In the final session of the Göteborg Film Festival’s TV Drama Vision, media analyst and author of the Nostradamus Report Johanna Koljonen used her Nostradamus closing keynote to reflect on the conversations that had unfolded over the preceding days, while also deliberately unsettling familiar binaries that continue to shape industry thinking. Rather than offering a recap of earlier panels, she focused on what she described as a “core misunderstanding” about creator media and professionalism, before turning to a seemingly unlikely case study: that of Warhammer 40,000.

Koljonen began by revisiting a distinction that had surfaced repeatedly during the event between “old” and “new” media. While acknowledging that such models can be analytically useful, she cautioned against allowing them to harden into misleading shortcuts. In particular, she pushed back against the casual opposition of premium drama and “cat videos”, arguing that this framing obscures more than it reveals.

Creator content, she stressed, is not synonymous with amateurism. It represents a 20-year-old industry in which a significant share of value is produced by professionals working in structured environments, often within independent production companies and studios. These creators employ teams, work with agents and publicists, and operate according to industrial logics that are far closer to film and television than the term “user-generated content” implies. Alongside them exists a spectrum ranging from semi-professionals aspiring to scale up, to hobbyists whose occasional virality should not be confused with sustainable production models.

Instead of contrasting formats or platforms, Koljonen proposed alternative distinctions that better reflect how the industry actually functions. One key divide, she suggested, lies between production models that require substantial external financing owing to high costs, and those that can operate with minimal budgets or self-financing. This distinction cuts across film, television and streaming, which she argued now belong to the same industrial category when it comes to premium content.

Crucially, Koljonen warned against equating legitimacy exclusively with high-budget, heavily financed models. As production tools become cheaper and more accessible, creators may increasingly find themselves able to work outside traditional funding structures. Dismissing these possibilities out of habit or status anxiety, she argued, risks blinding the industry to genuine opportunities for innovation.

Professionalism, in her view, should also be redefined. Rather than being determined by income or formal credentials, it rests on the ability to intentionally produce content to a high technical standard and to operate within a professional production pipeline. From this perspective, small YouTube studios with dedicated teams qualify as professional environments, and there is much that traditional film and TV can learn from them, particularly in areas such as audience metrics, vertical storytelling and responsiveness to viewer behaviour.

Koljonen then pivoted to Warhammer 40,000 as an emblematic example of how deeply niche worlds can sustain vast, long-term engagement. Originating as a tabletop miniature game in the 1980s, the Warhammer universe has grown into a sprawling ecosystem encompassing novels, video games, retail spaces and live communities. With hundreds of dedicated stores worldwide and thousands of independent retailers, it represents an IP built not through traditional screen media, but through decades’ worth of fan investment and ritualised participation.

The relevance of this example, Koljonen argued, lies not in whether Amazon’s forthcoming screen adaptations succeed, but in what the phenomenon reveals about audience passion. Cultural elites, she suggested, routinely underestimate or misunderstand what large groups of people care about. When seemingly “absurd” or opaque interests command such loyalty, they should be read as signals, rather than curiosities. As Joe Bergan, media partnerships Nordics at YouTube, had noted in an earlier panel (see the news), audiences are telling the industry something, if it is willing to listen.

Returning to IP and world-building, Koljonen echoed discussions from earlier sessions, emphasising that worlds need not originate as traditional franchises. Catalogues, locations or loosely connected stories can also be curated into shared experiences, provided they are approached with openness, rather than snobbery. In an evolving content economy, she argued, storytelling increasingly extends beyond individual works into networks of meaning, participation and identity.

Koljonen closed by urging the industry to approach these shifts with humility, curiosity and passion. Acknowledging that her contribution would form only a small chapter in this year’s forthcoming Nostradamus Report, which will be presented during the Cannes Marché du Film, she hinted that while other sections might paint a darker picture, this one was intended as a reminder of possibility.

Her keynote ultimately reinforced a theme running through TV Drama Vision 2026: that understanding audiences today requires us to let go of comforting hierarchies, and to accept that value, professionalism and cultural impact often emerge from places the industry has learned to overlook.