In the last post, we looked at how the power in film and TV has always belonged to those who control the money, the distribution, and more recently, the data.

But something else has been happening in parallel. While traditional media doubled down on centralization, creators were building something new.

We all saw it unfold in real time. A teenager with a webcam could build a bigger audience than a cable network. A vlogger could sell out merch in minutes. A streamer could earn more in a month than a studio assistant does in a year.

For the first time, the tools to publish, promote, and profit were in the hands of individuals. And what emerged from that shift was something people started calling the creator economy.

But here’s the thing no one likes to admit.

Even now, it’s still not a fair fight.

The Platform Trap

Yes, creators have more power than ever. But that power comes with a catch.

Everything is routed through platforms: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Spotify. Each has its own rules, revenue share, and algorithms. These platforms aren’t neutral pipes. They are middlemen with enormous influence over what gets seen, who gets paid, and who disappears without warning.

And creators know it. Because one change to an algorithm, one demonetization notice, or one content flag can wipe out an income stream overnight.

We’ve moved from being at the mercy of studio execs to being at the mercy of content platforms. The faces changed, but the leverage didn’t.

If anything, the system’s gotten more exploitative over time, a phenomenon known as “Enshittification.” The more value creators and audiences bring in, the more the platforms squeeze out, until almost nobody wins except the platform itself.

Creators Built the Culture. But Not the Infrastructure.

Think about it.

Nearly every cultural trend of the past decade, music, fashion, politics, even how people learn, has been shaped by creators.

They make the content that drives engagement. They build the communities that keep people coming back. They turn viewers into fans, and fans into movements.

But the infrastructure they rely on? It wasn’t built for them. And it definitely wasn’t built by them.

That’s why the relationship still feels off. Creators generate the value, but they don’t own the platform. They don’t own the audience. And they rarely own the upside.

The vast majority of creators see little real reward. For every breakout success, there are millions more whose work is just raw material for someone else’s profit.

What If Creators Could Own the Pipes, Too?

Here’s where things get interesting.

What happens when creators don’t just create content but also shape the platform it lives on?

That’s what blockchain technology makes possible. Not as hype, not as speculation, but as a way to rethink how content is shared, funded, and rewarded.

Instead of relying on a platform’s black-box revenue system, creators can use transparent smart contracts that distribute earnings automatically.

Instead of hoping an algorithm pushes their work, they can build directly with their community, turning fans into backers, holders, and co-owners.

Instead of renting attention from a platform, creators can build ecosystems that grow in value as they do. Audiences that stick around, invest in the journey, and participate in the outcome.

It’s not just a financial shift. It’s a structural one.

We’re Closer Than We Think

These ideas used to feel futuristic. Now, they’re already starting to take shape.

On decentralized platforms, creators are launching shows, releasing digital collectibles, and earning tokens tied to actual usage and engagement.

Fans aren’t just watching. They’re curating, voting, funding, and sharing. And getting rewarded for it.

We’re not just seeing a new kind of creator. We’re seeing a new kind of creator economy. One where value flows outward, not upward.

One where creators and communities grow together. And where the rules are written in code, not in boardrooms.

Up Next: What Real Creator Freedom Looks Like

Of course, it’s not perfect yet. There are still barriers: onboarding, UX, education, and trust.

But we’re making progress. And in Part 2, we’ll dive deeper into how platforms like RewardedTV are helping creators step off the algorithm treadmill, own their audience, and build for the long haul.

The creator economy changed everything. Now it’s time to change the infrastructure behind it.

In Part 1, we explored how the film and TV industry evolved from studio monopolies to data-driven streaming giants, and how, despite decades of disruption, the power has never really shifted into the hands of those who make or watch the content.

Today, though, we’re at an inflection point.

For the first time in a century, we don’t just have new tools. We have the chance to build an entirely different system, one where creators, not corporations, are at the center of the value chain. And where audiences aren’t just consumers, but active participants.

Blockchain isn’t the answer to every problem in media, but when it comes to power, transparency, and ownership, it’s a game-changer.

Here’s how.

1. True Vertical Integration Without the Monopoly

The old studio model worked because it controlled the entire lifecycle of a film: funding, production, distribution, and profit.

Blockchain lets us recreate that, but without centralizing power in a single entity.

Creators can now:

• Fund projects through NFTs or tokenized crowdsales
  
• Distribute via decentralized platforms, not dependent on major studios
  
• Earn revenue through smart contracts that pay out transparently and instantly
  
• Retain ownership over their IP, even as it’s licensed or monetized
  

It’s vertical integration, owned by the artists and their community, not by legacy studios.

