The upfronts have a new center of gravity
Mike Shields takes us through the 2026 upfronts, the sports rights math and more.
“For Amazon, advertising is like the world’s greatest side hustle.”
Mike Shields, Next in Media
A small confession: I have a voice crush on Mike Shields, there I’ve said it. He runs Next in Media and happens to be one of the few writers who can take ad tech, agency politics and measurement and make any of it readable for the rest of us. So when upfront week 2026 wrapped, he was the only guest Evan Shapiro and I really wanted on the pod.
We caught him just after Disney closed out and before the marketplace itself opens. We wanted his take on what actually changed this year, what is real and what is PR jargon. Spoiler: the upfront is alive and well and its new center of gravity is big tech.
Big tech now runs the calendar. Shields explains why the trad media calendar now bends around big tech instead of the other way around.
Shields then takes us through why the sports rights math is breaking, his honest read on Thursday Night Football’s “add to cart” experiment and more.
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That’s it for today but before you go:
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