As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession” | Hacker News Reader

As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

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159 pointselsewhen197 comments

Good. I hope they all go out of business. Their predatory practices are the reason why social media is so toxic. I'm honestly amazed that companies haven't figured out that advertisements are far less effective than they claim to be and they are probably over spending on them [1].

[1] https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/research/resear...

I know half of my advertisement budget is wasted, I just don't know which half.

Plus your source is about TV ads only.

The largest media companies are loss-leaders for telecom conglomerates. They don't actually need to be profitable.

Could you expand on this? I don't get it.

I mean that Comcast, ATT and Verizon collectively own a large portion of US media corporations – including CNN and MSNBC. You can quibble about the semantics of ownership, but the control of media is concentrated in a small cluster of last century's monopolies.

There is an infographic here: https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-9...

Are you basically saying the large media companies are kept alive to keep people on cable?

I don't think it has to serve a purpose other than power projection for the rich owners. I'd say that owning all media is the best bang for your buck if you want to to convert money to power.

Big media exists to define the overton window for the plebs.

> You can quibble about the semantics of ownership

AT&T spun out Time Warner and merged it with Discovery because it had no idea what to do with it or how to run a media company.

Comcast only bought NBC Universal in 2011. Only one major media company (and not even the biggest one) could arguably be a loss leader for a telco. The rest are doing their own thing.

I believe the OP is referencing the fact that over the years, the cable tv/telephone groups have been buying up production houses (i.e., Time-Warner owned by AT&T, NBCUniversal owned by Comcast, etc.) and is implying that the owner (AT&T, Comcast) owns the production house (Time-Warner, NBCUniversal) not to directly profit from the production house output per. se., but to provide content with which to use to incentivize people into paying for their other media distribution products.

> amazed that companies haven't figured out that advertisements are far less effective than they claim to be

I was once asked to do some stats on the marketing effectiveness of a company I was at. Not my job but I really hated a couple of the people in the marketing dept so I went at the task anyway. I had long had suspicious that the advertising was mostly smoke and mirrors so I was glad to find out that I was right. There was basically no correlation to sales and marketing spending, campaigns or anything they were doing. Except for a couple of basic common sense ad placements. They were wasting millions a year.

What do you think happened? Surprise happy ending. At the end of the year they shut down the marketing dept and outsourced the basic ad placements for a fixed fee.

At my old shop we had a 'marketing' person for a bit. She was supposed to run the social media profiles, keep the website updated, post ads and stuff.

Pretty sure she did literally actually nothing the entire time she was there until they started having her double up on reception duties on Saturdays.

She ended up leaving because she moved away somewhere. Needless to say, they did not hire another marketing person.

This depends very heavily on the product. With some products, for example food, you have to win your customer back every month. Additionally, it is often very difficult to correlate certain kinds of ads to sales...but if you look at the marketing investment over decades in some industries, it is probably the only source of competitive advantage.

That being said, given that most people here work for tech companies, I do suspect there is huge overinvestment into marketing by tech companies. Some companies just don't do any of this, don't have a sales team, don't have a marketing team...and they do fine. But that isn't universal (for example, sales clearly has an important implementation role in some industries, in some industries sales has an organizational role, etc.).

I think sales is essential if you have a B2B product and want to sell to larger enterprises. Most of them will not seek you out, and you need someone who can do a deal tailored to each enterprise's needs and wants, and maintain the relationship going forward.

But otherwise I agree.

In my experience marketing people are very good at marketing themselves. :-)

On the other hand a good marketing person is worth gold. In one company I contracted at they had a marketing person who was super proactive and really worked social media , the press and other channels. She pretty much singlehandedly made the company into a known player in their field. Same probably goes for good salespeople. But there aren’t too many people of that caliber. Most just go through the motions.

> On the other hand a good marketing person is worth gold.

I don't deny this, but I think you can say this for any position that ultimately can deliver something. A good PM, a good IT manager, or just the accepted good engineer. People that really want to contribute will work on what matters most and set their egos aside. I say this as someone who has been a PM before and realized it was not the most critical function at the time, so I offered to go back to engineering (I've worked full time as both for years). A good employee will contribute the best they can, and a great employee will be able to identify what matters most and works towards helping (even if they can't do it themselves).

I realize my comment is a tangent, I just feel like it's unnecessary siloing that props up some positions as more important than others. It will depend on the situation. Sometimes you need more engineering talent, sometimes you need more salesmanship, sometimes you need more product direction - it's impossible to know without being at the company. And it's very hard to recognize what matters most outside of your area of expertise.

I think a good salesperson or marketing person can bring way more value than a good PM or IT manager usually can.

Linus Torvalds is evidence that a good PM/IT manager is worth a lot.

There aren't a lot of people that can make or lead a team to make world class products, but the number of marketing mangers who are exceptional enough to have significant impact on your company aren't that many either.

Yeah that idea worked out real well for Theranos.

It did though. That Theranos was at heart a complete scam doesn't take away from the quality of its marketing and promotion. If anything, it shows how exceptional they can be, in elevating even a mostly worthless "product" to media attention until the lies become impossible to hide.

I think this is the wrong takeaway. I understand your point, but ultimately the company failed and there is a possibility Elizabeth Holmes will go to jail. There was no financial payout. Doubling down on bullshit just leads to a worse reckoning (at least in a world with accountability, and sadly that's not always the case).

> But there aren’t too many people of that caliber. Most just go through the motions.

This is true of every field from doctors to lawyers to software developers. Most people are pretty average at their jobs.

