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Comment by chipotle_coyote | Hacker News Reader

I'm not convinced changing millenial habits are the true threat to this idea--there's still space for longer serialized works. "Todd in the Shadows" is not really in meaningful competition with "Game of Thrones" except in the broadest sense of people only having so much time in the day for entertainment. Also, once you have this infrastructure in place, it's not difficult to pivot to shorter works by smaller producers if it seems that's where the money is.

The real problem may just be saturation. The dream of having all streaming entertainment through one service for $12 a month was never realistic (and arguably not really desirable), and I think we may all have to get used to the idea of paying for several services to get everything we want. But there's "paying for several," and then there's "paying for a dozen or more"; the latter just isn't sustainable.

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Here's a question: what mass media hit has taken hold in anywhere near to the same form that GoT has in the past 5 years? From my perspective, new noteworthy cultural touchstones like GoT and the Marvel Universe have ceased to exist since roughly 2012. GoT will end in a few months and while the Marvel Universe will continue, it operates on a certain inertia that has built since before the current status quo came into being. What show or other form of video IP will take their place? As of this moment, I see nothing currently on air or on the horizon.

Well, I don't know, but I bet if you or I or anyone else, probably including George R.R. Martin, was asked a couple years before GoT came on the air if it would become this kind of cultural phenomenon, it would have seemed wildly unlikely. These sorts of things are pretty hard to predict. It's possible that there won't be anything else like GoT, but it's possible that something else will become the must-see thing everyone is suddenly talking about.

(Of course, there's no guarantee it will be on any premium streaming service, or indeed any streaming service at all. Or that it will even be video anything. Currently I'm sitting at a Starbucks listening to music that gave me a possible answer to your initial question: it's the soundtrack to "Hamilton.")

Good call with Hamilton. Although I haven't seen it and have 0 interest in seeing it, I'm not only aware of it but relatively familiar with its premise as is practically everyone in the US. That definitely fits my definition of a mass cultural phenomenon.

I will argue that Hamilton debuted almost 4 years ago now which is a long time ago in cultural terms. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic but I feel like there were at least 3 or 4 mass cultural phenomenons popping into existence each year back in the 80's and 90's.

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