Regardless of how Silicon Valley feels about copyright, it's been a profound failure of our legal system to permit their epic theft of creative work. I'm sure lots of people hate to buy the things they need, but if they decide to take them, they don't get glowing cover stories about their ability to create new "models"; they get arrested. These tech moguls have perpetrated of the greatest heists in the history of the world, and we're still treating them as heroes in most walks of life.
So what you're saying is that in 10 years there will be one ginormous entertainment conglomerate that produces everything controlled by a nepo baby who's Dad is one of the 10 people that owns for 50% of the planet's wealth.
Gee, this sounds like a great good v evil script. If only there was an indie studio to produce it.
I love everything you write, Ted, but I think this post misses a few things (sorry about the mega-comment, which should be illegal):
1. It was The Studio - Showrun by established writers who have been in Hollywood for 30+ years - that won those Emmys. And Apple didn’t exactly revolutionize the development process. They hired the same execs that have been in the Hollywood ecosystem for decades.
2. Tech learned to do entertainment better than Hollywood 3 decades ago when Pixar applied iterative design principles to storytelling, and I don’t think any of us would reasonably argue that early Pixar movies represented some nightmarish Tech dystopia.
3. The fact of the matter is that the best storytellers come from Hollywood because they were trained by the best storytellers before them who were trained by the best storytellers before them and so on…
4. AI is not going to be able to replace them anytime soon. The backlash to Tilly Norwood was so swift and severe that the creators had to unroll their rollout and block comments on their posts. People have grown increasingly wary of AI and incremental improvements to models are only serving to exacerbate that distrust, not allay it. Further, the bubble will burst very soon (you said so yourself exactly a month ago) and when it does, all of its flaws will come to the surface. Generative it is not a magic bullet for storytelling, and the more practical applications of AI tech (e.g. sentiment analysis, transcription and editorial) will prove to be most impactful to the process of telling real stories.
5. Fully agree that increasing consolidation will be bad for the industry, as single points of control tend to smooth all the lovely rough edges out of storytelling. Creatives from the creator economy are learning to tell better stories - without and with AI - and I would argue they are a greater threat to the studio system than any tech bros… you’re right to want to build elsewhere, but studios have always been seen as a necessary evil by creatives, and I don’t think much is going to change in that regard.
6. La La Land will never beat Severance except maybe in the purely symbolic way you refer to in the post.
Our country is going through hell, and we get apocalyptic posts that cite Apple shows as an example of "techbros taking over"?! I mean... has the OP watched anything on the Apple TV+ platform? Even most of the shows that more or less "failed" have been very, very creative. Foundation, Silo, Dickinson, movies like Killers of the Flower Moon - if the OP hasn't watched any of them, I suggest that he do so before attacking. B/c while the funding comes from Apple, the shows themselves are an entirely different matter.
But no. The OP really is off the rails on this. Broadcasting opinion that isn't fact-based... Ted, honestly, you know better than to do that.
I've been biting my tongue re. David Foster Wallace, but attacking a company that's been bankrolling a bunch of good TV shows and movies is... due to prejudices? A lack of research? Both?
I know, I know... this is me being a gadfly. But maybe that's a reasonably good thing? Watch the shows; do the research.
Edited to add: zero posts about NPR and PBS and what the feds just did to them?! My local PBS and NPR stations are *shutting down* in June of next year, even though viable offers were made, and there will be *zero* local reporting. As it happens, these stations are the only outlets of NPR & PBS for over 1/3d of this state, due to multiple transmitters in *very* isolated places. Local NWS emergency broadcasts basically won't exist anymore, yet somehow "techbros" are this piece's target?!
I give up on this blog, basically. It's the same post over and over, with different names - well, except for all the paywalled content re. music. I have a lot of respect for TG's books on, for example, jazz history. But the Luddite mentality here... /rant And ban me again if you want to. Too bad you seem to pay little attention to all the suggestions on alternatives per music and more that many of us keep mentioning in the comments. Take the hints already!
