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We’ve viewed 2024 as a fragmentation election, and media analysts largely expect fragmentation to continue – more and more podcasts and Substacks and hyper-personalized TikTok accounts and increasingly weaker major media outlets.

But as one of the great early Internet CEOs once said, there are only two options in media: bundling and unbundling. Just when you think one of these trends is in control, the pendulum begins to swing back. And there are good reasons to expect a wave of bundling on both the consumer and corporate sides.

The consumer push is obvious: the number of subscriptions you need to keep up with entertainment and news is insane, unmanageable and expensive. Consumers are overwhelmed by information and disoriented by complicated decisions. Part of our secret at Semafor is helping our readers navigate this messy, untrustworthy patchwork of paid and free content. I love a lot of Substacks, read some of them, but can’t keep paying a combined $200 a month. I expect there will be an annual Substack subscription in 2025 as individual publishers struggle to survive the coming wave of subscriptions.

In the meantime, I want to watch shows on Max, Netflix, Prime, Hulu and Apple TV+ – but it’s maddening to pay for all those subscriptions on top of YouTube TV for sports. Consumers are reaching a breaking point and streamers are starting to respond with new packages – but if they don’t act fast enough, they will find other players happy to offer packages. Amazingly, Verizon offers a Netflix/Max package. If media companies can’t figure out how to act as bundlers, other layers of the ecosystem – telecoms, devices, social platforms – will.

Large corporations are now also striving for consolidation. The Trump administration is more likely than Biden to wave through major media mergers — including another endlessly debated WarnerMedia sale. Elon Musk is building a new conservative/populist creator platform for his distribution rights to compete with X.