Hat Tip to Tim Ferriss' 5 Bullet Friday
(And Derek Thompson's article)
Follow Derek Thompson https://substack.com/@derekthompson
The Concept of Flow
Derek Thompson’s recent essay, “Everything Became Television,” makes the startling claim: podcasts, social media, and even AI is evolving into the kind of television that’s always on.
We scroll through infinite clips, curated by algorithms. News and politics become performance theater. And we, the audience, drift in a current of content that rarely asks us to feel deeply.
And we just keep watching.
It’s tempting to read this as a cultural warning. But I also see it as an opening.
If “everything is television,” then every creator, brand, and storyteller now has a shared stage. So maybe the question is: who’s making television matter?
In Thompson’s piece, he describes how media has reached its “attractor state” – that gravitational pull toward endless, unbroken streams of moving images. He calls it “flow.”
For most of the world, this means more video. And for those of us working in accessibility, it means more opportunity.
Wait, Roy. How Do You EVEN Tie This To Audio Description (AD)?
The more visual our culture becomes, the more essential it is to make sure that everyone can access those visuals, AND experience the emotion behind the information.
Audio description in film and (traditional) TV joins storytelling, by crafting visuals into something equally cinematic in sound. When done well, it surfs the experience.
And in this new world of constant flow, that completion matters more than ever.
The more we turn everything into television, the more our screens need to speak every language of perception. And with that, accessibility for blind audiences is the next evolution of innovation.
So How Do We Use This “Everything Is Television” Moment To Make Stories More Human?
And more inclusive?
Start with a mindset shift:
Accessibility as part of the design for attention.
When you create an accessible experience (through AD, captions, or inclusive storytelling choices), you’re making it possible for more people to engage, and you’re teaching your audience how to engage more deeply.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
1. Design for context
Think of AD as part of the storytelling, not a separate track. It’s tone, rhythm, and empathy joining that story context: what happens before, what happens next. It’s how a moment feels. When the AD performer matches the video content’s emotional temperature, the audience understands what’s happening and they feel included in it.
2. Embrace “flow” consciously
If we live in a world built for half-watching, accessibility can bring people back to full presence. It’s a small act of resistance: helping people focus, notice, and connect through sensory storytelling. AD slows down the scroll and reminds us that meaning is in the attention.
3. Invite creative teams to collaborate early
The most powerful accessibility isn’t added later. By building it in early, writers, directors, editors, and AD professionals work together from the start. The result is cohesion.
4. Use technology with humanity
As AI-generated video floods the internet, human-led accessibility will become a trust signal. Audiences can feel the difference between automation and care. Human narration carries empathy that no synthetic voice can replicate yet, and that emotion builds connection and credibility.
Accessibility, in this sense, is a strategy.
It’s how you earn attention in a culture that treats it as disposable.
What Now?
If everything is television, then every brand, studio, and creator is now in the business of audience experience. And that means we all share the same challenge: how to turn “flow” into feeling.
Accessibility is a key to that shift:
It transforms visuals into shared understanding.
It turns passive watching into active belonging.
It ensures that as the river of content grows faster, no one gets left on the shore.
So as Thompson warns that we’re drowning in endless video, we’ve also never had a better moment to redefine what attention feels like.
We can choose to make television flow that connects.
And that connection, when built on accessibility, becomes empathy in action.
So what happens when everything turns into television, is we discover who remembers that stories were always meant to be shared.
→ Explore more at roysamuelson.com/book
→ Listen to ad podcast for conversations that reimagine what inclusive storytelling can sound like.