---
type: source
title: "EY 2026 Media and Entertainment Trends: Simplicity, Authenticity and the Rise of Experiences"
author: "EY (Ernst & Young)"
url: https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/media-entertainment/2026-media-and-entertainment-trends-simplicity-authenticity-and-the-rise-of-experiences
date: 2026-01-01
domain: entertainment
secondary_domains: []
format: report
status: unprocessed
priority: high
tags: [authenticity, ai-content, media-trends, consumer-preferences, streaming, podcast]
---

## Content

EY's 2026 M&E trends report identifies a critical tension: AI productivity tools are expanding across entertainment production while synthetic "AI slop" is simultaneously proliferating, eroding consumer trust.

**Trust collapse:**
- September 2025 Gallup poll: confidence in news organizations at lowest level on record — 28%
- Steeper declines among younger audiences

**Strategic implication:**
Authenticity becomes a competitive advantage. Media leaders advised to blend AI-driven efficiencies with human creativity, ensuring audiences encounter "recognizably human" content—genuine storytelling and distinctive editorial judgment.

**Consumer entertainment preferences (from EY Decoding the Digital Home 2025 Study):**
Consumers don't want MORE content; they want:
- Better mix of live TV, channels, and dedicated apps
- Greater customization and guidance
- Overall simplification

Fragmentation remains primary pain point, particularly for sports fans navigating rising costs and fragmented rights.

**Podcast market growth:**
- Global podcast market projected to surge from $7.7 billion in 2024 to $41.1 billion by 2029
- 39.9% CAGR — underscoring format's staying power and importance of long-form human voice

## Agent Notes
**Why this matters:** EY's "authenticity as competitive advantage" framing is exactly the mechanism my KB needs to explain why studios might rationally invest in demonstrated human creative direction even as AI costs fall. It's not nostalgia — it's that authenticity is becoming a premium differentiator in a world of infinite cheap content.

**What surprised me:** The consumer preference for SIMPLIFICATION (fewer services, better guidance) contradicts the intuitive assumption that more content options = better. Consumers aren't suffering from too little — they're suffering from too much. This has implications for the community-filtered IP thesis: communities as curation layers are more valuable than I'd modeled.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Specific data on what percentage of media consumers actively seek "human-certified" content, or whether AI disclosure requirements are moving into regulation.

**KB connections:**
- Strengthens: `the media attractor state is community-filtered IP with AI-collapsed production costs where content becomes a loss leader for the scarce complements of fandom community and ownership`
- Connects to: `information cascades create power law distributions in culture because consumers use popularity as a quality signal when choice is overwhelming` — the simplification desire is the same phenomenon
- The podcast growth data supports: `complex ideas propagate with higher fidelity through personal interaction than mass media because nuance requires bidirectional communication`

**Extraction hints:**
- Potential claim enrichment: add authenticity premium data to `consumer definition of quality is fluid and revealed through preference not fixed by production value`
- New claim candidate: "Content fragmentation has reached the point where simplification and curation are more valuable to consumers than additional content quantity"
- The podcast CAGR (39.9%) as evidence that human voice and intimacy retain premium value in AI content environment

**Context:** EY M&E practice works with major studios and platforms on strategy. This report is credible signal about where enterprise entertainment investment is heading.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: `the media attractor state is community-filtered IP with AI-collapsed production costs where content becomes a loss leader for the scarce complements of fandom community and ownership`
WHY ARCHIVED: The "simplification demand" finding reframes the attractor state — consumers want less content but better curation. The authenticity-as-competitive-advantage thesis names the mechanism by which community-owned IP (which signals human creativity) commands a premium.
EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on (1) simplification demand as evidence that curation is scarce, not content, and (2) authenticity-as-premium as a claim that can sit alongside (not contradict) AI cost-collapse claims.
