Distribution is no longer the step after production. It's the constraint that should shape what you make in the first place.
The old sequence was make it, then find somewhere to put it. That order made sense when a small number of channels controlled access to audiences. It does not survive a landscape where format, length, and pacing determine whether a platform surfaces the work at all.
Plan distribution in the brief
Decide where the work lives before the first shot list. That single change affects aspect ratio, runtime, hook structure, and how many usable assets come out of a single production day.
Measure the system
Judge a release by how it moves through the ecosystem — what gets clipped, shared, searched for afterward — rather than by the performance of any single upload.