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Comment by acchow | Hacker News Reader

> Did you really think that all these media companies were going to magically shed 90% of their revenue?

This is exactly what happened with print media. Why is film media immune from the internet revolution?

The two situations are completely different. With print media, the Internet showed that the public was willing to forgo an expensive, high-quality product (e.g. the NYT) for a much cheaper, low-quality product (e.g. Buzzfeed).

That hasn't happened in television and film. To the contrary, peoples' expectations have only gone up. The production value (and production costs!) of television shows these days is up there with that of movies 10-15 years ago. Netflix's pivot to original content shows that consumers want high-budget, high-production-quality original content more than ever.

> With print media, the Internet showed that the public was willing to forgo an expensive, high-quality product (e.g. the NYT) for a much cheaper, low-quality product (e.g. Buzzfeed).

Another big thing happened there: the Internet radically expanded total text content production. The median price of consumed text content plunged toward zero, while its production soared. I'd suspect a direct correlation between those two things, the NYT acquired immense new text competition in terms of the reader's attention across every possible quality & segment level.

In 1960, I could read the NYT, I couldn't read my friend's cooking blog, much less 8,207 cooking blogs. I may derive far more entertainment value or enjoyment out of those blogs than the NYT. Multiply that concept by a million fold.

Video production + Internet simply has drastically greater barriers to entry, almost at any scale (whether we're talking about Jenna Marbles or Comedians in Cars). Almost anybody can publish formatted, routine textual content online, via services like Wordpress. With a modest amount of effort (or just shelling out $50 for a theme) a blog can look decent. It takes far greater effort to get a video production to look decent.

>It takes far greater effort to get a video production to look decent.

That's absolutely true. Although relatively speaking generating at least indie-level video content has dropped drastically in cost/effort as well.

But then, people feel the need to consume news.

I can easily forego watching a TV series. There are only a couple of "must watch" TV shows at any given time.

I already have a huge backlog of shows to watch/finish. I honestly don't care if I never watch a new TV show again

I don't think this is universal. I bet many people feel a lot more attached to their favorite shows than to watching the news.

News will get to me. I need to proactively seek entertainment. I would rather pay for entertainment than news.

Though of course i am a public radio funder.

Attendance at theaters is also reaching new lows, though. So it's not just about production quality.

I would hypothesize - non-falsifiably - that moves are suffering in part because TV production quality has increased so dramatically.

I haven't gone to movie theaters much in years anyway. But in terms of screen-hours, I've definitely shifted the mix from movies to streaming TV over the past few years. I certainly still watch movies, but I'm mostly not a big fan of blockbuster action films and there's an almost limitless supply of quality well-written TV.

More than that, there are "straight to streaming" movies that are really good—people don't need the theater.

But domestic box office revenues are still up slightly.

More IP movies like Bitmoji, and Fruit Ninja, more focus on little kids for the whole family sale and immunity from critical reception. After all, your kid doesn't see Shrek VII.V "The Shrekening" because it was rated 100% fresh.

I don't think it's either of those things, or attendee count wouldn't be down. They're making more per visit.

People are willing to pay for quality content and are not accustomed to it being free.

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