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