I think especially larger companies prefer average but predictable people that execute their role as ordered. Top performers don’t really fit in.

Top performers aren’t needed for most jobs and in many cases just aren’t desireable. There’s nothing wrong with filling seats with perfectly average people to do perfectly average jobs — and I say this as a person who is (at best) quite average.

Really there are two types of work: bounded and unbounded. In bounded work there is some well defined threshold where someone is good enough, or at least some finite risk from someone not being good enough. For example a mediocre mechanic might not be able to fix an issue that a better mechanic could, but the cost of going with a bad mechanic will never exceed the value of the car (at which point you would simply buy a new car), and realistically the cost will almost always be quite a bit less. For bounded tasks, it makes sense to hire average people who show up.

On the other hand there is unbounded work where the skill level necessary is unknown and the costs of going with someone who is insufficiently skilled could be immense. For example odds are there's no way to know if your surgeon isn't up to the task before they've cut you open, which is a terrible time to discover that fact. For unbounded tasks it makes sense to always hire the best you can possibly afford, even for something that seems like it should not require much skill.

Because that’s actual marketing, not just spamming dumb commercials to whatever venue you can find.

The best marketing a company will do is to itself.

I know it could be tongue in cheek, but if you did the analysis because you hated them you may have been biased in your results.

I have no idea about marketing, but as a consumer I know that I am influenced both positively and negatively at times with regards to products based on my experience with their marketing. I also have a feeling that marketing is more than just correlation between campaign and sales. I.e. what was the competition doing at the same time. Marketing I assume is also about avoiding churn, or making the overall market bigger (e.g. PS5 ads may also help Xbox sales, game sales etc..)

In general it feels a bit creepy to me when someone suggests that people losing their jobs is a happy ending. Therefore I accept I am also replying with bias…

They were probably spending something like 20% of the entire budget on pointless advertising. Commercials, Radio, Billboards, planes, buses, google. In one example they were paying 10's of thousands a month each for some premium listings on several free listing sites where we literally never had a single conversion or even click through to our website. There were targeted ads where the cost of the ads were more than even if we had sold every single item that was advertised. There were long running ad campaigns running on products that had zero sales.

I actually realized my bias and possibly the perception of it to others. I made a dynamic dashboard setup with all the data I could find on sales and marketing and let them mix max slice and dice it themselves. I figured that if I simply delivered a super negative report it would be ignored.

One of my favorite additions to the report were sliders that let them increase or decrease the threshold of which ads counted towards a sale. Say an ad placed today and a spike in sales tomorrow or next month. The stats were still bad with huge gaps in time that counted towards a sale.

I am in a similar situation at my work; can you give me some pointers on how I might able to validate the same premise at my company? TIA

I feel this way about traditional broadcast/cable. BUT I think the side effect of dwindling audiences is far worse in toxicity. Look at NewsMax and Fox. They cater to more extreme more engaged viewers, at the expense of reality and the health of the rest of us.

A highly subjective view that could be expanded to any number of mainstream and fringe media outlets.

Can definitely be expanded beyond the right but there is scientific backup on media affects on extreme and dangerous views

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C6&q=coro...

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C6&q=extr...

People were predicting this a decade ago, such as after Facebook ipo. Many huge companies do not care about roi in the same way small biz does. They just want to spend as much as possible to get the word out about a new product.

Put another way, I think after a certain amount of money, the owners (or executives, really) of these sorts of companies are more interested in power projection and influence than they are in immense profitability for the companies they run.

Why would they care about getting the word out if it wasn’t ultimately for ROI?

It really is. The stuff facebook serves to me is just so badly wrong it's hilarious that they are taken someone's money to show me an add which if anything is going to result in me even less likely to buy the product

And yet, you are likely an outlier because many people advertise on Facebook and can specifically track sales per impression or click. They can turn off their ads, and sales stop. They can increase their ad spend and sales increase (to a point).

This is why they keep using online ads. The results can be pretty instantaneous and trackable.

Every time this subject prop up I can’t help but remember the book called ‘Generation Pi’ (sometimes translated to just Generation P) by Russian cyberpunk author Victor Pelevin. There’s even a movie that’s pretty well-made, if you can watch it despite it being Russian.

Ratings for sporting events are down dramatically. People generally aren't returning to movie theaters. According to the article, overall media consumption is up 30 minutes per week, which makes me wonder if what happened was mostly a case of habit destruction. Now that habits have been disturbed, trends that were already taking place were accelerated. Is there any reason to think people will break their new habits to go back to their old habits as freedoms are slowly restored?

AMC is looking into showing live events such as college football, world sports, and concerts. So they seem aware that movies are no longer enough to keep them afloat. Can they build new habits? Be a family friendly alternative to the sports bar for alumni groups? In a landscape of broken habits, maybe, maybe not. Big screens at home are cheap and so are the food and drinks. What's missing is a sense of community. Can they deliver on that?

N=1, I spend all my media time on Youtube. Haven't watched a show in years. Watched some of the NBA playoffs though. Also watched Tenet in a huge empty theater.

I wonder if this will result in more outrageous, more clickbait junk from media outlets, desperate for audience attention. Even more than it is now.

I am spending more time on YouTube too. I used to watch Netflix, but it has been downhill last 3 years or so.

What's strange to me is that while YouTube seems to be stealing a lot of attention, the creators on the platform are so often complaining the platform and having to build out non-platform revenue streams in order for it to make sense.

Is it that they expect more than their fair share, or is YouTube leveraging their creators more than they should, or are adblockers the issue? I'm not sure what it is, it just surprises me that there seems to be unwavering consumption and creation on the platform but the numbers aren't lining up for the creators.

