The Media Odyssey
Each week, two of media’s most influential thinkers, Evan Shapiro & Marion Ranchet, take on the hottest media topics with their hottest takes, helping their audience chart a course through the maelstrom that is today’s Media Odyssey. Based in the US, Evan Shapiro is the Media Industry’s official Cartographer, known for his well-researched and provocative analysis of the entertainment ecosystem in his must read treatises on Media’s latest trends and trajectories. Marion Ranchet, French expat based in Amsterdam, has become the industry’s go-to expert in all things streaming, building a following for turning even the most complex problems into easily digestible and actionable insights. Ranchet and Shapiro are known for their sharp-yet-accessible content on Media consumption, audience trends, and the shifting fundamentals of the business itself. Even during the toughest of topics, they each make talking about Media fun. Together every week, these two will offer entertaining, often humorous, and always educational content on today’s Media Odyssey.
Episodes
Happy Summer Break from The Media Odyssey podcast!
The media industry isn’t heading for a clean recovery but bracing for another year of pressure, recalibration, and structural change.
Welcome back to The Media Odyssey Podcast with a special thanks to Spectrum Reach! In this first part of their 2026 predictions, Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet lay out what the coming year will likely bring for media, technology, and enter...
Happy Summer Break from The Media Odyssey podcast!
Public service media isn’t outdated, instead, it’s fighting for relevance, trust, and survival in a fractured global information ecosystem.
Welcome back to The Media Odyssey Podcast. In this episode, Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet sit down with Raney Aronson-Rath, Executive Producer of Frontline and Editor-in-Chief of Documentaries at GBH, for a conversation on the...
Two-thirds of the world watches more video on their phone than on TV, TikTok is beating Netflix in most markets under 55, and traditional media is ignoring 60% of its own audience's attention. It’s The Media Odyssey’s season two finale!
Evan and Marion zoom out on the biggest trends of the year so far they haven’t covered yet: the AI investment bubble, the creator economy's growing pains, the state of kids' content...
AI infrastructure is now two-thirds of US GDP with 90% of companies investing in it reporting almost no ROI, and the media industry is frozen in place waiting for a merger that may never close. Happy H1.
This is the Season 2 finale of the Media Odyssey Podcast (split across two parts) with a deep dive into H1 2026. Evan and Marion zoom out on the biggest trends of the year so far they haven’t covered yet: the AI investment bub...
We’re back with another Media Odyssey LIVE! In this episode, Evan and Marion are joined by former media executives Tony Goncalves and Ami Angelowicz to discuss how to pivot your career after corporate media. The panel shares their personal stories of navigating layoffs, “misalignment burnout”, and finding satisfying careers completely in their own control. The conversation dives into building personal intellectual...
Comcast is splitting in three, Fox just bought Roku for $22 billion, and the Paramount-Warner merger still hasn't closed. Welcome to Media Shark Week.
This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast is Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet's deep-dive into the wave of media mergers reshaping the streaming and broadcasting landscape in real time. Recorded in early July, it covers four major deals in rapid succession: the Comcast-NBCUniversal...
The growing vertical video landscape has potential far beyond microdramas. Two TV veterans just built the studio to take vertical premium all the way with true crime, dating reality formats, scripted drama, and a 12-step AI process to get there.
This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast with Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet features Guy Hameiri and Lior Friedman, co-founders of RoseBerry, a vertical premium television studio built on...
Two nearly century-old brands. One brand-new animated series. And a first-of-its-kind partnership that's never been done before.
This special episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast was recorded on the Croisette at Cannes Lions, hosted inside BBC Studios' headquarters, and features three guests across two breaking news announcements. Jasmine Dawson, SVP of Digital at BBC Studios, returns for what's become an annual tradition on the pod...
Demand for high-quality kids' content has never been higher, but the supply has never been more broken. And YouTube, the most powerful kids' platform on Earth, is running it like an algorithm, not a network.
This live panel episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast, recorded at the Media Universe Summit, features Evan Shapiro and Jamie Shapiro alongside Andy Donner, Head of Partnerships at Common Sense Media, and Sara DeWitt, Senior ...
