Jon Stewart sagt, dass Streamer wie Apple und Amazon Autorenzimmer in „rücksichtslos effiziente Content-Fabriken“ verwandeln: „So kann ich nicht funktionieren“

> “There was this legacy business, and you’re seeing it change now as Silicon Valley comes in,” Stewart said. “The ethos of legacy entertainment is: we’ve created this incredibly eccentric business, where you need an agent and a manager and a lawyer, and they’re going to take about 60% of what you make, but without them there’s nothing you can do! And you join the studio, and the studio will give you a deal, and you’ll sit in your room. It’s the most inefficient way. Silicon Valley walked in like in the way Elon Musk walked into Twitter and went, ‘How many people work here? 10,000? Make it two.’”

> Stewart said that companies like Apple and Amazon have disrupted the legacy system by entering writers’ rooms and cleaning house. Stewart imitated a Silicon Valley streamer coming into a writers’ room of 14 and cutting it down to four — “and it’s got to be on Zoom,” he quipped.

> “They’re changing the ethos into this… they’re changing us from an analog business to a digital business,” Stewart added. “And I think that’s the schism, the earthquake that’s been going through [Hollywood]. I can’t function like that.”

Its not just Silicon Valley. The change away from 26 episodes a year is what made the big change.

Outlets, whether Silicon Valley or no, started to produce content more like the British model with periodic, shorter seasons but better writing in the episodes. And people like it and so that’s what’s offered now. That plus trashy reality TV (including variety shows).

He’s right that the business was more eccentric before. Not wildly eccentric. I mean there used to be only 3 TV show outlets and they all just put on thin, episodic gruel. So watch a bit of Dragnet or Streets of San Francisco, Stewart and see formulaic, repetitive and self-similar those were.

It comes and it goes I guess.

If you want it to be driven less by money then you’re going to have to do it. You’re producing your own content, you can decide to employ more writers if it improves the product or your conscience.

Honestly, these studio systems have frequently been brutal. They’re brutal in gaming too. To have an independent company come in and then try to pitch for funding to multiple places? Yeah, it’s going to produce a system as harsh as a gig system does.

For sure with the average show getting a lot fewer viewers now (due to there being more shows and in general other content including video games competing) they’re going to have to spend less. Take a look at what Fallon said. It wasn’t anything to do with “analog versus digital” or Hollywood versus Silicon Valley or anything like that. It’s that the number of eyeballs is down so the revenue is down so they can’t make the product using the same budget as before.

I get why writers need a steady income to do what they do, but if a show’s season is only 8 episodes with a year or two break, how long should they be pulling a pay check? Submit your assignment and we’ll call if we need you doesn’t seem entirely inconsistent with how the world works.

Stewart was never funny 

Speaking of “content factories”, it seems like a big chunk of entertainment journalism now consists of transcribing what the guests on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend say and then releasing the transcripts as articles.

Wasn’t that the studio system of the 50’s