I don't know if this is a case of fair or unfair, so much as there is a lot of potential value that isn't captured by YouTube ads, which the creators would be silly to leave on the table, but which Google has not historically been positioned to capture. The ability to join channels is an attempt to make inroads on that value, but it seems like it will take some doing before that vehicle catches up to Patreon if it ever does.

Another possibility you didn't mention is that many creators aren't creating as much value as they think they're worth.

Anyone can be a creator. You have to be pulling in millions of views from people that are valuable to advertise to (not all views are created equally) in order to make a career out of it.

And even then it's flash-in-a-pan stuff for the most part. My YouTube viewing very often consists of getting interested in a creator, watching a lot of their stuff for a while, slowly getting bored as it gets repetitive, then moving on. This happens sometimes in weeks, sometimes in months, sometimes in only days. There's nobody I watch year after year.

This video from Veritasium goes into more about Youtuber burnout, self-blame, dynamics and the drive to non-platform revenue streams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8

If you find the apparent contradiction between Youtube success and creators needing to built out non-platform revenue streams strange, the video gives a pretty good theory explaining why.

It's possible that a small number of creators are taking most of the revenue at any particular time, and the set of outstandingly successful creators keeps changing, which it might due to the promotion algorithm.

That gives all of them reasons to build out non-platform revenue streams.

I'm not saying Google/YouTube aren't taking too much. But hypothetically, even if they took 0% cut, the above could still happen.

Youtube makes money from ads, unlike other video communities like onlyfans , so most likely the cut that creators take doesn't cut it. Currently it seems creators use it as a social tool to raise awareness of their moneymaking product , but that leads to more and more videos being ads themselves, which is leads to google's recurring issue: spam.

If youtube made money from subscriptions the interests of youtube and creators would align better. As it is now it's on a spiral of more and more spam and self-reference which will eventually turn it to a ghost town (because unlike google search, all the video content is in their platform)

Isn't it simply that there's a lot less revenue coming in to YouTube? Most users aren't paying any monthly subscription, and the global audience is probably much less valuable to advertisers (on average) than e.g. a US cable TV audience.

I alternate between YT and Netflix.

The problem I have with YT is the paralysis of choice in deciding which of a zillion videos to watch. When I have a show to binge, its much easier to just jump into it relax without thinking about what to watch

> The problem I have with YT is the paralysis of choice

This is it. I haven't subscribed to a new YT channel years.

There's always a million+ subscriber channel with good stuff to watch - that I don't have time for.

more likely youtube will adopt the onlyfans model once people start getting tired of the clickbait useless vids

Well there's the Premium option. You don't see any ads and though the recommendations are sometimes low qualty, most of them don't stike me as overt clickbait.

but it 's very optional, which changes the dynamic

They already have paid channel membership and member only videos.

> Also watched Tenet in a huge empty theater.

Same, what a great experience. I don't mind the experience of a busy theatre but watching a movie in a comfy centre seat all by your lonesome is pretty rad.

I'm looking forward to returning to a movie theater. Though only Alamo, which was really the only one I went to pre-pandemic anyway, because the rest of the industry was already in shambles. Alamo is the only chain I know of whose experience has evolved past "big screen and big speakers and overpriced snacks".

Alamo is amazing. More businesses should follow their example.

I think their secret is being run by people who are actually into movies, instead of people who are only into money

Their "secret" is a liquor license.

There are several movie theaters that serve alcohol. The Alamo Drafthouse is the only place that tries to make the movie going experience a genuine blast.

Ha, AMC has a liquor license around here, but since re-opening I've still had:

1. A movie start 30 minutes late as they had forgotten about the showing

2. 30 minutes worth of ads after the supposed start time of the film

3. God awful food whose quality rivals Circle K at quadruple the prices

4. Alcoholic beverages that are several times more expensive than the plastic bottle their liquors come from

Not to say all theaters are this way, but certainly the only theaters I have access to around me are. Decided to give up after the third horrible repeat. I do miss the old independent theater from down in Tucson, they suffered from none of these issues; unfortunately nothing like that where I am now. Can't speak to Alamo.

AMC is the counterargument I was thinking of too. Total shitshow of a cinema chain. Cinemark is the bare minimum experience IMO.

What, exactly, is special about Alamo? I'm unfamiliar.

They kick out people who text or talk during movies and they were the first theater I heard of that served alcohol and food.

Only through coincidence of living where it was founded at the time, Warren Theater beat Alamo by about a year. I’m only mentioning as when it opened they had limitations I found interesting. The small swivel tabels at each seat apparently somehow failed THX certification so when they first opened, you’d have to set the plate of food in your lap. I found it incredible that the tables somehow had a bearing on the THX certification of the theater.

THX probably specifies a stat like RT60 reverb time, or EQ matching the target curve, or prominence of early reflections, and the tables (big flat reflective surfaces) probably threw off that metric.

I want this so bad

On the surface, they serve decently good food and an array of cocktails and other beverages, and it generally isn't overpriced. They have great milkshakes and they'll bring you warm cookies just as soon as a giant bowl of popcorn with parmesan.

But that stuff isn't strictly unique anymore; there are other dinner-and-movie chains.

