Comment by jmyeet

I wish the article had split TV and movies because there are different factors at play.

Movies just don't make economic sense unless they're blockbusters and that's mainly because of the decline in movie theaters for various reasons but also the death of physical media sales. DVD sales in the 1990s were a bit of a Golden Age. Matt Damon talked about this [1].

Up until the 2000s the TV economic model was:

1. Produce a full season of TV, typically ~22 episodes, and air those on network TV. Sell ads;

2. Sell physical media. Unlike movies, this wasn't as big of a factor until serialized TV came about but it was a factor; and

3. Syndication. Basic cable channels and foreign distributors would pay to air TV shows.

Premium cable (eg HBO) was an exception. It still had foreign distribution but cable subscriptions replaced ad revenue.

In all of these cases, actors, writers, etc would get residuals or back end participation. For what became TV shows, there was a whole ecosystem of pilots. Scripts would be bought. Some would get greenlit for pilots. Some of those would get a half or full season order.

A TV season meant basically a full year of work for those involved. All the pilot activity meant more work. Residuals allowed actors and writers to survive between jobs. There are still people getting significant residuals from Friends from over 30 years ago.

All of that died with streaming. Netflix streaming first began as a means of monetizing old seasons of TV and older movies. It was additional revenue. But as Netflix grew, all the studios saw dollar signs and launched "me too" streaming services, most of which were doomed from the start. Streamers began to cannibalize the syndication and physical media revenue.

Netflix in particular made the decision relatively early that they needed original content to survive. By having a worldwide customer base, they didn't care about physical media and didn't have to pay for syndication. Also because of some unfortunate contracts in the late 2000s, there was little to no residuals for streaming so that too was more saved money.

And the cost-cutting continued. Smaller seasons (8-13 episodes) with smaller writing rooms meant fewer people employed, particularly when it might be 2-3 years between seasons. Suddenly you needed 2 jobs a year to survive where once it was 1. That's a huge difference because you're lucky to get 1 job. And you got no residuals on top of that.

This coincided with more general Hollywood cost-cutting to move productions out of LA to Canada (particularly Toronto but also Vancouver), Atlanta and elsewhere.

Hollywood was an ecosystem. Short term profit-seeking has basically destroyed it but also, so has the high cost of housing. LA used to be somewhere you could live cheaply and this enabled people to chase their dream. Many didn't make it but this was the entry to the funnel. Some did.

Now there are fewer jobs and those are increasingly dominated by second and third generation nepo babies.

Why do you think there's so much recycled IP now? Relaunches of 1990s and 2000s properties. The people involved are out of work. That's why. And it's easier to greenlight something with a track record. Also, notice how many podcasts there are of people who used to be in shows? The Office is particularly egregious for this. I swear half the cast have podcasts now. Why? Because they're out of work too.

I cannot overstate how much expensive housing has strangled Hollywood. Expensive housing is an input into everything you produce and do. Yet people see it as their retirement. What retirement? If your $200k house is now $1M, so is every other house. You still only own one housing unit's worth of wealth. So you need to multiple houses, to be a landlord or Airbnb host. And we wonder why the housing supply sucks.

[1]: https://streamable.com/pedvjq