Yeah I usually agree with Ted (which is why I’m a paid subscriber) — but I think he missed the mark here by omitting some critical distinctions.
First, the distinction between production and distribution. The algorithmic optimization is a silicon-valley phenomenon, yes — but it’s not as if Hollywood is immune. Why do we have so many superhero movies and IP-driven franchise films? They’ve got to be profitable.
Which is actually why I’m cautiously optimistic about the most profitable companies in the world going into the production business. They can afford to take creative risks that hollywood studios cannot because of their wildly profitable core businesses.
Ultimately what we should watch is the creative constraints that the tech patrons place on their in-house studios. If they’re relatively hands-off and just want to produce great award-winning art, that’s great! If they want to produce stuff that fits the algo or their politics, less great.
This is why I buy DVDs. I can watch as many times as I want without paying a fee. I get director’s cut if possible. Funnily enough I have seen ending changed online.
My friends premiered their documentary in a theatre in Toronto. They have their own Substack and following and filled a nice theatre rented from the university.
As you mentioned in a previous article about Hollywood folks buying up old theatres to debut their own stuff, I saw what that looks like first hand.
It was a great success. They have their own Substack and a substantial following and managed to fill the theatre. There was great discussion and socializing after, dining, and a symposium on a beautiful farm estate the next day.
I can see a lot of independent theatres popping up, to show their own stuff. As long as they pair that with their own strong independent online platforms, the theatre side should have more of a social and institutional dimension than perhaps traditional theatres, a place for ideas and people to flourish and become intimately acquainted with music, culture, art, film etc. It would also offer a much more trance-formative and immersive experience than what modern streaming can offer.
If there was one such theatre/institution in each major city, I reckon that could have an interesting effect.
We know the major streaming services like Amazon/Netflix are largely about predictive programming, getting people to play out the scripts and realities the oligarchy itself wishes to “manifest.”
Last I checked, Minority Report’s pre-crime isn’t that far with Palantir (whose founder Thiel is obsessed with the anti-Christ lol). Nor is Gattaca that far anymore, with the whole Human Genome and various gene editing programs. Nor is something like digital ID, something out of the most dystopian stuff we could imagine!
Real theatre and art has to in some way provide a meaningful and serious response to this kind of dystopian predictive programming.
With AI, we actually can make cool stuff independently. Even here, I think the bad guys may underestimate how their own tools can be used against them.
Not that I disagree with anything in this article but it should be mentioned that Ellison sr is buying tik tok so that they can shut down all criticism of Israel (Netanyahu was very clear about this) the fact that his son is also buying media properties shows how much they want to shut down any honest discussion of Israels genocide and war crimes.
That is far more frightening than Hollywood losing its influence.
It sounds like things are coming full circle. The radio and later television networks were founded by radio and later television manufacturers like RCA and General Electric. That was during a period of hardware innovation, and the manufacturers needed content. Radio manufacturers who shared in a patent pool for things like superheterodyne tuners even tolerated small infringers who manufactured cheap, low quality radios they called jalopies because this got less well off and less motivated people into the radio habit.
It's hard to say where streaming is going to take us, but we've been seeing a lot of hardware innovation with faster, better, larger displays and wireless / cellular internet. The developers need content. Netflix and Criterion show that there is a place for non-hardware manufacturing streamers, but the tech companies have the money and the hardware. Apple became a studio to sell hardware just as RCA became a radio producer almost a century earlier. There is still room for independent streamers, and there's a good chance the hardware will become available cheap after the AI bubble collapse.
Most TV and radio networks were started by tech companies. Columbia started CBS to help sell its records. RCA made transmitters and receivers and started NBC, which later spawned ABC. Crosley started WLW to help sell his radios, and later formed a network. Westinghouse had a network. DuMont made TVs and then a network. It's pretty much the default situation.
I think in ten years whatever theyre calling movies wont much resemble the movies we have(albeit dwindling) now. They arent going to make better movies, theyre going to kill that whole thing. Like theyre killing everything else we used to enjoy(think of the album, its hardly what it used to be, still was with cds).