What really makes them special is all their auxiliary stuff. Before a movie, instead of ads they show relevant obscure video clips that are funny and/or interesting. Before a superhero movie they might show relevant action figure commercials from the 80s, or clips of goofy unlicensed knockoff movies that they found on YouTube, etc. Famously, you're not allowed to talk/text once a movie is playing [1]. They'll have themed cocktails and food for movies that are currently showing. Every month they pick a selection of classic movies and do showings of those throughout. Sometimes they'll bring in an actor or the director for after-screening Q&A. For cult hits they'll do themed "movie parties" where everybody's encouraged to quote/sing-along, and often there are props. We went to a Monty Python and the Holy Grail party where everyone was given, among other things, coconut shells to clap. We saw Hackers on the big screen (which was incredible in its own right), and everyone was encouraged to wear their best hacker-punk getups and then they had a costume contest (and we got to take home floppy disks with "HACK THE PLANET" emblazoned on them). We saw Akira on the big screen (!!) and they had a synchronized laser-lightshow in the theater. We went to an "anime brunch" they did several Sunday mornings in a row where they'd pick a genre of anime and show four or five episodes from different shows and you could order coffee and stuff and it only cost $5 at the door.

And the person hosting/organizing these events always comes up to the front and talks about the thing you're going to be watching. They're personally invested. They geek out, telling anecdotes from their own life and giving background on why people love this thing so much. It gets you excited even if you've never heard of it before.

Everything - even the decorations and marketing - gives you the distinct sense that everyone calling the shots at this company is super into movies, and their enthusiasm is contagious even if you don't consider yourself an enthusiast

[1] Except at movie-parties, which are all about audience participation

If they serve dishes, doesn't the sound of forks and knives hitting the plates when people eat, get annoying while watching a movie? Or is it all the kind of food Americans eat with their hands?

A lot of it is hand-food, yeah, which I'd never thought about but it makes sense. Most of the dishes are also made of some sort of plastic-composite instead of ceramic or metal, which probably helps. In either case I haven't really noticed the noise; I'm more likely to notice someone loudly chomping popcorn a couple seats over than forks clanging on dishes, which, what can you do. Another thing that helps is almost nobody orders boxed candy because you can get much better desserts, so you never hear M&M's and such rattling around. Glasses are also open-top, so there's no straw squeaking either.

That sounds amazing! I'd happily pay more for a movie experience like that

I’ll Stan Alamo til the day I die. Even took my family there immediately after I got married ha!

Here is why Alamo has set the bar high for being more than a “movie theater”, in no particular order: 1. Their programming AKA the movies they choose to show is highly curated. You’ll have your standard summer blockbusters, a weird Wednesday film (usually a cult classic from the past generations), screenings with Q&A after the film with directors, actors, etc. As a movie goer I engage a ton with their marketing to look out for these events, because yes, I would absolutely love to see Uncut Gems and have the Safdie brothers and Adam Sandler talk about their experience. Those are more rare but just another opportunity to create a long lasting memory of a film, even if it sucked.

2. The pre-programming is custom, curated and so clever, it makes me ALWAYS want to get there earlier. For most movies they find similar footage or clips that have intertwining themes to the main film (early footage of actors in the movie, etc). It’s usually on the funnier side of things.

3. The no bs talking and phones policy is amazing. It’s enforced and if you want to experiment being a rat, you can even alert servers of guests that are breaking the rules without fear of retaliation. Finally a place to enjoy the film without most distractions.

4. It’s nice to plan a dinner and a movie and have it be all in one place. While the food is fine and not completely mind blowing, it’s good for a movie night and the popcorn is fantastic. Also +1 the queso as well. Alcohol selection is great and you can basically order whatever you want and will likely be able to make it (cocktail-wise).

5. When it existed, the Alamo season pass was amazing. $30 bucks a month, a movie a day and you select your seat ahead of time (you select your seat regardless of the pass, but still). I hope it comes back!

Some downsides: 1. You sometimes will smell food that might not be your favorite. Your a veggie that doesn’t like the smell of a burger, sorry, you likely are gonna have all the food smells.

2. Servers darting around the theatre for a lot of the movie. They are usually pretty sneaky but you get some Paperboy PTSD of enemies coming out in your peripheral vision.

3. YMMV with each Alamo. Pre-pandemic some were franchises and some were corporate. The corporate ones were so much better and the franchises just seemed to be poorly run across the board.

So many other things they hit out of the park, screenings for families and folks with autism (you can talk, etc) as well as screenings for parents with young kids (more talking and likely some more crying). Lots of accessibility screenings for the deaf and blind. The list goes on…

If The restructure for Alamo works out, you’ll be seeing more and more of the old guard changing things to align more like Alamo, and that definitely will be a good thing for the film industry. Just my 2¢

Movies, as in 2 hour stories that you consume in a physical location outside your house, are never gonna return to what they were. What will survive is "a fun location outside the house to watch a screen with incredible sound + picture" with your friends / a date / kids. That market should remain lucrative, cause people aren't gonna wanna be in the house all day / weekend and it's gonna remain a relatively cheap night out.

Live sports is wrapped around groups a lot too. Which also begs the question of are people actually watching the ads in a bar or party..

The move to streaming for sports is bad.

I signed up for paid Hulu to watch olympics. It's grossly expensive, with ads still, and really confusing. I learned the hard way the only way to actually watch the events I wanted to I had to advance DVR them.

Instead of just listing them as videos, like netflix youtube and the rest of the world. The only stand alone videos I have access too without DVR are short 5 minute summary clips. And the DVR recorded broadcasts you have to manually figure out and skip over commercials and manually find the events in a 2 hour broadcast. I remember the super old tv connected DVRs recognized ads to skip. PornHub and YouTube can automatically mark content changes on the timeline.

Movie theaters can't go out of business soon enough for me.

