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Comment Re:Which writers? (Score 1) 316

So is this about Hollywood or traditional TV writers? Well they can suck the collective dicks of all people across the Earth as far as I'm concerned. They have all but destroying movies being entertaining.

I agree the quality of what we're seeing in theaters is pretty uniformly low, but you're not putting the blame in the right place. The studios have developed a system by which they make movies that are guaranteed to have market appeal. Which incidentally, is why they all seem the same. I have a friend who submitted a script that got picked up by a studio, and this was basically what happened:

  1. 1. Original script is submitted. Studio person reads it and likes it.
  2. 2. Studio decides script won't appeal to women. Another writer adds love interest. Some vital scenes are removed because now, with the love interest, the movie will be too long. Ending is changed because "Americans like happy endings". We're only on step 2 and the script has already been gutted.
  3. 3. Studio decides Chinese government won't like a scene. Changed by yet another writer to make sure the film makes it into such a large market.
  4. 4. Studio cuts projected budget. Brings in someone to change scenes that will be expensive to shoot.
  5. 5. Studio brings in someone to add product placement and merchandising which is, as Mel Brooks pointed out, "where the real money from the movie is made."

After all that was done they decided not to go through with the project. He made a tidy sum for his original script. The one they planned to shoot, had the project gone forward, was nothing whatsoever like the one he'd written after being worked over by the studio's staff into something that was mostly like every other movie out that year. He didn't care because he knows how things work, but that has to be soul crushing for someone who wants to see his vision on the screen.

There's almost no chance to get something original, tight, and compelling out of a system like that.

Comment Re:The last time (Score 1) 316

Hollywood, although still capable of producing an original hit now and then, are more interested in sequels and reboots then originality.

While some of the people involved in the actual production are in it for the art, studios are there to make money. Those sequels and reboots are almost guaranteed to make money, and for any business a sure thing is better than a crap shoot that might make even more, but probably not.

Comment Too late (Score 1) 316

The time to strike is when there exists a large demand for your services, but for whatever reason you aren't capturing much of the profit as that demand is satisfied.

That's not the position writers are in now as demand for their services slackens. It's likely they'll just strike themselves out of a job.

Comment Re:Because they went full SJW (Score 2) 155

That's part of it, yeah. For whatever reason sports writers and media personalities are pretty far to the left of their audience. That doesn't matter when the sports programming is about sports, but once you start slipping your politics into a broadcast to people who came for sports, you're going to lose subscribers.

Comment Re:Not really that surprised. (Score 1) 155

Agreed. Broadcasters are being squeezed on both ends. Not only do customers now have a way to pay for only what they want to watch, but also new content providers aren't crowded off the dial, so the competition for eyeballs will only get more fierce. I haven't seen anything by Netflix yet, but some of the in-house Amazon content is quite good.

ESPN is in bad shape because sports fandom is pretty much a binary - there are a few people out there who only watch college football, for example, but for the most part people either watch a lot of sports or they don't watch any sports at all, and ESPN has lost its ability to dun the latter group.

Comment Re:We've seen this coming... (Score 1) 155

Monday Night Football only costs $1.5bn because it draws viewers to advertisements. It doesn't cost anything like that for the NFL to produce, and as it draws fewer and fewer viewers to advertisements the league will lose the ability to command that kind of price for its product. ESPN will survive, the NFL will survive, and players will survive, but everybody is going to make less money.

Comment Re:Tradeoffs (Score 1) 667

There are always nutty people who attach themselves to every political and social movement. In this particular case we're talking about a rounding error.

People on the remain side don't want to face the fact there were good arguments on the other side. Arguments about sovereignty. About trade and income inequality. And the response to those arguments was "you're a racist" . The remain side deserved to lose - if that's your best argument you should go home and think about the kind of person you've become.

Comment Re:A completely unaccountable governing body (Score 1) 667

This whole concept of Nationalism and Nation-States is only a 19th century experiment and it doesn't seem to working out well in a lot of cases.

Exactly the opposite. Nation states work well, and the effort to do away with them has caused terrible stresses that will almost certainly lead to war and privation.

Comment Re:Tradeoffs (Score 1) 667

This is why Brexit happened. Instead of making the case for the UK to remain in the EU, the people running the "remain" campaign tried (unsuccessfully, I might add) to paint the other side as "xenophobes and racists". People who voted to leave are neither, and the name calling just makes you look small.

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