59% of people now watch video on their phone first. If your content strategy doesn't account for that, Evan Shapiro has a message for you: you're already losing.
This keynote episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast features Evan Shapiro's live Stream TV Europe presentation. It is a fast, data-driven breakdown of where streaming media, social media, YouTube, and TikTok are headed next. Built on original research from MX8 Labs and Evan's...
Valerie Bertinelli has been a content creator since she was 12 years old. She just stopped asking permission to make the shows she wants.
This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast features special guest co-host Valerie Bertinelli — television icon, actress, author, and Food Network — alongside Billy Cooper, CEO and co-founder of Visible Things, the direct-to-consumer platform infrastructure company behind Valerie's brand...
1.7 million subscribers. A Global deal. Live Bundesliga rights. And a studio in Brooklyn for the World Cup. The Overlap built it all without owning a single match.
This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast features Scott Melvin, CEO of The Overlap, the multi-award winning sports channel, for the beginning of the 2026 World Cup. What started as a side hustle for a Sky Sports pundit itching to do long-form conversation has grown into ...
Full Disclosure meets Media Odyssey in this crossover episode of The Media Odyssey podcast with Roben Farzad, host of Full Disclosure on NPR and former Wall Street reporter for BusinessWeek and Bloomberg.
The episode covers a wide sweep of interconnected stories: the proposed Paramount-Warner merger, the editorial independence implications of foreign money in US media, the GameStop-eBay bid as a case study in social media-driven mar...
Eight episodes, $25,000, 2 million views. One indie creator just proved you don't need a studio, a streamer, or a greenlight to break into the fastest-growing format in streaming media.
This bonus episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast features Eli Shell, founder of Sidewise Studios and creator of In-House, a vertical comedy series he wrote, funded, and launched entirely on his own. The vertical video market is almost entirely dominat...
10 billion views. 200+ episodes. A Random House deal and a streamer announcement incoming. Toonstar built it all without asking anyone's permission.
Welcome to this episode of The Media Odyssey Podcast with hosts Marion Ranchet and Evan Shapiro featuring John Attanasio and Luisa Huang, co-founders of Toonstar, a next-generation animation studio built from the ground up to produce kids' and family content at the speed of the internet...
Pure play digital is now capturing 75% of every US ad dollar and 60% of that goes to just three companies. What's left for everyone else?
This episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast brings in Mike Shields, founder of the Next in Media newsletter and podcast and one of the sharpest voices in streaming media and advertising analysis working today. Recorded during Upfront week, this snapshot of the advertising ecosystem addresses who's w...
What if fans could own a piece of the films they love and get paid when they hit? One company is making it happen, and Hollywood gatekeepers are not invited.
Welcome to The Media Odyssey podcast featuring Marc Iserlis, Head of Film at Republic, a platform built one simple but radical idea: fans should be able to invest in the films and studios they care about. Evan and Marion have spent the season exploring what they call the "affin...
Five companies just committed $725 billion to AI in a single year. Meanwhile, kids content is in freefall and the people who can least afford it are paying the price.
Welcome to the Media Odyssey Podcast! Evan, fresh off a surprise Webby Award win for Best Creator Thought Leadership, breaks down Q1 earnings from the five biggest tech companies (Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple) and the AI Loop. Big tech’s collectiv...
What if the future of entertainment fits in your pocket and a six-year-old startup from Ukraine is already building it?
Welcome to the Media Odyssey Podcast, recorded live at StreamTV Europe, featuring Bogdan Nesvit, founder of HOLYWATER TECH and the microdrama platform My Drama. What started six years ago as an interactive fiction app has quietly evolved into one of the most data-sophisticated entertainment companies operating toda...
Europe’s media industry leaders gathered in Lisbon this past week for the inaugural Stream TV Europe, and the prognosis is—to everyone’s surprise—refreshingly optimistic. Welcome to The Media Odyssey podcast!
In this episode, Evan and Marion break down the biggest moments from Stream TV including: the "renaissance" of the living room and the shift in digital strategy by global players. They are later joined b...
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