I hate being trapped with rude people talking and using their phones during the movie. Not to mention people who don't believe in baby sitters, and bring their infant or toddler along for a good scream fest in the middle of the show. And don't get me started on loud eaters, flatulent people, etc.

I think they've been on borrowed time since the 80s, when video stores got big. First run movies are their only hook now, and they're loosing even that with movies like Black Widow premiering on streaming. I hope more films premiere on streaming.

Uh, you can just watch movies at home if you don't like theaters ...

But not first run movies that have a theatrical window.

Can you list the movies that didn't get a simultaneous digital release during the last year or so?

Tenet, and...?

I have a bunch of pre-paid movie tickets still from the pre-pandemic days. Haven't used a single one, since all the movies I wanted to watch I can see at home for around 25€.

Stillwater, which is the first movie in a while I've wanted to see.

> I hate being trapped with rude people talking and using their phones during the movie.

FWIW, it's not like that in France, Sweden, Belgium and Japan, to cite countries where I've been to the movies.

correct. the trend was down even before covid, it's just that instead of covid people's attention was in politics, and often stupid politics. I somehow wish the attention will shift to who can develop a vaccine/cure first, but i m not holding my breath for that

In the last year I've cancelled my cable service, totally deleted facebook and twitter accounts, quit watching (new) movies, quit watching pro sports and several other things. Why? I feel like I'm being preached to constantly rather than entertained, and not just a little bit here and there. It's constant. I refuse to pay for it or be a part of it. It offers no value to me anymore. Why would I pay for or be a part of something that just irritates me? It seems most movies are just running the same formula for the last 20 years and, well, I've seen it. Hyper-realistic non-stop over the top garbage and woke super heroes. Yay. There is no originality or good story line, with few exceptions. It's all messaging, and it's completely obvious. Messaging was always there, sure, but now it's just overly blatant and constant. It's not just a well-placed can of Coke in the shot. And sports...used to be an avid NBA fan. Haven't watched a single game in the last year+ since it became about political messaging rather than athletic prowess and physical competition. If I want to watch political opinions, I'll watch a political news show - not a "professional" basketball game. In short, the products suck and not worth my time or money, so I no longer participate.

relevant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n3WgiMftaU

>Ratings for sporting events are down dramatically

I think maybe some of the kneeling and other political / social virtue signalling by sporting codes are having an effect too.

I know I am fed up. The same ideology is broadcast at work, on the news, on art/film/theatre/books, social media and now sports. I feel like the protagonist in "A Clockwork Orange" with my eyelids stapled open and being force fed a mind virus.

That's what did it for me. I was already a bit sour with the amount of ads in the NFL, but when it became political on the field, that was enough.

Agree or disagree with the position, but I watch sports to take a break from reality.

I suspect most of the athletes are okay with you not watching. For them, sports are reality and not escapism.

Perhaps the tens of millions of dollars in annual income driven by television broadcasting and advertising sales is also a large part of their reality and motivation, no?

What percentage do you estimate when you say “a large part”?

I agree that it is perhaps possible that some olympians derive motivation from potential economic returns. I think that’s what you’re trying to say, right?

I posit that is not the primary motivator, and projecting motivations on a group of people tells us more about your motivations than theirs.

Good content wins. Media has gotten away with producing junk for too long. Media complaining about a lack of “attention” is like employers complaining about a lack of workers. Give people a good job and pay them well and you’ll have no trouble finding workers. Produce good content and you’ll have no trouble getting eyeballs. Pretend like old normals still apply and it will be painful on both fronts.

It's not just that they've gotten away with producing junk, it's that they're actively becoming / making themselves more junky by the minute.

I can totally imagine that. I cancelled my TV subscription as it was all about corona all the time. So depressing.

Now that I've done without for so long I don't think ever getting live TV again. My use of mainstream news sites has also dropped to near zero, just a one check per day. I focus more on tech news these days (stuff that really matters :) )

Now realize a lot of people just..kept watching. Scary stuff.

It was just the same news over and over again ...

I think people are just exhausted and numb to what Hollywood, etc has to offer.

I've had it with the Marvel Overextended Universe, and Star [Wars|Gate|Trek|Craft]. Time for something new.

I've had it with scripts written by corporate committees. Star Wars can be good, just not under Disney's heel.

The thing that makes me sad is that IMO the best Star Wars film that came out since the Disney acquisition was Rogue One (even though it trampled all over the expanded universe novel Rebel Dawn, which I loved). Likely Disney views that movie as their second-worst Star Wars outing (after Solo), while I enjoyed it far more than episodes 7, 8, or 9.

On the optimistic side, I absolutely love The Mandalorian (which I didn't expect, and resisted watching until after season 2 was complete), and I'm looking forward to The Book of Boba Fett as well.

But I absolutely agree with you on the failure of "corporate written-by-committee". I think The Mandalorian is so great in no small part because it's run by a small number of people who really love Star Wars and have been fortunate enough to be granted near-complete creative control.

I watched the first episode or two and wasn't that impressed. It just felt like a pretty generic action/adventure storyline with Star Wars... stuff, plastered over it in a fairly superficial way.

Which is how I feel about most big franchise movies these days; they all just feel like cookie-cutter action flicks with some IP draped over top to promote the theme park and/or Fortnite tie-in. Nothing interesting or surprising ever happens. Nothing worth mentioning in terms of emotional spectrum. Even the set design - which is always very handsomely executed - is just ruthlessly on-brand. It looks precisely like "Star Wars stuff" or "Marvel stuff" or whatever, without exception, to a point where it all just becomes branded noise. Not a single thing is new or out of place. It constantly calls back and feeds into itself; nothing new under the sun.

