Content may be king, but context is queen

“Content is King-er” concluded a leading media industry prognosticator in the keynote address at the recent Media Insights and Engagement Conference, after he took the audience through a whirlwind tour of the changes in the ecosystem over the past year. He was doubling down on the oft-made claim that content is king with a purposeful grammatical error. Of course, we have all heard about the importance of quality content in the fight for viewers and the claim to the crown has become almost standard industry doctrine. One needs to look no further than the cult following of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, This is Us, and The Handmaid’s Tale to understand the impact of quality on a network or streaming service. While from the main stage, the content is king claim resonated, it was made to sound hollow as the conference unfolded over the next two and half days as session after session of media and research executives laid out their challenges and strategies to capture eyeballs today. Two interrelated realities emerged from the myriad presentations: We have reached a state of peak content and, in a world of good content abundance, the context of how we learn about, access and make choices is now nearly as important as the quality of the content.