But idk, im having a hard time caring about this. Something much worse, and more dear to our lives, seems to be looming over us. Like the death of hollywood is just a side effect, and not the thing we should be paying attention to(not bc its not important or interesting, it is and is).
Maybe im all doom and gloom bc of the changing season. I tend to get in this mood this time of year. But that doesnt mean drastic shit isnt happening. And nothings slowing down, its picking up speed.
Are we like those folks who decried the disappearance of silent movies while the great despression was overtaking them? Except this is so much more than an economic downturn. This is restructuring our society, changing the very fabric of our lives.
My prediction, before i die ill read an article, perhaps by ted, about how apple(or some other tech player) owns our water.
But ill feel better about all this in another month or so
Im off on a tangent here but in UK for at least 5 decades 'old movies' filled up the afternoon tv schedules once we had all day tv. Of course they were less old in 1965 than in 1995,lol. But they stopped doing that around millennium time. A whole generation has grown to adulthood without seeing Casablanca or Meet Me in St Louis. But more significant I feel all the less famed films,the B movies and the oddities like John Wayne being Ghengis Khan or Yul Brynner - with hair - as a pirate. I feel that by fates exigencies I had a film school education! But my personal interpretation is that one thing most old movies both USA + British is an insouciant disrespect for authority and an encouragment to question and NOT obey. I'm pretty sure the powers that be wanted to be quell this idea as much as they promoted it previously in order to destroy social connection and poison friendships and family relationships. Im sure a Gen Z watching many a 1950s Ealing comedy or a 1950s Western cowboy movie would find the lack of respect of and obedience to authority strangely disturbing. I'll just add im not against respect for authority. Im lucky in that in my life the authority figures who have occurred have been talented and decent people who deserved respect and obedience. Until now.
They are good at raising subscription prices too, Netflix recently did and none of them give a shit. It seems most of today’s business community lacks any sense of morality or ethics and all they care about is their fat fuckin’ wallet
Having been involved in several standards competitions in the 1990s & early 2000s involving IT; CE; &, Major Labels/Studios, this is not surprising at all. The messaging from the content folks to their own creatives was misleading and the focus of the content folks to give little to no support for literally hundreds of startups that had technologies and innovations that would have helped is just desserts.
Apple is just playing the part of a TV network. Shows like Severance are developed by a Hollywood-type production company, pitched to Apple and others, one of whom puts up the money to make it and gets the right to distribute it. TV networks weren't usually based in Hollywood anyway. The networks are the business end, not the creative.
Not "Hollywood type," Hollywood. The $ may come from Cupertino, but the people who develop the shows, the showrunners and scriptwriters, et. al. are either from Hollywood, or the centers of TV/film in other countries. Cupertino is about hardware/software - they're smart enough to fund projects by people who are *not* from their world.
Also, how is this different from the way the studio system worked in the 30s-50s, tying actors to exclusive contracts and X # of films? Before the studio system had to stop, and make way for indies? It isn't, not really.
I'm not exactly a fan of Big Tech, but some people who work inside the system clearly *are* trying to provide viable alternatives to the Big Three networks + what Netflix has become. Think about it, please. (Meant sincerely.)
NBC is famously owned by GE. Way back when, they were making the hardware and decided to get into the content side. Apple is doing the same thing, just the broadcast medium has changed.
Exactly! Kaleberg went into detail about GE and - iirc - RCA in a reply that's fairly far down this thread. Tina Fey had fun sending up GE on 30 Rock, too.
If Ellison wants to take over Warner, he's got to get past the FCC first. Since he already owns Paramount's assets, they will likely smell a monopoly in the making and deny it.
Regardless of how Silicon Valley feels about copyright, it's been a profound failure of our legal system to permit their epic theft of creative work. I'm sure lots of people hate to buy the things they need, but if they decide to take them, they don't get glowing cover stories about their ability to create new "models"; they get arrested. These tech moguls have perpetrated of the greatest heists in the history of the world, and we're still treating them as heroes in most walks of life.
