The term "attention economy" feels modern. A 21st-century problem. Too many apps, too many notifications, too much content. But attention has been the scarce resource and the valuable asset for much longer than the internet.
The attention economy isn't new. We've just made it more visible.
If you want to understand how to compete for attention today, it helps to understand how this game has always been played.
The Newspaper Era: Hearst and the Mass Market
Before the internet, there was the newspaper. And before modern advertising, there was William Randolph Hearst.
Hearst understood something that most people didn't: The product wasn't news. The product was attention. Newspapers sold advertising. The newspaper itself was just the vehicle to deliver attention to advertisers. The more readers, the more valuable the attention, the more you could charge for ads.
So Hearst invented yellow journalism. Sensational headlines. Shocking stories. Stories that made you keep reading. Not because the stories were important, but because they were engaging. He understood that attention is a finite resource and if you want people's attention, you need to beat everyone else competing for it.
He was running an attention economy in the 1890s. He just had different tools.
Radio: Scarcity Creates Value
Then came radio. And suddenly there was a different constraint: frequency space. There are only so many radio stations. Only so many hours in a day. Only so much attention people have time to give.
This created massive value. Radio stations became incredibly profitable because attention was scarce. You couldn't have infinite stations. You had to pick a few. Those few that got the attention made enormous amounts of money.
The FCC had to regulate it because attention scarcity was being created artificially by physics. There wasn't enough bandwidth for everyone. So whoever had a license to broadcast had a monopoly on attention in their geographic area. This is why radio licenses became so valuable.
Scarcity creates value. When attention is scarce, whoever controls the access to the platform has power.
Television: The Network Effect
Television was the first medium where the network effect became obvious. The value of a TV network increased with the number of people watching. The more people watching, the more advertising revenue. The more revenue, the more you could spend on content. The better content, the more people watching.
This created the three major networks: ABC, NBC, CBS. For decades, attention was consolidated. Want attention? Get on one of the three networks. The networks had all the leverage.
This was a stable equilibrium for a long time. And then cable fragmented it.
Cable: The Fragmentation of Attention
Cable introduced something new: infinite channels. No scarcity. Just pick a channel. Watch what you want.
For the networks, this was devastating. Attention was no longer scarce. A channel could start tomorrow with zero viewers. The barrier to entry was just a camera and a feed. You didn't need an FCC license or a broadcast tower. You just needed content.
What happened? A thousand new channels launched. Most failed. The few that won were the ones that understood their audience better than the networks did. Niche audiences that the networks weren't serving. A channel about cooking. A channel about sports. A channel about 24-hour news (CNN). The big networks lost attention because they were trying to serve everyone and the new channels served someone.
But even with a thousand channels, attention was still somewhat scarce. You had only so many hours in a day. You could only watch one channel at a time. So attention still had value, it was just distributed differently.
The Internet: The Death of Scarcity
Then the internet happened. And suddenly there was no scarcity at all. Infinite channels. Zero barrier to entry. Infinite content creators. Infinite distribution.
This should have made attention worthless. If anyone can create and distribute, and everyone can see everything, why would attention have value?
But it didn't. Attention became even more valuable.
Why? Because removing scarcity from supply created scarcity in demand. There's too much content. The bottleneck isn't creating content or distributing it. The bottleneck is human attention. You have 24 hours. You can only consume so much.
When supply is infinite, demand becomes the scarcity.
This flipped the economics entirely. When attention was supply-constrained (three networks), the network had leverage. When attention is demand-constrained (infinite content), the platform that aggregates demand has leverage. Google. Facebook. YouTube. TikTok.
These platforms don't create content. They aggregate attention. They point people toward the content that's most likely to keep them engaged. That's their value.
The Platform Era: Algorithmic Scarcity
But here's where it gets interesting: These platforms create artificial scarcity.
Facebook could show you everything you've ever seen from everyone you follow. But it doesn't. The algorithm shows you a small subset. Why? Because infinite content would overwhelm you. The algorithm creates a scarce feed.
By creating artificial scarcity, the platform creates valuable real estate. Your feed position is valuable. Getting to the top of someone's feed is valuable. Why? Because it's scarce. The platform only shows so many posts.
This means the platform has leverage again. They can charge creators for access to the scarce feed position. They can de-prioritize certain creators. They can promote certain content.
We've gone from scarcity created by physics (radio frequencies) to scarcity created by algorithms. Same game, different mechanism.
What This Means For You
Understanding this history tells you something important about competing for attention in 2026: It's not about being the loudest. It's about being in the right place at the right time, served to the right person.
Hearst was loud and sensational. But he won because the newspaper was the only way to get daily news. Radio stations didn't win by being the loudest. They won by being on the right frequency. TV networks won by having the best shows that people wanted to see. Cable networks won by understanding niche audiences. Internet creators won by understanding algorithms and feeds.
Today, you don't win attention by being the loudest. You win by:
Understanding the algorithm. Each platform has an algorithm that determines what gets shown. Facebook shows what gets engagement. YouTube shows what keeps people watching. TikTok shows what creates "for you page" virality. Instagram shows what gets saves and shares. Understanding what each algorithm rewards and creating for that algorithm is the game.
Understanding your audience. You're not competing for "attention." You're competing for a specific person's attention at a specific moment with a specific need. Niche beats broad every time in an infinite attention environment.
Understanding the medium. What works on radio doesn't work on TV. What works on TV doesn't work on the internet. What works on Facebook doesn't work on TikTok. Understanding the constraints and opportunities of each medium matters.
Being consistent. You're not trying to go viral. You're trying to build an audience that comes back. Viral is a spike. An audience is a compound asset. Every episode, every post, every piece of content you create is building that asset or not.
The Pattern Underneath
Here's the pattern I see: In every era, the winners understand the constraint of the medium and they build for it. They don't fight the constraint. They embrace it.
Newspapers were constrained by printing and distribution. Hearst built a distribution machine. Radio was constrained by frequency and broadcast range. Radio stations built local loyalty and personality. TV was constrained by channel scarcity. Networks built must-watch shows. The internet had no constraints so it created artificial ones through algorithms. Creators learned to build for algorithm distribution.
Right now, we're in the platform era. The constraint is feed position, visibility, algorithmic favor. The next era will have different constraints. But the winners will be the ones who understand the constraints early and build for them.
The attention economy isn't about being louder. It's about understanding the rules of the game and building for them before everyone else does.