I agree that Rogue One was a little bit of an exception, at least in terms of plot/emotions. I would also put Episode 8 in that category.

Maybe I'm just watching the wrong kinds of movies.

It's fascinating to me that it lasted THAT long. I may have seen a few of the first (like Daredevil decades ago?) and I saw the "last" one, something about a giant who wanted to destroyed the universe, failed but somewhat succeeded and a bunch of weirdos had to go back in time ?

I mean I don't get it, it can't be for children anymore since the entire thing started when I was a kid already and now I have kids. I'm not american and what we say here is that americans are so dumb they just rewatch the same "cape dude in underwear" over and over again, with the same story with small variations :s It must be a sort of puritan/christian gay complex or something.

As for Star Wars under Disney, I find the Mandalorian surprisingly nice with its contemplative slowness, the music, the kind of out of the box new angle thing... But I guess it's the same thing, how long are we going to watch the same thing over and over again :D

I will watch Picard season two whenever it comes out. I just ordered STG:1 on DVD, and will probably do Atlantis after that. If keeping up with the Cardashians had been what I thought it was, I would definitely be watching that too.

Those aren't bad TV shows, unlike most of Marvel. I think maybe that is because they actually believe in/stand for something, as opposed to just being boobs and fights.

> If keeping up with the Cardashians had been what I thought it was...

As somebody who only consumes tv that my friends/family watch (which includes scifi and not "reality" tv), I thought there was some weird show about Cardassians for a blissful decade...

You mean a remake or a new release of that same movie series/tv show, you've watched when you were a kid?

Basically playing for nostalgia points, but making it shittier.

This would be the best thing for improved mental health in many years.

I’d be interested in seeing a regional breakdown of media consumption trends. Echoing several other comments, my media consumption habits were broken during 2020. People in the Pacific Northwest flooded outdoors and started camping and doing other outdoor activities at a record pace. That alone had to have shifted demand for passive media consumption. Obviously tv shows and movies are different from checking online news nonstop (something that was driven higher during pandemic) so any insights would have to be broken out by medium and type.

Yeah I started spending loads of time at home where I have control over my environment and found I didn't have to contantly turn to media for escapism any more. And because I'm not oversaturated with content any more I'm able to rengage with things like fiction books and naff movies that I wouldn't have had the patience for in the sea of outrage I was stuck in before 2020. In turn this has stopped me being burnt out by sheer interaction/pseudointeraction and I'm able to do outdoor activities without my headphones on and risk bumping into people I know who might want a chat.

It's made me a lot pickier though, we all talk about the high prices of cinema, but where I live they're not very pleasant environments and why would I expose myself to that any more? I think perhaps because the pace of life has slowed down durring lockdown people's decision making can keep up a bit better and this is reflected in higher standards as we choose what to reengage with

This is already happening. I work for a large b2b saas company - many of our attention-oriented metrics (eg traffic, top of funnel lead generation) are off by 20-40% year over year. We are hearing that peers are seeing the same thing. People are sick of screens and relishing the offline world, which is even touching B2B.

https://trimread.org/articles/44

Great new conspiracy theory, that the media is purposely trying to make the virus seem worse so people will stay inside looking at ads.

Or further “evidence” that the virus was created by the global elite for wealth and control

Fortunately not many conspiracy theorists likely subscribe to the economist

How about hollywood starts making GOOD content again?

Nah, more of the same super hero garbage please, uhg.

May I direct you to every single A24 film?

there are lots of a24 studios out there. but they’re tiny, they release few films with modest revenues.

not sure if this is coming back anytime soon:

1. games are a much bigger market than movies, which makes hollywood even more risk averse than usual

2. superhero movies make most income, sucking up all the talent

3. huge emphasis on TV series in the last decade, again sucking up all the talent

for these three reasons i’m not sure if i’ll see another sin city/training day/etc in the near future

Tv is a better format for visual story telling then movies could ever be. now that we have streaming its not bound to time limits or irrelevant commercial pacing. The stories are longer and can be more in depth.

Does TV get the best talent though? For some reason I thought they get paid less despite doing alot more work. All those actors from got went on to try movies afterwards.

More likely, in my opinion, is the the stories can also be too long and all over the place.

That's true, the potential is higher with TV I think think though. Story telling is a skill that anyone can screw up independent of the medium

Compare the size of the story to another medium with different constraints. A 13- or 26-episode TV series can usually make a decent adaptation of a novel. A movie always has to cut a lot of stuff out.

The pendulum swings both ways. Unfortunately, I have seen far to many instances of episodic products that are excessively drawn out and waste my time.

> For some reason I thought they get paid less despite doing alot more work.

Are American TV shows as big of money makers globally as the movie industry? How much do American TV shows make in China vs Hollywood? Are they even shown? I don't know, but have never heard of it but have heard quite a bit about how much Hollywood makes in China.

I don't think it's the amount of work that dictates lower salaries for TV acting, but more likely the size of the market that the respective products are sold in and where that market is located (locally vs globally).

> now that we have streaming its not bound to time limits or irrelevant commercial pacing

The Mandalorian is a perfect example of this. The episodes varied from 25 minutes(!) to 47 minutes. Just take the time the plot needs, no more.

> 3. huge emphasis on TV series in the last decade, again sucking up all the talent

Some stories are just better when they are told in a serial format with more room to breathe. Even if they need to take a budget cut.

