I find a few shows that I really like. They get cancelled or fizzle out creatively within a season or two.
I still have an open mind and I still look for something to watch.
You are right about the movies, the last couple of years have pretty sparce and this year I can’t remember a movie that I wanted to go see or enjoyed when I saw it.
I marvel that the studios have survived.
Avatar - a movie that was so bad, I didn't even finish watching the DVD - pays for a lot of other crap from Fox. Then again, MGM - which is the studio that enjoys the rights to the Bod franchise - is so poor that can't even afford to finance that sequel, which is as close to a sure-fire box office money maker, as you can get. Maybe mediocrity is finally catching up to the studios.
The studios have consolidated (MGM owns the library of Orion which owns the library of AIP etc...).
With the new 100 year copyrights, they are banking their wealth off of half century old films that should already been in the public domain.
Disney's biggest money makes for a generation have been the home video sales of the product of WALT Disney, not the post-1985 culture trash.
And some Disney subsidiaries are in it to spin it (with anti-Catholic films like Priest released on Good Friday).
They would be more accountable to their box office bottom line if they didn't have 80 years of product in the vault to capitalize on. It's why any up and coming studio is going to face a tough battle (plus who is going to give that studio a distribution deal and screen time in a multiplex).
One Big Monopoly. But the robber barons of old were demonized while today's pwn the Legislature.