Byron, welcome.
You have so much experience in this field.
Where do you see the future of mass media headed?
Oh, I think this is
a phenomenal time right now, because I look back at 100 years ago,
it was the Industrial Revolution, and what fueled that was gas and oil.
And today, 100 years later, it's the digital revolution.
And what's fueling that is content.
And we will never have enough content
as we're out there trying to feed an insatiable appetite
and more than 4 billion connected devices around the world.
This is really exciting.
I love it.
And I can't think of a better time than to be in media.
And it's in its infancy.
It really is, because we're now making that transition where we're adding more
texture to the landscape, where it isn't just linear, it's linear and digital.
And I don't think it's either or.
It's never either or.
Instead, if you look at the movie industry, right, so you have the movie
industries, you make them
movie industry, you make the movies, and then here comes radio,
and then they say, “Oh, well, radio is going to get rid of movies.”
And it was like no, no, no. It became additive.
And then it was like, Oh, TV came along.
Oh, that's it.
That's a wrap.
Goodbye. Movies, Goodbye radio. We have TV. No.
It became additive.
Everything makes it better.
Here's VHS, here's cable.
All of it just made everything bigger and better, and it’s the same thing with streaming.
But at the end of the day, human beings want to connect.
They want to hear great stories. They want to tell their stories.
They want to be heard. They want to feel relevant.
And at the end of the day, you will never, ever be able to feed
that insatiable appetite of content, content, and more content.
It's so great to hear you say that because as someone in the media,
we hear all the time about AI, Gen AI it's going to take jobs.
It's going to disrupt in a negative way.
It's not just very nice to hear you say that
this is an exciting time for mass media.
Well, listen, AI will be a part of our landscape,
but AI think what will happen with AI is it's going to be regulated
because you can't let something become smarter than you
and then all of a sudden you go, “Wow, how did we let that happen?”
You know, so I think it's going to be regulated.
I think it's going to make us better.
It's going to give us the tools we need to improve what we do.
So I don't think we should be afraid of it.
We just need to...
Albert Einstein said it best.
The very definition of intelligent life is life that can adapt.
We have to adapt. We have to grow.
We have to use AI, but use it in a way where it is helping us and not hurting us.
And I think that's very possible.
Where are you putting your focus at the moment?
Right now we're just having fun building the world's biggest media company,
and I'm a firm believer in local news.
Over the last several years, we've invested over $1 billion buying...
Listen, I don't think people will ever wake up one day and not want local news.
You need it.
It's a matter of survival.
I mean, look what happened with the pandemic.
You know, in some cases, our local news had 90% of the market share.
If people had their television sets on, 90% of them were watching our local news
because they needed to know what was going on with the pandemic.
And so it's important. It's a matter of survival.
Local news, weather, sports, traffic, you name it, and local sports
that's big as well as national sports.
You have to have it.
We're never going to wake up one day and not want NFL football,
college football, NBA basketball.
It's a great business and I love it.
Listen, ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX, the four networks came together
and did a deal with the NFL for 10 billion a year for 11 consecutive years,
$110 billion to have NFL rights.
So we're going to have NFL football on our local TV stations
out to 2033.
I'm not losing any sleep over local TV stations.