A recent example being Tomorrow War[0]. It had WAY too much shit happening for the 2h 18min runtime. The same content as a, say, 4 hour miniseries? That would've been fucking amazing.

Same budget, same plot, just add more character development (talky bits), a bit slower pacing. Perfect.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9777666/

> How about hollywood starts making GOOD content again?

Well I'm expecting a new surge of great movies coming out after everyone's vaccinated. Looking forward to the 2021 version of Dune, although I don't think that was spurred on because of the pandemic (maybe I'm wrong?). Expect some epic movies to come out in the next few years.

Dune isn't going to suck because of the pandemic. It's going to suck because of the pg-13 rating.

What element of Dune do you think would suffer by not having an ‘R’ rating? It’s not as if the book is reliant on anything exceptionally violent or obscene. Probably the darkest element is the reference to The Baron’s rape of young people. Frankly that’s better off as something to be implied and not depicted.

I think you can get away with enough in a PG-13 to suit the tone of this story. Watching the recent trailer you can catch a glimpse of what appear to be prisoners of war strapped upside down on troughs that will collect the blood from their slit throats. That’s pretty dark. And seemingly it’s an addition by the filmakers. It’s not an element from the book.

It’s not the R rating necessarily, it’s how they’ve sanitized the story. The whole book is rife with islamic/arabic and at least from the trailer they’ve anglicized everything, which doesn’t give me much hope. I really don’t see a reason for it.

Gotcha. I know that the first trailer substituted the word “jihad” with “crusade”. That rubbed me the wrong way as well. But as someone who has pored over every bit of available information about this movie, I’ve come across an interview with someone who saw a test screening AND was already familiar with the book. They were directly asked if the word jihad was used in the film and they said that it was.

It seems that the ommission of jihad in the film’s marketing may have been a strategy to side-step any potential negative press in the lead-up to the film’s release. That seems wise given the way that American media likes to sensationalize every last detail that can be mined for potential outrage/eyeballs.

I guess we’ll see it and find out for sure.

Well for one thing it's about drugs...

Eh, Barely. Saying Dune is about drugs is like saying Back to the Future was about plutonium. It’s more of a plot element that facilitates the novel’s themes. It’s a resource that shapes the world and gives the characters something to compete over and control.

The story revolves around spice but it’s not ABOUT spice.

In any case, it still doesn’t strike me as the kind of fictional drug that’s calling out for restrictions. It’s depiction can be mild enough to circumvent an unwanted movie rating and still not compromise the story.

Narcotics featured heavily in Batman Begins and that movie still had a PG-13. Again, I don’t see what about Dune’s story is crying out for an R rating in order to be true to the story.

I remember when the first Avengers movie came out, a lot of my industry friends repeated some nonsense line about how we need to see Blockbusters so that the money can trickle down to independent filmmakers and riskier ideas. 10 years later and the market is saturated with super hero films, the independent directors are all directing Disney blockbusters, and the riskier ideas only get a spotlight during Oscar season (unchanged).

> we need to see Blockbusters so that the money can trickle down to independent filmmakers and riskier ideas

Did they ever expand upon how this trickle effect supposedly happens?

Yes, but it only works with the trickling of the validation of good movies. Big studios will buy up indie productions and/or take a chance on making something not-a-super-hero film only if they have the extra cash from the super-hero film.

In which, this argument disregards the Internet and it’s effect on media distribution disruption in it’s entirety.

That's because all the riskier ideas are on television and TV-emulating streaming services (if you make a series divided into "seasons" and "episodes", I consider your series television even if it's straight-to-streaming).

The traditional roles of TV and film have been inverted. Film is now mindless entertainment aimed at the widest possible audience, while television has become a medium for plumbing the depths of artistic possibility.

I chalk this up to two things:

1) Film is increasingly internationalized in ways that television isn't. A movie has to appeal to a wide variety of cultures, all of whom have different mores. Ultimately, the only thing the whole world can agree on is that explosions are fun.

2) Television offers a more flexible format. You can only sit in a theater for so long without a break. Television lets you do sprawling, drawn-out epics with hours of content a year. Television lets you mix serialized and episodic storytelling as you please: your series can lean into one or the other, or it can offer a mixture of both with the showrunner using the balance of serialized and episodic content to carefully control the pacing, set up expectations, and then possibly subvert them. This has always been true, but television has historically been beholden to FCC regulations, network BS&P, advertisers who panic when faced with anything unconventional, rigid time slots, and linear programming. The rise of non-linear consumption (e.g. DVRs), premium cable, and direct-to-streaming series have completely blown the doors off what's allowed on television (or "television"), and showrunners are taking advantage of it in a huge way.

I read that huge overseas revenues from reliable blockbuster franchises help to subside less profitable niches.

Or it will just come from outside of Hollywood. La Casa De Papel (aka Money Heist) is so good I am probably going to cancel Netflix since it's taking away from my nightly reading time and affecting the quality of my sleep.

Disney still has more money to milk from its Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar IP.

I was definitely spoiled by movies when I was growing up. Because of industry circumstances, 1999 was a very good year for movies. I can't think of recent movies that would be considered this generation's "Fight Club," "The Matrix," or "Office Space." On the plus side, there's currently a plethora of adequately entertaining movies for long-haul flights.

Some reading on 1999: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a23803/1999-mov...

One of my favorites from 1999 is October Sky. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132477/

When GOOD content sells, they will.

The best films of the year regularly make less money in their entire lifespan than a mediocre Marvel movie.

That's because "good" depends on who you ask.

The free market produces for the masses.