2. Transparent, Automated Revenue Sharing

If we ask any filmmaker, actor, or screenwriter what the biggest pain point in the industry is, odds are they’ll mention the same thing: getting paid fairly and getting paid on time.

Smart contracts change that.

Every time a piece of content is viewed, licensed, or sold, royalties can be distributed instantly and on-chain. No middlemen. No opaque contracts. No creative accounting.

For once, the people doing the work get to see how the money flows. And they don’t need to fight for it. It’s baked into the code.

3. Creative Freedom Through Decentralized Funding

Of course, transparency and fair payouts are only part of the story. For many creators, though, the real roadblock comes much earlier in the process.

When creators pitch projects to studios, there’s always a filter: Is this commercially viable? Does it fit a brand strategy? Can it “travel well” globally?

Some of that makes business sense, but many important, bold, or personal stories never make it past that gatekeeping layer.

Blockchain opens up new paths to funding, directly from fans, communities, or mission-aligned investors. Whether it’s a docuseries, an indie film, or a niche genre, projects that would’ve been rejected in traditional rooms can finally be greenlit by the people who care most.

This isn’t just creative freedom. It’s creative resilience.

4. A Role for the Audience Beyond the Remote Control

If creators finally have new ways to fund and distribute their work, what about the audience?

For decades, viewers have been treated like data points: watch time, click rate, subscription churn. In the streaming economy, we’re inputs, not participants or fans.

Blockchain offers a different path, a completely new role for the audience:

• Watch-to-earn models reward attention, curation, and sharing
  
• Viewers can own collectibles, tokens, or NFTs tied to the content or creator
  
• Fans can vote on future projects, fund pilots, or even co-create alongside artists
  

This shift transforms the audience from passive observer to active participant. A new generation of modern-day patrons. Not just subscribers but people with real skin in the game.

5. This Isn’t Theoretical. It’s Happening.

This transformation isn’t just a thought experiment or some distant idea. We’re already building it and making it real, right now.

At RewardedTV, we’re taking these ideas and turning them into a real, working platform. One that:

• Pays creators instantly and transparently
  
• Lets fans earn for watching, reviewing, or curating content
  
• Opens the door for new projects to get funded by the communities who believe in them
  
• Aligns the incentives of everyone involved, creators, viewers, supporters, around shared success
  

We’re not trying to rebuild the old studio system. We’re building something better.

A place where creators own their future. A place where fans have a voice. A place where watching something you love isn’t just entertainment. It’s participation.

What’s Next?

The tools are here. The audience is ready. The only thing left is for more creators, and more visionaries, to take the leap.

In future posts, we’ll explore how this approach overlaps with the creator economy, how we fix the user experience in Web3, and why mainstream adoption might be closer than we think.

But for now, I’ll leave you with this:

The future of film doesn’t belong to platforms. It belongs to people.

Most people think streaming changed everything. It did, just not in the way we hoped.

If anything, the story of film and TV over the past hundred years is a story of control. It’s about who gets to fund the work, who gets to distribute it, who makes money from it, and who doesn’t. The technology keeps evolving, but the power structures? They’ve remained surprisingly constant. 

And today, they’re more concentrated than ever.

To understand what needs to change, and how blockchain might actually offer a better path forward, we need to rewind. Because the system we’re living with today is just the latest version of a long-standing pattern.

The Studio Era: When One Company Owned It All

In the early 1900s, Hollywood’s original powerhouses, MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount, controlled everything. They owned the production studios, they owned the distribution pipelines, and they even owned the theaters where audiences watched the films.

This setup, known as vertical integration, was efficient. It let the studios scale quickly, pump out movies, and dominate the market. But it also locked out independent voices. If you weren’t inside the system, your film didn’t get made. Or if it did, it didn’t get seen.

It wasn’t just a business model, it was a gatekeeping machine.

The Paramount Decree: A Window Opens

Then came a shake-up. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the studios in what’s now known as the Paramount Decree. It forced them to sell off their theater chains, breaking the full-stack control they had over film.

The result? A wave of independent filmmakers stepped into the space. Studios shifted focus toward production and away from distribution. For a few decades, there was real creative breathing room. If you had a great idea and a small team, you could build something.

It didn’t last.

The Conglomerates Strike Back

Starting in the 1980s, major media companies, Disney, Time Warner, NBCUniversal, Viacom, started consolidating again. This time, the control came through different layers: cable channels, home video rights, syndication, and eventually global TV networks.