So what you're saying is that in 10 years there will be one ginormous entertainment conglomerate that produces everything controlled by a nepo baby who's Dad is one of the 10 people that owns for 50% of the planet's wealth.
Gee, this sounds like a great good v evil script. If only there was an indie studio to produce it.
I love everything you write, Ted, but I think this post misses a few things (sorry about the mega-comment, which should be illegal):
1. It was The Studio - Showrun by established writers who have been in Hollywood for 30+ years - that won those Emmys. And Apple didn’t exactly revolutionize the development process. They hired the same execs that have been in the Hollywood ecosystem for decades.
2. Tech learned to do entertainment better than Hollywood 3 decades ago when Pixar applied iterative design principles to storytelling, and I don’t think any of us would reasonably argue that early Pixar movies represented some nightmarish Tech dystopia.
3. The fact of the matter is that the best storytellers come from Hollywood because they were trained by the best storytellers before them who were trained by the best storytellers before them and so on…
4. AI is not going to be able to replace them anytime soon. The backlash to Tilly Norwood was so swift and severe that the creators had to unroll their rollout and block comments on their posts. People have grown increasingly wary of AI and incremental improvements to models are only serving to exacerbate that distrust, not allay it. Further, the bubble will burst very soon (you said so yourself exactly a month ago) and when it does, all of its flaws will come to the surface. Generative it is not a magic bullet for storytelling, and the more practical applications of AI tech (e.g. sentiment analysis, transcription and editorial) will prove to be most impactful to the process of telling real stories.
5. Fully agree that increasing consolidation will be bad for the industry, as single points of control tend to smooth all the lovely rough edges out of storytelling. Creatives from the creator economy are learning to tell better stories - without and with AI - and I would argue they are a greater threat to the studio system than any tech bros… you’re right to want to build elsewhere, but studios have always been seen as a necessary evil by creatives, and I don’t think much is going to change in that regard.
6. La La Land will never beat Severance except maybe in the purely symbolic way you refer to in the post.
THIS
Thank you.
Our country is going through hell, and we get apocalyptic posts that cite Apple shows as an example of "techbros taking over"?! I mean... has the OP watched anything on the Apple TV+ platform? Even most of the shows that more or less "failed" have been very, very creative. Foundation, Silo, Dickinson, movies like Killers of the Flower Moon - if the OP hasn't watched any of them, I suggest that he do so before attacking. B/c while the funding comes from Apple, the shows themselves are an entirely different matter.
But no. The OP really is off the rails on this. Broadcasting opinion that isn't fact-based... Ted, honestly, you know better than to do that.
I've been biting my tongue re. David Foster Wallace, but attacking a company that's been bankrolling a bunch of good TV shows and movies is... due to prejudices? A lack of research? Both?
I know, I know... this is me being a gadfly. But maybe that's a reasonably good thing? Watch the shows; do the research.
Edited to add: zero posts about NPR and PBS and what the feds just did to them?! My local PBS and NPR stations are *shutting down* in June of next year, even though viable offers were made, and there will be *zero* local reporting. As it happens, these stations are the only outlets of NPR & PBS for over 1/3d of this state, due to multiple transmitters in *very* isolated places. Local NWS emergency broadcasts basically won't exist anymore, yet somehow "techbros" are this piece's target?!
I give up on this blog, basically. It's the same post over and over, with different names - well, except for all the paywalled content re. music. I have a lot of respect for TG's books on, for example, jazz history. But the Luddite mentality here... /rant And ban me again if you want to. Too bad you seem to pay little attention to all the suggestions on alternatives per music and more that many of us keep mentioning in the comments. Take the hints already!
Yeah I usually agree with Ted (which is why I’m a paid subscriber) — but I think he missed the mark here by omitting some critical distinctions.
First, the distinction between production and distribution. The algorithmic optimization is a silicon-valley phenomenon, yes — but it’s not as if Hollywood is immune. Why do we have so many superhero movies and IP-driven franchise films? They’ve got to be profitable.
Which is actually why I’m cautiously optimistic about the most profitable companies in the world going into the production business. They can afford to take creative risks that hollywood studios cannot because of their wildly profitable core businesses.
