Ten media executives forecast linear TV decline and FAST growth by 2029

The projected erosion of the traditional cable bundle forces a total reorganization of media economics around personalization and global scale. As linear TV decline removes the historical floor for carriage revenue, companies must pivot toward frictionless commerce and AI-driven localization to maintain margins. This shift benefits dominant platforms like YouTube and Netflix while pressuring mid-tier streamers to consolidate or find niche aggregation partners. The industry is moving toward a hybrid model that combines the logic of cable bundling with the technical flexibility of on-demand streaming. Watch for the pace of sports rights migration to streaming as the final indicator of when the cable ecosystem will reach its breaking point.

The migration of broadcast content to free ad-supported streaming television has accelerated faster than most industry forecasts anticipated. Tubi, Pluto TV, and The Roku Channel have expanded their channel lineups and ad inventory aggressively, creating a competitive environment where scale and content differentiation determine which platforms capture advertiser budgets previously allocated to linear broadcast. The convergence of FAST and ad-supported tiers from Netflix and Disney+ further compresses the distinction between traditional television and streaming, forcing media companies to rethink how they package and price content across distribution surfaces. Nielsen ONE Ads launched commercially in January 2023 as the first module of Nielsen's cross-screen measurement platform, providing deduplicated audience reach and frequency counts across linear TV, CTV, mobile, and desktop based on panel data and an ID resolution system.

The business implications of this shift extend beyond content strategy into advertising measurement and rights economics. Nielsen lost its Media Rating Council accreditation for local and national TV ratings in late 2021, prompting a wave of alternative measurement currency providers to enter the market. Nielsen finalized its plan to add big data sets including second-by-second viewership and census-level data from third parties to its national TV currency, drawing on ACR data from roughly 30 million homes through deals with Roku and Vizio, satellite viewership data from Dish and DirecTV, and set-top box data from Comcast. This measurement evolution is critical because the executives surveyed identified personalization and AI-driven ad targeting as key revenue drivers through 2029, yet advertisers cannot fully commit budgets to streaming until measurement parity with linear is established. Meanwhile, sports rights remain the most expensive and strategically significant content category, with ESPN's direct-to-consumer strategy representing the final structural pillar holding up traditional bundle economics.

On the technology side, ubiquitous personalization and Netflix bundling is emerging as the primary differentiator among streaming platforms competing for viewer attention in an increasingly fragmented landscape. Nielsen ONE integrates planning, measurement, and outcomes tools into a single platform with deduplicated metrics across linear, streaming, and digital, enabling advertisers to define audiences, build campaign scenarios, and optimize in flight with consistent cross-platform metrics. YouTube has similarly invested in AI-powered content discovery and ad personalization, leveraging its position as both a creator platform and a premium content destination. The executives' consensus that AI will reshape content discovery and advertising by 2029 aligns with these platform-level investments, suggesting that companies without sophisticated personalization infrastructure will struggle to compete for both viewers and ad dollars as the linear TV ecosystem continues its structural decline.