Hollywood tech

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 17:00:00 +0000

Hollywood problems are because of “tech”, and are self inflicted. The current strikes of both the writers (WGA) and the actors (SAG-AFTRA) are in part because of “tech” and also are self-inflicted.

The LA Times Column: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking (maybe paywalled):

Yet the reason this battle is shaping up to be so uniquely intractable and momentous — as you might have gathered from all the headlines about artificial intelligence and streaming economics — is very much of our moment.

But it’s not, ultimately, technology that’s at the root of the problem. It’s that the studio executives both new and old have embraced the powerful — and ultimately disastrous — magical thinking pumped out by Silicon Valley for the last 10 years.

In short, streaming services and the so called “AI”, coming directly from Silicon Valley, are the “oh shiny” that Hollywood execs saw as a unicorn money maker. Silicon Valley call that disruptive technology, a technology that promise a tranformation while rarely delivering.

Hollywood groundbreaking proposal is to replace artists with “Generative AI” (either writer or performers), and they also don’t want to pay artists residuals finding workaround in contracts when it comes to streaming.

What the writers and actors want is to not get screwed by Hollywood execs that see just another scheme to make even more money. CNN has an explainer of what the average SAG-AFTRA member makes: 12.7% of the member qualify for the healthcare threshold of $26,470 of annual income (ie make more than tat). We are far from the top earners. Much like CEO are far away from the majority of their employees. It really boils down to the majority of the actors being low income and getting exploited even more because Hollywood saw shiny new tech.

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Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When it comes to streaming, CNBC, back in June 2019 Why NBC is paying $500 million to stream ‘The Office,’ a show it already owns:

The Comcast company on Tuesday revealed that it has signed an exclusive deal to house the show on its upcoming streaming service for five years, starting in 2021.

The streaming service is set to shell out $100 million per year for the show, even though it’s technically a property of NBC’s parent company.

NBC own streaming service has to spend half a billion dollars for the right of a show they already own. Worse, they outbid Netflix:

Netflix was willing to pay up to $90 million a year for the rights, but NBC topped the bid.

What’s the point? Spend money for a show you already own to show on a platform you decided to operate, whose profitability is uncertain, instead of having another company assume the risks and pay you the almost same amount? The left hand paying the right hand seems to be because of market regulations, but this doesn’t make sense still.

Are they just jealous of Netflix success? If anything this make Netflix less attractive.

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Hollywood tech

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