Ultimately what we should watch is the creative constraints that the tech patrons place on their in-house studios. If they’re relatively hands-off and just want to produce great award-winning art, that’s great! If they want to produce stuff that fits the algo or their politics, less great.
He is ignoring the way Old Hollywood's studio system and contracts were lethal to creativity.
Also, as Kaleberg pointed out, how commercial radio developed, and who did that. To which I'll add the recording industry itself. Same deal.
I hope that Apple, et. al. don't turn into the political/ideological outlets that network TV has become.
AI feels like Juicero. A Silicon Valley slop machine that had no real market demand and went bankrupt after a bubble. Ellison is turning into Elliot Carver, the Bond villain in Tomorrow Never Dies: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/tomorrow-never-dies-fake-news-info-war
This is why I buy DVDs. I can watch as many times as I want without paying a fee. I get director’s cut if possible. Funnily enough I have seen ending changed online.
My friends premiered their documentary in a theatre in Toronto. They have their own Substack and following and filled a nice theatre rented from the university.
As you mentioned in a previous article about Hollywood folks buying up old theatres to debut their own stuff, I saw what that looks like first hand.
It was a great success. They have their own Substack and a substantial following and managed to fill the theatre. There was great discussion and socializing after, dining, and a symposium on a beautiful farm estate the next day.
I can see a lot of independent theatres popping up, to show their own stuff. As long as they pair that with their own strong independent online platforms, the theatre side should have more of a social and institutional dimension than perhaps traditional theatres, a place for ideas and people to flourish and become intimately acquainted with music, culture, art, film etc. It would also offer a much more trance-formative and immersive experience than what modern streaming can offer.
If there was one such theatre/institution in each major city, I reckon that could have an interesting effect.
We know the major streaming services like Amazon/Netflix are largely about predictive programming, getting people to play out the scripts and realities the oligarchy itself wishes to “manifest.”
Last I checked, Minority Report’s pre-crime isn’t that far with Palantir (whose founder Thiel is obsessed with the anti-Christ lol). Nor is Gattaca that far anymore, with the whole Human Genome and various gene editing programs. Nor is something like digital ID, something out of the most dystopian stuff we could imagine!
Real theatre and art has to in some way provide a meaningful and serious response to this kind of dystopian predictive programming.
With AI, we actually can make cool stuff independently. Even here, I think the bad guys may underestimate how their own tools can be used against them.
This is very encouraging! Thanks so much for posting.
Not that I disagree with anything in this article but it should be mentioned that Ellison sr is buying tik tok so that they can shut down all criticism of Israel (Netanyahu was very clear about this) the fact that his son is also buying media properties shows how much they want to shut down any honest discussion of Israels genocide and war crimes.
That is far more frightening than Hollywood losing its influence.
It's always about the Jews with some people.
Because it is.
Whoa. On Yom Kippur? L'shana tova.
It sounds like things are coming full circle. The radio and later television networks were founded by radio and later television manufacturers like RCA and General Electric. That was during a period of hardware innovation, and the manufacturers needed content. Radio manufacturers who shared in a patent pool for things like superheterodyne tuners even tolerated small infringers who manufactured cheap, low quality radios they called jalopies because this got less well off and less motivated people into the radio habit.
It's hard to say where streaming is going to take us, but we've been seeing a lot of hardware innovation with faster, better, larger displays and wireless / cellular internet. The developers need content. Netflix and Criterion show that there is a place for non-hardware manufacturing streamers, but the tech companies have the money and the hardware. Apple became a studio to sell hardware just as RCA became a radio producer almost a century earlier. There is still room for independent streamers, and there's a good chance the hardware will become available cheap after the AI bubble collapse.
Not to mention how the recording industry came into being...
Most TV and radio networks were started by tech companies. Columbia started CBS to help sell its records. RCA made transmitters and receivers and started NBC, which later spawned ABC. Crosley started WLW to help sell his radios, and later formed a network. Westinghouse had a network. DuMont made TVs and then a network. It's pretty much the default situation.
