Are We About to Reinvent Cable... for AI?

Having cable was seen as a silent sign of luxury, almost like a garage fridge. You had access to channels beyond the local linear broadcasts that gave you sports, cartoons, and movies to watch with your friends.

Then came streaming services. Whispers of “cutting the cord” became bragging rights around your parents' friends. They were no longer going to be paying the big, bad cable company when they could watch what they wanted on-demand for a fraction of the cost.

One streaming service became two.

Then three.

Then five.

Now very major media company wants, no - NEEDS - its own exclusive branded platform.

Media has a habit of solving one complexity by creating another.

What began as a simpler alternative to cable eventually became another fragmented ecosystem that consumers have to now navigate. Now many households subscribe to so many different streaming platforms that we jokingly say we've recreated cable, just with more passwords.

I recently read FOX's announcement about its new Agentic AI Advertising Platform and immediately wondered... “Are we about to repeat the same fragmentation cycle we've already experienced with cable and streaming…but with AI?”

The Media Innovation Cycle

How Does This Relate to Cable, Streaming and now AI?

FOX didn't just announce another AI tool. They announced a different way of buying media.

It's important because a major publisher is redesigning the advertising workflow around AI agents instead of humans manually passing information between systems.

Every platform, for the most part, has its own interface.

Its own reporting.

Its own measurement.

Its own optimization.

Its own definitions.

Media buyers already spend a lot of time moving between systems and vendors.

Which brings me back to my big question: if FOX builds an Agentic AI platform...what's stopping every other publisher from doing the same?

Today we already manage several:

• DSPs

• Retail Media Networks

• Search engines

• Social media platforms

• Streaming publishers

• Measurement platforms

• Attribution platforms

Now imagine if every one of those also had its own AI agent.

Suddenly we've gone from logging into multiple dashboards...to managing multiple AI ecosystems.

That isn't necessarily simpler. And it just brings us back to square one... just like what happened with cable and streaming.

If I Had a Crystal Ball

There are several scenarios that I could foresee happening.

• Scenario 1: Every publisher begins operating its own AI ecosystem.

• Scenario 2: AI platforms learn to talk to one another.

• Scenario 3: Someone builds the operating system to connect all of the Agentic AI platforms.

Scenario 3 feels most likely to happen because that's exactly what our industry has done before: when complexity increases, someone eventually builds a simpler way to navigate it…until it gets too complex again.

TL;DR: Will Agentic AI Solve Media Buying—or Make It More Complicated?

History suggests that media doesn't stay simple for long.

Every major innovation, from cable to streaming, from ad servers to programmatic, from measurement to attribution, has followed a familiar path.

Innovation creates opportunity. Opportunity creates fragmentation. Fragmentation creates demand for Consolidation. Consolidation invites Simplicity. Rinse. Repeat.

Agentic AI could be the next chapter in that cycle.

The companies that succeed may not be the ones building the smartest AI, but the ones that make all the other AI systems work together.

We've spent years asking how AI will change media buying.

The more interesting question may be: Who will connect it all once every platform has its own AI?