The Great Content Consolidation

From Printing Press to AI—Why History Points to Massive Media Mergers

From Gutenberg to Google, media consolidation is accelerating like never before.

Books took 500 years to consolidate. TV, 40 years. AI content? Just 3 years.

10-Second Summary of this Post

• Media consolidation has sped up over history (Print took centuries — TV took decades; and AI Content will be single-digit years.

• AI Content Flooding the Market. A single creator can now generate articles, videos, music, and images at scale, flooding the market.

• The AI/Media Deal Frenzy is Here. Microsoft bought 49% of OpenAI for $13B (within 2 months of ChatGPT’s launch). And Google, Thomson Reuters and Getty Images have already spent $billions on acquisitions since ChatGPT’s Big Bang moment.

Bottom Line: Only the biggest players will survive.

Why AI/Media Consolidation is Moving So Fast

• Tech adoption is now instant – ChatGPT hit 100M users in 2 months (faster than any platform in history).

• VCs demand quick exits – The new playbook: Raise, scale, sell within 5 years (see YouTube, Instagram, and nearly every AI startup).

• AI floods the market with content — A single person can now create:

  • Articles with ChatGPT

  • Videos with Sora, Runway

  • Music with Suno, Udio

  • Images with Midjourney, DALL·E

Result:

• Millions of AI-made books, blogs, and videos flood the internet.

• Too much free content = ad rates drop = media giants must merge to survive

Bottom Line: Only the biggest players will survive.

Who’s buying who in AI & Content?

The deal-making has already begun.

Here’s the full artifact of the image above on Claude

And the speed is unprecedented:

The AI “Big Bang” Moment to Strategic Deals

ChatGPT launched November 30, 2022.

Let’s call that the Big Bang moment.

Look how fast major mergers & acquisitions happened next:

• Microsoft buys 49% of OpenAI ($10 bil) (2 months after ChatGPT’s launch)

• Shutterstock buys Giphy ($53 mil.) (6 months)

• Thomson Reuters-Casetext: $650 million acquisition (9 months)

• Google-Character.AI: $2 billion licensing/hiring deal (15 months)

• Microsoft-Inflection: ~$650 million acqui-hire (16 months)

• Getty-Shutterstock $3.7 bil. (26 months) — Shutterstock was until a few years ago considered a simple imaging business it is now the biggest seller of content in my List of AI Content Licensing Deals.

Next week, I’ll list out “The Next Wave of AI & Media Deals” I see coming.

Final Takeaways

For Content & Media Execs

✅ Own your audience. Build direct-to-consumer models (newsletters, subscriptions, premium content).

✅ Leverage AI—don’t fight it. Use AI for efficiency, but double down on things AI can’t do (brand trust, investigative journalism, unique storytelling, etc.)

✅ Negotiate from strength. Media giants must partner, merge, or form alliances to secure better deals with Big Tech. This doesn’t mean an outright sale — you can license your data to LLM co.s (many of those deals average $24 million per year)

For AI Execs

✅ Pick the right partners. Align with media companies instead of fighting them—licensing deals could be key to survival.
✅ Differentiate your AI. Specialized AI (finance, law, education) will hold more long-term value than generic content generation.
✅ Prepare for regulation. Expect lawsuits and content restrictions—build transparency into your AI models now to stay compliant.

Thx for reading!

Rob Kelly, Creator & Host of Media & the Machine

ps: I’ll do a part 2 on The Great Consolidation next week with “The Next Wave of AI & Media Deals” (I’ll predict types of deals and name names).

pps; How to reach me — The best way to reach me is to reply to my newsletter emails. It’s free to subscribe and your reply comes right to my inbox.