Ad Age is marking Black History Month 2025 with our fifth-annual Honoring Creative Excellence package. (Read the introduction and all the essays here.) Today, guest editor Kaleeta McDade, global chief experience design officer at VML, writes about reclaiming media as the voice of connection.

The hardwood floor was freezing cold under me as I slid into my spot in front of my dad. It was sitcom night, and the house was buzzing with anticipation, even if the weather outside had all the warmth of a January graveyard. Dinner? Swanson—classic Americana served on partitioned trays of barely edible nostalgia. And me, I was skating across those slick floors in My Little Pony socks like Evel Knievel on a budget.

The lights dimmed; it was go time. TV time.

We waited for Urkel’s “Did I do that?” to rupture the air like a sacred chant. Waited for the Fly Girls of “In Living Color” to mesmerize us with their futuristic cool. These weren’t just shows—they were mirrors. “The Cosby Show” taught me how to feel deeply. “Martin” laid bare the ridiculousness of adulting. These were half-hour escapes, but they were also cultural markers and mileposts I grew up chasing. It felt infinite. Boundless. A playlist of America, all on one central broadcast.

And like anything quintessentially American, it came with strings.

The invisible hand of the Nielsen ratings—the system pretending it knew us—decided what was gold and what deserved a curtain call. Cable corporations didn’t help, squeezing every dollar out of households for something they called “premium.” Middle America fought back; Napster and LimeWire became modern-day Robin Hoods.

So streaming, when it landed, was the balm we didn’t know we needed. One price. Every show. Customized for you—because yes, your TV was now officially stalking you.

But of course, America does fine print better than it does freedom. “We the people”—but they get to choose who those people are. “In God we trust”—except if it’s a god without feathered hair and blue eyes.

And so, the “freedom” to binge was an illusion promising boundless choice shaped by algorithms designed to maximize engagement—not necessarily broaden horizons.

Curated streaming felt like breaking chains. There were no more gatekeepers or tastemakers trying to prescribe what you should watch. We binge-watched ourselves silly, hardly questioning how every click and every skip was feeding the algorithm. The same TV that brought a world together now carved us up like cultural pie charts. Black stories? Check. No room for nuance or context. “Roots” and “Fresh Prince” were reduced to the same label. Diversity collapsed into a binary: You were either “in” or “out.”

Streaming promised personalized entertainment as the world shrunk into algorithmic echo chambers. Fewer shared moments—watercooler conversations morphed into insular memes. Bridges collapsed under the weight of familiarity. Every joke, every hot take, drove deeper wedges.

It’s time to unplug from the rhythmless algorithm—a deadbeat conductor flattening the full spectrum of humanity into background noise. Algorithms stopped being just shortcuts; they became new overlords, dictating not only our watch lists but our perceptions. They manufacture culture, distort nuance and drive division under the guise of harmony.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: The very same streaming utopia that saved us can now destroy us. With every curated click, we’re either building new bridges—or torching the ones we have left. And while algorithms could bring us together, right now they’re mostly sowing isolation, stereotyping us into submission.

So what’s the move? Refuse to settle. Don’t let your viewing habits calcify into safe, familiar corners of sameness. Seek discomfort. Watch the stories you wouldn’t ordinarily watch. Tear down your digital echo chamber. If media’s going to evolve, it must abandon its current gig as a partitioning force and step into its rightful place as the voice of connection.

If we don’t fight back now, the rhythmless algorithm wins. And we all lose the song.