I'm hyped that the old guard of companies are finally collapsing under their own weight, and we are seeing new companies springing up.
There have been soo many young dudes who were awesome that weren't able to work their way up the ranks because there were too many old dudes who just wouldn't fucking leave or give up control. (I think of Jonathan Pierce losing his window to come up, because he was stuck waiting for Blackbox to do something with him.)
The older skaters with established companies should have followed Rocco's model: find a charismatic talented younger dude, fund his new company while maintaining a large percent of the company, promote it via a media outlet owned by the distribution company, repeat, and see what sticks.
They either needed to invest heavily in market research or allow young people who know what is cool run the show. Sadly, they all believed that they were awesome and everyone (young and old) should love them because "they know what is cool."