I think in ten years whatever theyre calling movies wont much resemble the movies we have(albeit dwindling) now. They arent going to make better movies, theyre going to kill that whole thing. Like theyre killing everything else we used to enjoy(think of the album, its hardly what it used to be, still was with cds).
But idk, im having a hard time caring about this. Something much worse, and more dear to our lives, seems to be looming over us. Like the death of hollywood is just a side effect, and not the thing we should be paying attention to(not bc its not important or interesting, it is and is).
Maybe im all doom and gloom bc of the changing season. I tend to get in this mood this time of year. But that doesnt mean drastic shit isnt happening. And nothings slowing down, its picking up speed.
Are we like those folks who decried the disappearance of silent movies while the great despression was overtaking them? Except this is so much more than an economic downturn. This is restructuring our society, changing the very fabric of our lives.
My prediction, before i die ill read an article, perhaps by ted, about how apple(or some other tech player) owns our water.
But ill feel better about all this in another month or so
Im off on a tangent here but in UK for at least 5 decades 'old movies' filled up the afternoon tv schedules once we had all day tv. Of course they were less old in 1965 than in 1995,lol. But they stopped doing that around millennium time. A whole generation has grown to adulthood without seeing Casablanca or Meet Me in St Louis. But more significant I feel all the less famed films,the B movies and the oddities like John Wayne being Ghengis Khan or Yul Brynner - with hair - as a pirate. I feel that by fates exigencies I had a film school education! But my personal interpretation is that one thing most old movies both USA + British is an insouciant disrespect for authority and an encouragment to question and NOT obey. I'm pretty sure the powers that be wanted to be quell this idea as much as they promoted it previously in order to destroy social connection and poison friendships and family relationships. Im sure a Gen Z watching many a 1950s Ealing comedy or a 1950s Western cowboy movie would find the lack of respect of and obedience to authority strangely disturbing. I'll just add im not against respect for authority. Im lucky in that in my life the authority figures who have occurred have been talented and decent people who deserved respect and obedience. Until now.
They are good at raising subscription prices too, Netflix recently did and none of them give a shit. It seems most of today’s business community lacks any sense of morality or ethics and all they care about is their fat fuckin’ wallet
I don’t think the difference in culture is so grand. We’re trading
Having been involved in several standards competitions in the 1990s & early 2000s involving IT; CE; &, Major Labels/Studios, this is not surprising at all. The messaging from the content folks to their own creatives was misleading and the focus of the content folks to give little to no support for literally hundreds of startups that had technologies and innovations that would have helped is just desserts.
Apple is just playing the part of a TV network. Shows like Severance are developed by a Hollywood-type production company, pitched to Apple and others, one of whom puts up the money to make it and gets the right to distribute it. TV networks weren't usually based in Hollywood anyway. The networks are the business end, not the creative.
Not "Hollywood type," Hollywood. The $ may come from Cupertino, but the people who develop the shows, the showrunners and scriptwriters, et. al. are either from Hollywood, or the centers of TV/film in other countries. Cupertino is about hardware/software - they're smart enough to fund projects by people who are *not* from their world.
Also, how is this different from the way the studio system worked in the 30s-50s, tying actors to exclusive contracts and X # of films? Before the studio system had to stop, and make way for indies? It isn't, not really.
I'm not exactly a fan of Big Tech, but some people who work inside the system clearly *are* trying to provide viable alternatives to the Big Three networks + what Netflix has become. Think about it, please. (Meant sincerely.)
NBC is famously owned by GE. Way back when, they were making the hardware and decided to get into the content side. Apple is doing the same thing, just the broadcast medium has changed.
Exactly! Kaleberg went into detail about GE and - iirc - RCA in a reply that's fairly far down this thread. Tina Fey had fun sending up GE on 30 Rock, too.
His reply is here - https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-war-between-silicon-valley-and/comment/162278907
If Ellison wants to take over Warner, he's got to get past the FCC first. Since he already owns Paramount's assets, they will likely smell a monopoly in the making and deny it.