About The Medium
Welcome to The Medium Substack. I am Andrew Rosen, a former executive-turned-analyst. I lived through one disruption cycle—direct-to-consumer and streaming—inside the building and learned what the smartest executives were missing or struggling to understand. I have 20 years of experience in digital media, and analyzed these market shifts in the Medium Shift column for The Information.
I now write about how AI is a new medium, but leaders treat it as a cost efficiency or technology upgrade.
The Medium
The Medium helps leaders understand how AI as a new medium disrupts their traditional understanding of audience engagement.
As a former digital media executive who started his career when Google’s Search Engine Optimization became the new paradigm—and then cut my teeth during the streaming era—I am well-schooled in how audience engagement economics shift during platform transitions. But generative AI is a fundamentally new medium—this is not another case of history repeating itself. When users can “prompt” episodes of shows they're watching, or when a platform like Google Veo 3 generates 70 million videos in three months, we are not only seeing faster/cheaper content creation.
We are witnessing the emergence of entirely new relationships between audiences and content.
The danger is that leaders and investors are applying old frameworks to something unprecedented. They are debating Netflix vs. YouTube competition while missing that AI technology turns every user into a potential creator. They are worried about “AI slop” quality while the real question is whether the boundary between creator and consumer is disappearing entirely, especially with 1.2 billion .
My professional experience with previous disruptions helps me to pattern-match, but AI as a medium demands new mental models. I write to help leaders grasp not just the immediate business model implications, but the deeper transformation of what content creation and consumption might become.
Because if AI truly is a new medium, we are not just optimizing for different engagement costs—we are entering entirely uncharted territory.
Who is The Medium for?
You have watched brilliant executives get disrupted because they could not decode the new economics of audience engagement fast enough. The Medium is for Anyone making multi-million dollar investments in startups or banking on strategic platform partnerships and want to prevent history from repeating itself with them.
These investors and executives:
Lack formal training audience engagement business models
Feel overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technological change
Struggle to assess how AI is reshaping content creation, distribution, and monetization
Fear missing out on emerging opportunities
The Medium helps you take calculated risks on the single most important factor for future success: Decode how AI is changing audience engagement before your competition figures it out.
The Medium is an independent, reader-supported publication drawing on 20 years of corporate, entrepreneurial and analytical experience in digital media.
Join over 20,000 investors, executives and entrepreneurs who receive The Medium in their inbox.
Questions after reading this FAQ? Email Andrew at andrew@parqor.com.
FAQ
I’m a past subscriber to The Medium, how do I log in to Substack?
Your email address for The Medium is the same one you used when you registered via The Information. Please follow the instructions found here to login to Substack using this email address.
If you use a different email address for your Substack subscriptions and want to transfer your existing subscription to that email address, please follow the instructions found here.
Why subscribe to The Medium?
Principal and Founder Andrew Rosen is a former executive-turned-analyst who lived through one disruption cycle—streaming—and can now spot the patterns of the next one in AI. He has 20 years of experience watching business models break in real-time.
He distills both 20 years of experience in digital media and private insights from top entrepreneurs, innovators, and decision-makers who are re-imagining and building audience engagement models in the age of AI. He uses these insights to reveal sensitive, often hidden signals that reveal the truly important emerging marketplaces after the secular decline of traditional media, what risks others underestimate, and what opportunities are still invisible to the mainstream.
How can I subscribe to The Medium?
The Medium is an independent, reader-supported publication drawing on 20 years of corporate, entrepreneurial and analytical experience in digital media. There are two ways to access these insights:
Standard ($15/month or $180/year): Monthly or annual access to in-depth interviews and insights sent 2x/week (typically Mondays and Thursdays).
PARQOR Platinum ($499/year): Exclusive monthly, quarterly and annual analyses and presentations, deeper thematic explorations across interviews, the ability to send advance questions for interviews and an exclusive community of leading investors, entrepreneurs and executives from The Medium’s three years on The Information.
How do I upgrade to a Platinum account?
Whether you are a free reader wishing to get paid access, or a paid subscriber looking to join the Platinum Tier, sign in to your account on Substack and follow the instructions found here.
My email for Substack publications is different from The Medium, what do I do?
If you use a different email address for your Substack subscriptions and want to transfer your subscription to The Medium to that email address, please follow the instructions found here." here.
How do I change the email address associated with my account?
Please follow the instructions found here to change your email address.
Can I print a PDF of your essays?
To print a PDF of any past essay, navigate to any article online by either clicking on the header of an essay you have received via email, or by visiting an article on The Medium directly. You will see a the 3-dot menu (...) to the right of the Share button. Click that and a menu including an option to "Open as PDF." The system will then generate a formatted PDF for saving or printing.
How do I cancel my subscription?
To cancel a subscription (or turn-off auto-renew), you can do so in Settings by following the instructions found here. You are also welcome to simply email Andrew at andrew@parqor.com an so we can cancel the subscription (or stop auto-renew) directly on your behalf.
About The Medium
Why is it called “The Medium”?
Technology constrains and shapes both content consumption and user engagement. The Medium mirrors McLuhan's insight that technology constrains and shapes both content consumer and user engagement. Emerging technological constraints not only reshape and redefine “content” but also our interaction with and consumption of content.
The title also is a nod to Medium Shift, a regular column on The Information.
Why is The Medium back on Substack?
Substack now enables The Medium to deliver full video interviews, audio conversations, and traditional essays individually and collectively providing depth and context.
All subscribers will now have access to an evergreen resource with deeper insights from interviews and new ways to engage with the content.
Who Is Andrew Rosen?
Andrew authors The Medium and founded PARQOR LLC. He writes Medium Shift, a monthly column on The Information tracking the transformations underway in the media business.
His analysis of the streaming marketplace has guided C-Suite executives and investors since 2015. Previously, he served as a digital media executive at Viacom (MTVN, BET).
What is PARQOR?
[How to pronounce: “Paar - kor”]
PARQOR is the mindset of revealing the potential in everyday markets, questioning established ideas and common wisdom, and reassessing the moving pieces of marketplaces.
The branding is a nod to Parkour, the practice of efficiently navigating urban environments through creative movement. PARQOR’s analyses on The Medium surface unexpected connections and patterns in familiar landscapes.
Can we hire Andrew for speaking engagements?
Yes. For the past two years, Andrew has given talks on evolving business models in media and journalism to Burda Media trainees and journalists at the Digital-Life-Design (DLD) Conference in Munich, Germany. You can also watch his impromptu talk here, delivered after an interview with then-YouTube Chief Business Office Robert Kyncl was cancelled at the last minute due to illness.
You can also listen to Andrew’s recent podcast appearances in the Articles + Appearances section.
Please email any questions or requests to andrew@parqor.com.
Join the conversation
Follow me at @aagave on X/Twitter, where I have discussions and (sometimes spirited) debates with researchers, investors and other former executives about the streaming marketplace.
