8 November 2026 · Bogusław Kisielewski

How to manage change in a media company

The newsroom is putting out more material than ever before, the technology team keeps rolling out new tools, and revenue is failing to keep pace with costs. This is exactly when managing change in a media organisation stops being an HR or IT project. It moves up to board level, because the way content is created, distributed and monetised, as well as the decision-making model, all have to be rebuilt at the same time.

In the media business, digitisation on its own does not provide an advantage. What provides it is the ability to make faster and better decisions about the product portfolio, audience data and capital allocation. A VOD platform, a FAST channel, a subscription service, a social format or AI-based automation are not goals in themselves. They are parts of a growth model that needs an owner, metrics and a business case.

Why change in media is harder than in other industries

A media company operates across several time horizons at once. It has to sustain current revenue from advertising, linear distribution, licence sales or subscriptions. At the same time it invests in digital products whose economics can be less predictable for a while. On top of that, it has to respond to shifts in audience behaviour, platform decisions, the development of generative AI and the ever-rising cost of capturing attention.

The most common mistake is to see these tensions as a dispute between the "old" and the "new" business. In reality the question is different: which assets of the traditional model can be used to build a digital advantage, and which merely tie up capital and absorb management's attention? A strong brand, a content library, relationships with talent, programming expertise and distribution reach can form the basis for growth. Processes built on manual work, scattered data and a lack of accountability for the product usually do not.

Change also reaches the team's identity. The newsroom focuses on the quality and impact of content, sales on hitting the budget, technology on system stability and product on user retention. Each of these viewpoints is essential. The trouble starts when there is no single, shared definition of success.

Managing change in a media organisation starts with an investment thesis

Transformation should not begin with a list of technologies to implement. First, the board must adopt an investment thesis, meaning a clear answer to the question of where the company will build growth over a three-year horizon and why it has the right to win there.

For one media group this means growing subscriptions built on expert content and premium products. For another - getting the maximum value out of its library through VOD, thematic channels and licensing. A third company may base its advantage on first-party data, advertising formats and more precise targeting. There is no single right scenario, but each one requires different skills, different technology and a different cost structure.

A good investment thesis consists of three elements. First, it identifies a priority audience segment and a problem the audience will actually pay to have solved, with time, data or money. Second, it defines the monetisation mechanism. Third, it shows which of the company's assets form a barrier to entry for competitors. Without this, the organisation will fund a string of attractive initiatives that do not add up to an operating result.

Transformation also needs to be distinguished from experimentation. An experiment is cheap, time-limited and has a clear decision criterion: we scale it, we improve it or we shut it down. Transformation changes the way the whole company operates. If every pilot drags on indefinitely, the organisation is not developing its capacity for change, merely accumulating a portfolio of unaccounted-for costs.

Build a portfolio, not a collection of initiatives

In a mature media company, the board's most valuable tool is a portfolio map. It should show not only products and channels but also their economic function: cash source, growth area, strategic option or asset for restructuring.

A TV channel with stable ratings can fund digital development, but it need not automatically receive the largest share of the budget. A VOD product may deserve investment despite currently lower profitability if it builds a direct relationship with the audience and proprietary data. An AI project, in turn, may be justified not because it is fashionable but because it shortens production time, allows more variants to be tested or lowers the cost of managing the catalogue.

Every item in the portfolio should have a P&L owner, or at the very least an owner of the business result. A person responsible for rolling out a system is not enough. What is needed is a leader who is accountable for the outcome after the roll-out: higher retention, better advertising yield, shorter time-to-market or a lower unit cost of content.

This changes the language of the conversation. The board no longer asks whether the company has "implemented AI", but in which processes AI has improved margin, decision quality or pace of work. Instead of counting new distribution channels, it analyses net revenue, cost of reach and audience value in each of them.

Data must feed into everyday decisions

The media have had reach data for years. Transformation, however, requires data that makes it possible to manage user behaviour and product economics. That is a fundamental difference. Reach tells you how many people showed up. Product data shows who comes back, what prompts registration, at what point a user drops off and which content raises customer value over time.

There is no need to build an elaborate data architecture straight away. It is worth starting with a few decisions that are currently made on gut feeling, even though they could rest on facts. They might concern investment in genres, the order of premieres, content recommendations, the paywall, pricing policy or advertising packages.

The prerequisite is a shared definition of key metrics. If sales measures campaign success differently from the product team, and the newsroom understands engagement differently again, the company is not managing change. It is conducting negotiations between silos. That is why it is worth agreeing on a common set of measures: active user base, retention, ARPU, acquisition cost, share of digital revenue, content margin and time to market.

AI: process first, scale later

AI in the media makes sense above all where there is high repetitiveness, significant volume or a need to produce variants quickly. This includes, among other things, transcribing and describing library assets, localising material, creating metadata, analysing comments, supporting advertising sales and preparing promotional versions of content.

Not every process is suitable for automation. Editorial material, programming decisions and communication with the audience carry reputational, legal and quality risks. There, AI should support people rather than take over the responsibility of an editor, producer or manager. The pace of implementation depends on the value of the process and the size of the risk.

The practical rule is simple: before launching a solution, you need to establish a baseline. How long does the process take today, how much does it cost, what is its error rate and who signs off the result? Only then can you fairly judge whether automation has made a difference. Without a baseline measurement, an AI project easily becomes a technology showcase with no effect on results.

The team needs decisions, not just communication

Change programmes often focus on communication. It is essential, but employees judge the credibility of a transformation by decisions rather than presentations. If a company announces a digital priority while the budget, promotions and the board's attention still reward only traditional channels, the organisation will read the real signal unerringly.

Leaders must draw clear lines of accountability. The product team cannot simply fulfil orders from the newsroom, and technology should not act as an internal helpdesk for the business. A cross-functional model works better, in which one team is responsible for a specific audience and financial outcome. The newsroom, product, data, marketing and technology then work towards a single goal instead of passing the task from one stage to the next.

Change also requires skills the company may not have. This does not always mean large-scale recruitment. Sometimes a selective reshuffle of roles, a technology partnership or developing in-house product leaders turns out to be the better option. Above all, there should be no pretending that a capability will appear on its own just because it has been written into the strategy.

A management rhythm that sustains the pace

Even the best strategies lose value without a rhythm of execution. The board should run the transformation in short cycles, for example quarterly, with a small number of priorities and a transparent review of results. In such a rhythm, the discussion covers not only budget delivery but also the decisions to be made: what to accelerate, what to pause, where to shift capital and what risk to accept.

In the media, it is particularly important to separate leading indicators from lagging ones. Revenue and EBITDA show the outcome, but with a delay. Retention, user activity, registration conversion, unit production cost or the share of content recommended by algorithms can signal earlier whether the strategy is working.

Nor is there any point pretending that every change will deliver an immediate return. Developing first-party data, rebuilding the CMS or expanding VOD all take time. The board must, however, set milestones in advance at which it will assess whether the investment still deserves funding. Discipline in shutting projects down is just as valuable as courage in starting them.

The strongest media organisations do not win because they foresee every change in the market. They win because they can turn a market signal into a decision, a decision into a product and a product into a measurable result faster than their competitors. That is where the board's next conversation should begin: not with the question of which technology to buy, but with which business decision the company wants to make better from tomorrow.

Based on a Polish post at boguslawkisielewski.pl.