Substack wants to be everything. That's either a dream or a trap.
The Substack TV App is here. The community is not happy.
Yesterday, Substack announced a TV app for Apple TV and Google TV. If you subscribe to creators who make videos, you can now watch their content on your television, like a personalized streaming service built from your Substack subscriptions.
The comment section had a different reaction.
“Please don’t do this. This is not Youtube. Elevate the written word.”
“This is a horrible move, and your most devoted users are going to turn away from this platform and seek to move to independent platforms if this change comes.”
"Like Cheesecake Factory, when you try to serve everything, you stop being great at anything."
The message was clear: people came here to write. That’s what built this audience—readers who love depth, creators who want sustainable growth instead of the viral treadmill.
And now they’re wondering if that’s about to change.
The business model argument
Hamish McKenzie, Substack co-founder, reacted with a Notes post. His argument: this isn’t a format revolution. It’s a business model revolution.
He’s not wrong. The idea of a content ecosystem—one place where everything lives, where you don’t have to scatter your work across five platforms and link to each one separately—is genuinely appealing. As a creator, I've wished for exactly this more times than I can count. No more sending your audience here, there, everywhere. No more "link in bio" chaos. My slightly scattered brain craves that kind of focus.
But there’s something worth thinking through here.
The “everything platform” trap
Here’s what I know from twenty years in media and content strategy: when you try to be everywhere, you end up being nowhere. When you try to speak to everyone, you speak to no one.
Substack is now trying to be Twitter (Notes), YouTube (video and now TV), Spotify (podcasts), a newsletter platform, a publishing house, and a social network. All at once.
This isn’t inherently bad, but it’s risky.
YouTube has a decade-long head start on video. Beehiiv just launched its own paid subscription for newsletters. Meanwhile, more and more creators are looking for alternatives to the short-form content treadmill…
The question isn’t whether any single feature is good or bad. The question is: can one platform genuinely excel at all of these things simultaneously? Or does spreading in every direction mean you stop being exceptional at any of them?