Every quarter, Evan Shapiro listens to the earnings calls of all the publicly traded media companies in the US—roughly 100 of them—and compares the earnings transcripts to the actual numbers. He constantly tracks the growth or decline of each of these, plus about 25 privately owned media companies. Using this information, he redraws the map he first drew in 2020, which looks like the map of a solar system through the lens of a fever dream: a handful of terrifyingly huge planets, then so many Venuses and Neptunes, then dwarf planets so small you could mistake them for space debris.

The map tells, with startling clarity, the complicated story of today’s media universe, in which the planets keep expanding, contracting, vanishing. It has been the springboard for many what-does-it-all-mean conversations online (Shapiro publishes a popular Substack, Media War and Peace) as well as for Shapiro’s rebirth as a media thought leader, prognosticator and in-demand speaker (he’s a former network exec). The map is a work of art, really—one that’s never ever finished.

What else is it? “A lot of f***ing work, to be honest with you,” says Shapiro. Like herding cats? “Like chasing toddlers at a birthday party where they gave out sugar and meth.”

But, he points out, “It’s all I do now. And nobody else is doing it.”
Which is the reason he, and only he, carries the title of “media cartographer”—a name somebody called him a few years ago and which he decided to run with. “I thought, ‘That’s a really good title,’” says Shapiro. “A cartographer is someone who helps lead through the darkness to a path of insight. I think that’s really good.”

Insights have become Shapiro’s stock-in-trade. Here’s one of them: while many lament that, today, too few companies control the media, “control” of the media has long rested in the hands of a small number. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, it was the Crown or the Church; afterwards, several corporations began to take over. Shapiro says this is partly due to the fact that the media is a “shapeshifting organism,” slippery and prone to consolidation.

The last time Shapiro redrew his map, he had to expand its size to accommodate the three “Death Stars”: Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia (whose astronomical growth Shapiro predicted three years ago), valued at approximately $3 trillion each. The map makes plain the gravitational pull those larger bodies have on the smaller ones around them—a dynamic the Canadian production industry knows all too well, as it strives to remain in its own orbit next to the American behemoth.

Shapiro has insight on this dynamic as well. When it comes to smaller players like Canada staying relevant—surviving, even—in this media ecosystem, he believes in the value of a muscular cultural policy. He applauds the effort of the Canadian government to bring the streamers into its regulatory framework with Bill C-11.

“It’s not protectionism; it’s not socialism,” says Shapiro (who, as an American, is well acquainted with that line of thinking). “It is really the responsibility and provenance of a government to foster creativity within the community who are native to that region. That’s how we get a diverse set of content on the planet Earth.”

“It’s not protectionism; it’s not socialism. It is really the responsibility and provenance of a government to foster creativity within the community who are native to that region. That’s how we get a diverse set of content on the planet Earth.”

Evan Shapiro

As the former president of the IFC Channel, he’s worked within Canadian broadcast regulations before. He understood they were tough, and followed them anyway. As such, Shapiro has little patience for streamers who may be bothered by the new regulations. “They’ve been getting a real free ride for a real long time,” he says. “Why are they so special?”

Bill C-11 may not be perfect, he says. But there is no perfect regulation: “There is the best attempt that humans can make, and I think [C-11] is a great first attempt.”

He’s also emphatic about the importance of a strong public service media. He laments the way that public broadcasters—NPR and PBS in the US, CBC in Canada—are under constant attack from their parent governments. In his opinion, “A healthy, vibrant public service media should be the first thing that governments are focused on.”

He goes further: “I think anybody who gets to be a nominee of a major party in any territory on Earth should have to take a media literacy course before they get on the ballot. I don’t care what your political leanings are. Understand the media, understand the Internet, understand what happens when you hand an iPhone to a 12-year-old. Understand it. Think about it. And then you get to run for office.”

After all, it’s the media’s universe; we’re just living in it.