What's Happening to Entertainment?

An arts & culture briefing paper

Below is my latest arts & culture briefing paper.

Today we explore a dozen unsettling situations that are not getting widely covered in the media. A recurring theme here is the expanding crisis in legacy arts and entertainment institutions.

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The top 10 songs this week are the same as last week.

We’ve seen many signs of stagnation in the culture. But it’s getting worse. Every day is now Groundhog Day in the music business.

According to NPR:

The Billboard Hot 100 is trapped in some kind of purgatory, as it’s topped by the same 10 songs as last week, albeit in a different order. A beneficiary of this stagnation is the song that’s at No. 1 for a ninth consecutive week and 10th overall: Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”In the process, it joins a notable club. Over on the albums chart, Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet holds at No. 1 for a third straight week, the top six remain the same.

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Movie audiences continues to shrink—next year could be a disaster.

Hollywood insiders keep insisting that the audience is returning to movies theaters—but the latest numbers tell a different story.

According to Axios:

Summer got off to a slow start, including the weakest Memorial Day weekend in nearly three decades….The box office still trails last year by almost 14%, and it's an open question if it can ever get back to the $10-billion-a-year industry it was before the COVID shutdowns.

Source

If you want to watch the pain and suffering, keep an eye on Disney—it has more than 40 movies in the pipeline, including ten hyped releases next year. If audience shrinkage continues, the House of Mouse may be caught in the trap.

Meanwhile…

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Hollywood exodus gets worse—as Sony and Warner Bros battle to create rival film studios in Nevada.

Why is Hollywood in a mad rush to get out of Hollywood? The Southwest is already a major center for the film and television business—with New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas all ramping up tax incentives and infrastructure for local work.

But the West Coast exodus will soon get worse, much worse. Two of the largest movie companies in the world want to build enormous studios in Las Vegas. Tax payers will foot the bill.

Proposed Warner Bros Studio in the desert (Source)

According to Variety, the Warner Bros project

would be built at a UNLV business park in southwest Las Vegas. The details have yet to be finalized, but the proposal is expected to cost around $100 million a year in tax credits, plus millions in additional funding for production elsewhere in Nevada.

Sandra Jauregui, the Assembly majority leader, is supporting the Sony project, which would cost the state $80 million a year. Another $25 million would be set aside for productions elsewhere.

This is all a gamble. But that’s how they roll in Las Vegas—and they’ve already spent $750 million to lure the Raiders from California.

In this poker game, the sure loser is Southern California, which is witnessing the decline of its most glamorous industry.

And the story gets worse, because…