Looks like it’s all just in time for delta

How much woke virtue signaling can one take? Even Bill Maher agrees.

> Even Bill Maher agrees.

Bill Maher is a shallow elite contrarian, not a progressive that it would make sense to say “Even” about when he agrees with criticism of something perceived to be on the left.

I love how now that he disagrees he's suddenly "not a progressive".

I love that now that you encounter a position that I've held and expressed consistently for long enough that it could legally vote if it was a person, and which has been quite common on the Left for at least as long, you act like its a sudden change.

I get that he opposes some things sacred to the Right, and that to people on the Right that makes him Left, but...

Bill Maher back around 9/11 had a slide deck act where he justified racial profiling in airports with a picture of a fundamentalist Muslim in traditional garb going through airport security. He once literally hosted a talk show called "Politically Incorrect"

He has always been "I'm leftist, but I have a politically incorrect anti-establishment edge.". He has been saying things like this for decades.

Politically Incorrect was canned when, in disagreement on teh show, he said the terrorists weren't cowards, that bombing a country (Iraq) including innocents from offshore was cowardice. Referring of course to physical / mortal cowardice, not moral cowardice, in which case he's right.

I mean, he's long been primarily a conspiracy theorist, surely?

No?

He occasionally gloms on to a conspiracy theory, but he's more into shallow hot takes without any deeply consistent factual or ethical theory from one moment to the next.

That's not a new take on Maher, and it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that it is.

He's an actual Liberal, based on what he purports, unlike many so-called progressives.

Well, a guy with a show called "Politically Incorrect" is supposed to be a contrarian.

The Left is so extremist now that it has lost any sense of humor (Maher had to point out the sarcasm to his audience), and it rejects any critical analysis of its agenda/narrative. Mao would be proud.

> Even Bill Maher agrees

Even famously pro-woke virtue signaling TV personality Bill Maher agrees!

The Delta variant is their great white hope.

Thankfully, with delta varient the media can rejoice for more lockdowns

I was wondering if even The Economist was so out of touch as to fail to notice that the trend was moving away from lockdowns lifting, but I see that the article is from July 3, when things looked rather different.

Are lockdowns coming back in the UK for real? I had the opposite impression from the news in the last two weeks. Some concern about variants, a push for vaccine passports from Boris’ cabinet, but no much talk of lockdowns. Please remember, The Economist is a British magazine. There is a world outside American borders.

I expect lockdowns to come back neither in the US nor in the UK, but hope for them to come back in both places.

Yeah, you can keep your economic and psychological ruin to yourself, thanks.

Nobody, including me, thinks lockdowns are good, but the effects of removing them too early (as my residence in the US did) seem to me to be even worse.

In the UK, lockdowns doubled mental health referrals amongst young people [1] and there was a sharp increase in alcohol related deaths [2].

I hope they don't return, given we now have a vaccine. I also doubt their efficacy, with cases declining in some cases before lockdowns began.

They are not a cost-free public health tool, and it is unknown whether they have caused more harm than good.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jul/15/young-mental...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jul/15/surge-in-alc...

> They are not a cost-free public health tool, and it is unknown whether they have caused more harm than good.

That is a good point, but it's not that we're weighing which of two decisions is good, only which is less bad. Certainly the laissez faire attitudes many places in the US, including my residence, have taken to dealing with the problem have also been not cost-free, and to say that it is unknown whether they have caused more harm than good seems to me to be a dramatic understatement.

I was pro-lockdown when we didn't have the vaccine, but don't know if all the measures the UK took were necessary to contain the virus, or if, on balance, certain policies didn't cause more harm than good.

For example, public exercise with other people was banned, even though open air transmissibility is low, and exercise improves mental health and coronavirus outcomes.

What also happened, in addition to the above, is that people also avoided hospital treatment, and other illnesses, such as cancer, were deprioritised.

These included young people, who would have not have been statistically at risk of coronavirus, but died unintentionally due to conditions caused by lockdown policies.

In this case, quality of life adjusted years becomes relevant, and you have to justify measures taken primarily to protect the old, over being able to treat the young.

Of course when I say "lockdown" it will have has different meanings, depending on which country one lives in.

I think certainly some lockdown policies have done more harm than good, even though given another pandemic, I would support other lockdown policies, like banning large indoor gatherings.

Stay at home if you're too afraid to go outside.

I do! But I'm surrounded by people who don't, and who won't follow minimal health and safety standards, so that it just keeps dragging on.

"Fog in channel, continent isolated".

Really, though, the Economist isn't isolationist.

As Fauci once said, "the virus sets the timetable". The Delta variant is a big worry. R0 is 8 to 9. If hospitals get overwhelmed, there may be lockdowns again, at least for unvaccinated people.

The estimates I've seen vary from 4-8 so it's not a sure thing if we do/don't have herd immunity.

I keep saying we should be masking and standing apart now so that hopefully we can nudge r0 down a bit and avoid lockdowns, but everyone's so relieved to be done that i may as well be pissing against the wind.

You can't realistically have lockdowns for unvaccinated people. People who don't get vaccinated are the same people who have the biggest problem with lockdowns. They simply won't do it.

Well, you kind of _can_, to some extent. Here, for instance, you need a vaccine cert to go indoors in pubs and restaurants (unvaccinated people can still eat outside). That said, there obviously won't be the political will for that everywhere; even before this was introduced Ireland only had 5-10% of people saying they wouldn't get vaccinated, so it wasn't a huge deal.

If you think they'll simply allow this to happen, I've got a UHF channel in Brooklyn to sell you.

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