SBJ Spotlight: TikTok’s threat to traditional sports media

While tech companies are consumed with finding ways to compete with
TikTok, almost no one in conventional media “spends any time
talking about it,” said Recode senior correspondent Peter Kafka in
an Spotlight interview with SBJ’s John Ourand. “To me, that’s just
an obvious disconnect.” Kafka authored a recent column headlined,
“It’s TikTok’s world. Can TV live in it?” He said the main response
to TikTok’s growth from traditional media execs has been to “punt
and hope it’s someone else’s problem a quarter from now or two
years from now.” But Kafka said that ignores the trend of
conventional broadcast audiences growing older while a billion
younger consumers spend most of their media time watching short
video after short video. “If you’re in the business of getting
anyone under the age of 30 to look at what you’re putting on a
screen, you have to think about the fact that you’re probably
asking them to put down TikTok and watch your thing instead,” said
Kafka. “That’s a very difficult ask. … [TikTok] is insanely
addictive.”