One change is streaming video, which pays content creators a fixed price with no downstream benefit if the product becomes popular. The other is AI, which can study the garbage shows that have been produced over the last five or ten years and produce identical garbage. AI writes without ego or pay, making it perfect for the studios, which are guided by leftist politics, pedophilia, immorality, and money.
In response to a disastrous drop in revenue because of these factors, Hollywood writers have been on strike. Recently, the actors joined them. Both are pushing back against the studios. Looking at Hollywood’s content, this is one of those strikes we all wish would see both sides lose.
Having said that, there are many good people who will be hurt if Hollywood implodes. While the public faces of Hollywood are leftist, the people who provide the infrastructure support (all the names that whiz by at warp speed as a show’s credits roll) are often conservative. And, of course, there’s the whole L.A. economy that’s also dependent on Hollywood wealth.
The sad fact is that change always leaves victims in its wake. We never mourn the wheelwrights and carriage makers who fell by the wayside when the car came along because the car was, and is, a much more democratic and effective means of transportation. In the same way, while every good person who loses a job or income if Hollywood fails is a tragedy, the fact is that it’s better for America if Hollywood circa 2023 is no more.
Things are on the edge of a major change in how movies are done. I could see a streaming service come up (perhaps from Musk) which would allow creators to rent movies direct to consumers, bypassing the studio system entirely (and incidentally also bypassing the unions).
“Yet we, the opiated people and, especially, our children, nevertheless waste endless hours of our lives staring at the boob tube, mesmerized.”
I don’t know about that. My 13 yr old boy doesn’t watch tv at all streaming or otherwise. Rarely exhibits any interest in movies. Has seen extremely few. Doesn’t care.
With the advent of broadband internet and near cinema quality cameras available on your basic smartphone, nearly anybody can become their own content provider.
Why produce content for a streaming video service for a flat fee when you can put your content online and get the advertising/subscription revenue for yourself?
Now true, 99% of what gets posted on YouTube and other platforms by ordinary citizens is junk. But there are now many YouTube channels produced by regular people that are compelling enough for me to subscribe to. Anything from cooking, to home repair, to history, to discussing music. I find myself spending more time consuming that content than the latest streaming show on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
I mentioned on other threads that there is already so much content produced that if all of us did nothing else but sit around and watch what was already out there, we would never run out of quality content.
Then you have your vintage movies and TV shows which were produced from a time before all this Hollywood wokeness took over. I could spend my entire retirement years watching all the movies prior to say the 1970s, which far surpass in quality what we are subjected to today. That is, if I wanted to spend my retirement watching movies, which I don't. But I will at least tackle the classic film noir films from the 1940s to 1950s. All good stuff.
Most of the 40s and 50s were westerns, musicals, and horror/alien stuff.
The 60s were westerns and lots of Disney kid stuff like Kurt Russell films. It was late 60s and into the 70s when it shifted into gritty city based movies.
Stayed that way until the mid 80s.
In May 22 I cut cable TV and went entirely to Streaming internet. Between YouTube & Rumble my wife and I now subscribe to dozens of “streaming” channels.
I would much rather watch a young expat American couple rebuild a 200 year old house in the foothills of the Italian Alps than watch ANYTHING Hollywood puts out.
I would rather watch the Joe Rogan Experience or PBD Podcast or Lex Friedman podcast than any interviewer on CABLE NEWS.
Except Tucker. Last night we watched Tucker's interviews of Pence and the other Republican POTUS candidates he embarrassed recently.