Offshoring of manufacturing to China is the analogy that springs to mind for me.

I'm looking at gaming these days and there's such an endless selection of excellent games I'd love to play. But there are far more great games than I have time to play. So when I see stuff like using AI to make games faster, I can only think what is the point, The market won't buy or play more games so something else has to give.

There is infinite demand for content (to the limit that human attention can absorb it).

Most content sucks ass. What may appear to be bountiful content is actually a lot of okay and meh content. Very little of it fits to your actual taste preference. It's a whole lot of mediocre. We as humans do not know what plentiful content looks like. We've never lived in it.

Most movies suck. You doomscroll and are dissatisfied. You refresh your media recommendations and sigh. You are excited to see a new fantasy or sci-fi film that scratches that itch, yet often left disappointed.

We are still in a desert. Anyone who says otherwise is settling for the status quo that our childen will call primitive and beastly.

Jobs are disappearing because cheap/free ad subsidized content attracts more eyeball hours than produced and prestige content. It's the optimal pareto frontier of content and does the most bang for buck, most in aggregate eyeball hours.

When the tools enable more creation at scale by tasteful creators, we'll start to get closer to content abundance. We're not there yet.

I just don't pay for it. If there's something I really wanna watch I might buy one month of the service binge it then cancel.

The streaming model has imho mostly killed old style television formats with the new way of hyping up a show in the first couple episodes by tossing money and talent, then leave people to hang with unsatisfying conclusions once you've got that sub money. It's all about convincing people to sign up and stay signed up with promises for new content. The quality of the content doesn't matter as long as there's a lot of it and it's enough to keep people from unsubscribing.

With traditional TV your value was directly determined by how many people were watching so you could sell addspace. And despite there being less choice and harder for independent players to get time, in some ways it was weirdly more democratic because if a show sucked or an episode sucked people would just change the channel or watch something else. With streaming they still do that but it's all in the same price scheme so doesn't hurt their bottom line. They're incentivised to just crank out as much crap as possible to keep subs up. Won't last.

and the content strangely sucks most of the time. like no one can write, edit, direct, or act anymore. Not always but strangely often.

I believe its called South America now.

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I stopped watching broadcast/cable TV 20 years ago. I had Netflix until they switched to their own content and started raising rates, so I dropped it. I now rent DVDs from a place about 15 minutes from. I also have Kanopy for free. Here’s the opinion: stop watching. That’s the only way to send a message. Read a book. Rent a dvd. Or play a game. Or draw. Or visit friends and play board games. Or learn to play an instrument. Or find a game store near you and go to game nights. Or bowl. Find something else to do than drool at a screen watching content product that doesn’t give a shit about.

Without even looking at the data, I bet both of your hypotheses here are wrong.

I bet the median American has more real disposable income than four years ago.

I bet the median American spends more in real terms on entertainment (and streaming specifically) than four years ago.

Almost without fail, the data in almost any area of modern life seems to be way less negative than people’s vibes about it are.

Also, nobody has any time for entertainment. Office workers all working 80 hours a week fearing stack ranking, PIPs, layoffs, needing to scramble to get a new H1B job or risk getting kicked out of the country and having to uproot kids. Service workers are working 120 hours a week across 3 jobs. Single people are working 100+ hours a week studying and interviewing and not getting jobs.

I can't watch youtube due to all these garbage. Youtube should allow me to blanket ban on publisher who use full AI for full video.

Vague takes like this scream Facebook boomer. There's lots of great media and lots of bad media. It's the nature of trying to monetize creativity.

There is some resurgence in quality here and there but then there is Avengers, MCU, Star Wars and idk how you can balance that with any amount of quality indie products

"We've finally gone too far on pricing" is a wild thing to hear a CEO say out loud in 2026.

This 100%. All the layoffs started before AI. High interest rates means businesses can't afford to take risks. Our entire economy is based on easy money from cheap debt. The tech layoffs are about being able to pay for AI whether that's paying for data centers or tokens.

I expect AI use to cause an increase in output, not a decrease in employment. At least right now. In TV and Film it would translate to more content that was too expensive to film before. If your business is making movies and then suddenly the market is flooded with fast and cheap movies, then you're going to make more fast and cheap movies too!

That doesn't explain anything in this article. All the time series go back to 1990 when interest rates were significantly higher any way you look at them.

Why should we expect the economy of 2026 (not 2020) be comparable to 2008? Am I missing something? Economy was awful i 2008 and we are currently in boom time markets, so boomy for so long that people have been saying it must be a bubble for years now.

Yeah but the total hours of content produced are way up. Most video content that needs to be produced and is consumed nowadays isn't movies.

> record job loss after the covid bump which we all know resulted in massive hiring sprees in a lot of sectors followed by massive layoffs. Is the movie and movie production sector really experiencing an apocalyptic downturn where the line will reach zero, or just returning to its median?

The 2023 Hollywood Strike strike, the COVID lockdowns shutting down theaters, and the aggressive film production (UK, Poland, Ireland, Norway, Italy, Spain, Colombia) and VFX (Ireland, India, Colombia) subsidizes right as American states like California, Georgia, NY, and others began cutting them meant much of the American film and television industry got obliterated earlier this decade.

The reality is revenue is roughly consistent, but production costs one you remove subsidies (like what most of the US and Canada did) become exhorbitant in low margin industries like entertainment.

It's now cheaper to produce an "American" movie or TV show in Ireland, using British actors affecting an American accent (thank Hugh Laurie, Idris Elba, and Dominic West for that), with post and VFX done in India than it is in the US.

This is something that has been reported on in the space for a decade now, but not much can be done.

This article is also another example of why HNers should stick to their own lane, as most lack context or visibility into other industries.

While true, it’s almost like saying crack dealers are outcompeting Michelin chefs for appetites.

They are totally different content, and one inarguably more addictive and shallow than the other

But you’re right.

Not even short form. I found myself watching an hour and a half long YT video of a dude jet skiing from WA state to Alaska and can’t even hype myself up to watch a feature film.

More than you can afford if you have any scruples

How much is your soul?

Something I realized recently was that when I watch videos in any form (feature film, documentary, dramatic or comedy series, or short) I have this nagging feeling I'm wasting time. I think it's because watching is such a passive activity.

When I read, I don't get that feeling. Even here on HN where it is mostly wasting time.

I think this is why so much media has viewer comments. It's something to engage with and lose awareness of the passing time.

This is my thinking. TikTok is very entertaining. I can’t do hours, but 30 minutes to an hour is great. Compare it to an unswipable hours long sporting event, 30 minutes looking for the right movie you quit 30 minutes in or have to pause till another day because something comes up, or tv shows with unresolved endings that leave you feeling like you are in a toxic relationship-hating the commitment but afraid of the sense of loss.

When art offers one of the only limited pressure valves for totalitarianism out gets embued with deeper meaning I suppose?