden-ess & Change

So you have been doing pretty much the same thing for decades. Change within your preferred structure is happening around you, but none of the younglings seem ready to take full control. But the pressure is relentless. The world has you on a countdown clock, even though you continue to be very successful in doing what you do. You can see that future, but you really don’t know that you will be around to engage with it.

And then there is the outside pressure. No one can quite make sense of it, but it is enormously popular and threatening your very existence.

Then, there is a big moment. And all the analytics are against you. The pressure keeps building for you to, somehow, step aside. So what do you do?

No, I’m not talking about Joe Biden after the debate. I’m talking about Linear television, in all of its manifestations.

It occurred to me after the last 4 days of endless chatter about whether Biden should stay in the presidential race or get out and whether it is functionally possible for him to do so and whether it would create a bigger mess… that these exchanges are very much like the ones the industry is now wrestling with about the future of Streaming, Cable, Virtual Cable, Broadcast, and Theatrical Movies.

Change will happen, no matter how subtle, familiar or radical. We are a living, breathing culture and things will change.

Change is hard.

I had an exchange on Twitter this morning about action and inaction and the person I was having the exchange with wanted to make clear that staying the course could be as brave or braver than making change. And that is absolutely true. But mostly, people don’t want to change.

The reality is that we don’t know outcomes. We can have all the bravado in the world… but we don’t know. Or as the late, great Bill Goldman wrote, “Nobody Knows Anything.”