They didn’t need to own the theaters anymore. They were the pipeline.

By the 2000s, most people were consuming media that flowed through just a handful of corporations. Creative decisions were increasingly tied to shareholder value, not audience needs, and certainly not creator equity.

Streaming: Revolution or Reinvention?

Then came the streaming era. Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney+, massive platforms with global reach, direct-to-consumer models, and vast data infrastructures.

At first, it felt like freedom. No more cable boxes. No more gatekeepers. But we quickly learned something else: in streaming, the real power isn’t just in distribution, it’s in the data.

Today, creators often have no idea how their content is performing. Viewership numbers, engagement metrics, even basic revenue attribution, it’s all locked behind closed doors. You can’t negotiate a better deal when you don’t even know how your last show performed.

And it’s not just about money. Data shapes the creative process itself. Algorithms decide what gets promoted, what gets buried, what gets greenlit.

We’ve gone from studio execs in boardrooms to opaque machine-learning models that no one outside the platform controls. Different tools. Same outcome.

And What About the Audience?

Here’s the kicker: through all these evolutions, the audience, the people who fund this entire ecosystem through subscriptions, ticket sales, and attention, have always been treated as passive consumers.

They’ve had no say in what gets made, no access to ownership, and no meaningful connection with the creators they support.

That’s not just a missed opportunity. It’s a broken model. Because today’s fans want more than a like button. They want a stake.

What Happens Next?

We’re standing at a crossroads. The infrastructure has changed, but the power dynamics haven’t. And that’s where things get interesting.

Because for the first time in a century, we’re not just shifting who controls the system, we have the chance to rebuild it entirely.

In Part 2, I’ll explore what that actually looks like, and how blockchain, transparency, and community-driven platforms can give creators and audiences the power they’ve always deserved.

Stay tuned.

Coming back from TOKEN2049 in Dubai, I left inspired, but also more resolute than ever.

Because alongside the progress and passion, the same two questions kept cropping up in every hallway conversation, investor meeting, and off-the-record huddle:

• Why is there still so much corruption in a space that was designed to eliminate it?
• Where are the apps that actually onboard everyday users, not just the same million Web3 wallets, but billions of people?
  

They’re uncomfortable questions. But they matter more than ever.

The Corruption We Built Tools to Prevent!

The first question hit close to home. I have recently, faced two legal battles in recent months, both tied to projects that attempted to rewrite the rules post-launch, effectively defrauding their own investors. It’s draining. But it also exposes a deeper truth: blockchain doesn’t automatically create fairness, people do.

And it’s not just me. I spoke with founders who were ghosted after token raises, advisors who watched their terms get rewritten mid-vest, and dev teams cut out of upside because the “new roadmap” didn’t need them anymore. Even some of the industry’s most respected projects have quietly adjusted vesting terms, because they could.

That’s not decentralization. That’s a digital Wild West in a tailored blazer.

Where Are the Consumers?

The second question is just as frustrating. For all our tech, all our capital, and all our launches… where are the users?

Take OpenSea. At its peak, it touched nearly 1 million wallets a month. Today? That number has dropped significantly.

One million wallets sounds like a lot, until you realize that TikTok has over 1 billion monthly users, and even a middling mobile game can break 10 million.

The brutal truth is that most crypto apps are still built for crypto people. Interfaces are clunky. Onboarding is jargon-heavy. And real utility is often buried beneath tokenomics.

Until we build things that are intuitive, rewarding, and fun, the average user just isn’t going to care.

So What Do We Do?

For us at Rewarded TV, these conversations confirmed what we already believed:

• If we want mainstream adoption, we need to meet people where they already are, not where we wish they were.
• People watch content.
• People want to support creators.
• People like getting rewarded for their time and attention.

That’s where we’ve planted our flag.

We’re building an ecosystem that makes it effortless for viewers to engage and earn, and for creators to own and distribute without gatekeepers. 

No crypto jargon. No complex setup. Just open access and fair rewards, built on-chain.

We’re not here to talk about “fixing Web3.”

We’re here to build something better, with blockchain as the enabler, not the headline.

What Comes Next?

I’m optimistic. Because while corruption lingers, it’s also being called out more loudly. And while most dApps still aren’t hitting scale, the demand for better, consumer-grade experiences has never been clearer.

If TOKEN2049 proved anything, it’s that we’re at a turning point.

Let’s not waste it.

By Michael Jelen, CEO of Rewarded TV