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Comment by bobthepanda

11 days ago

It's worth noting that due to advances in technology, it is possible to deliver the same show for less money and time.

The average "how to cook on a food network" show was, ultimately, one person in the kitchen of a large home cooking for the camera, produced once a week. There are plenty of people delivering that style of cooking show with high production quality today. Obviously it's not the same because some things are less deliverable with smaller or one-person teams (Miss Piggy is not going to visit some Youtube show the way she visited Martha Stewart) but there are people making this content ranging from big shops like NYT Cooking to smaller outfits like Binging with Babish, Glen and Friends Cooking, etc. and there are even outfits like this dedicated to more niche topics like Tasting History or Emmymade.

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bobthepanda

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Retric  10 days ago

A wide range of things have gotten dramatically cheaper, but that only goes so far.

Many YouTube channels make great use of Zoom calls for example. It’s still generally a compromise vs an actual face to face conversation.

Safety is another real concern. People have died doing stuff solo that wouldn’t have been particularly dangerous with minimal supervision.

  • bobthepanda  6 days ago

    I mean as far as this goes

    > Many YouTube channels make great use of Zoom calls for example. It’s still generally a compromise vs an actual face to face conversation.

    A lot of today's news footage with experts etc. these days is also not shot from studios but from online calls. Actually flying somebody out onto location is pretty uncommon; and I would say with the rise of filmed podcasting, that podcasters are more likely to have people on set than television news is.

    • Retric  5 days ago

      Daily TV News is limited by travel times. If some story breaks finding the right person and getting them on an airplane and then into a studio can be impractical.

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immibis  10 days ago

> it is possible to deliver the same show for less money and time

Do we, though?

I recently learned about the controversial scene "Baby, It's Cold Outside".

Ignoring the content of the scene for a moment, the quality of the choreography stood out to me as something you would never see in a movie today. Certainly not in one take.

  • bobthepanda  10 days ago

    I would say that has more to do with the decline in musicals involving small numbers of people doing choreography, and the current movie system de-prioritizing dance as an important skill. The highest grossing musical movie happened in 2024 with Wicked, and the second half of that movie is probably going to do the same thing next year.