The Medium is the Mutation (Pt. 2): Monetization and Mutation

Every delivery method of entertainment implies a path to monetization, and that path shapes the creative act. When revenue comes from ticket sales, you invest in the stage. When it comes from ad dollars, you write to the break. When it comes from algorithms, you write for clicks.

Monetization models are not neutral—they drive budgets, which in turn determine production value, which in turn create audience expectations. Eventually, the product’s very aesthetic logic comes to reflect its revenue logic. Sometimes this leads to aesthetic success. Sometimes it leads to aesthetic stagnation. Hollywood’s current output—largely IP-driven mega-films backed by private equity or corporate media conglomerates—reflects this perfectly. Each film is less a standalone work than it is a financial instrument: a known quantity engineered for maximum global box office, merchandise potential, and theme park synergy. They are expensive commercials for themselves. But they are not really films.

But technology is not inherently the enemy of art. Tomorrow we will look at one of the great artistic achievements of our day which has always been pushed forward by technology and mode of delivery.

The Medium is the Mutation (Pt. 1): Entertainment, Distribution, and the Evolution of the Product

Every entertainment product is shaped not only by its content but by how it is delivered. This is not incidental—it is constitutive. This has been true forever.

When Anglo-Saxon scops performed their poems, they were also composing in a meter and rhyme scheme which made their product memorizable. That’s how we have Beowulf still today.

Elizabethan drama was inseparable from the open-air amphitheaters, daylight performances, and all-male casts of its time—conditions that demanded vivid language, heightened emotion, and theatrical ingenuity, giving rise to the genius of Shakespeare, whose plays were shaped by and written for that very form. And he did it so well, his plays became works of literature to be read.

A Depression-era radio drama in the American Heartland was not simply a stage play without visuals; it was a form that lived and breathed and thrived within the affordances and constraints of radio. Change the mode of delivery—to television, to podcast, to livestream—and the product changes too. Not just in packaging, but in pacing, structure, budget, and ultimately meaning.

So we see the mode of delivery becomes embedded in the product itself. Silent films had exaggerated facial expressions because that was the communicative mode. Network TV dramas were built around ad breaks, which shaped story arcs. VHS led to the rise of the direct-to-video market; streaming birthed the binge model, which in turn warped storytelling to serve the "next episode" button. The medium doesn’t just carry the message—it molds it.

Ponder that and tomorrow we will discuss monetization.

This article was first posted on MontLux.com

Poetry about Texas

Poetry about Texas

This short book is a Texan’s reflections on home through the lens of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets; or reflections on Four Quartets through the lens of Texas. It is available on Amazon for $6.99.

“Jagged, hopeful men 

High on the dream of independence declared

At Washington-on-the-Brazos

Built and built again

A hardscrabble Capitol of whiskey-breath 

Poker games and livestock

By the dusky molten bronze River

Singing low, they dug deep”

Excerpts from Four Texas Quartets:

“It is told by our Storytellers

That before the age of barbed wire 

A steer driven from deep down in Texas as far as Kansas 

Would sometimes turn around 

Walk back along the trail and eventually 

Arrive where he started”