By Andrea Widburg
You’ve probably wondered why modern Hollywood churns out mindless pap that’s intermixed with graphic sex and violence and an in-your-face embrace of ideologies that are intended to offend ordinary Americans and indoctrinate their children. It’s this dreadful product that explains why so few Americans care about the writers’ and actors’ strike, for they understand that it doesn’t affect Hollywood’s toxic product. However, John Nolte, in a fascinating article, explains that the strike matters because it risks exposing Hollywood’s deepest, darkest secret, which is that it’s dying.
Yes, you read that correctly: Hollywood is dying.
When Hollywood developed, there was a direct relationship between film quality and profits. Movies were shown in theaters and, if Americans wanted to see those movies, the studios made money. Simple.
With radio and TV, there was a shift in tracking profits. Now, Hollywood made products that went out on the airwaves. The money didn’t come directly from consumers; instead, it came from manufacturers who placed advertisements in these media. If a show had a big audience, the manufacturer got lots of eyes and ears, which translated into better ad revenue. Audiences still mattered.
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And then cable came along, and with it came “packaging,” which was enormously profitable for entertainment companies. You, the consumer, paid a set number of dollars and got 50 or 100 or 500 channels for your money. That you’d watch only ten of those channels was irrelevant; you had to buy the package. John Nolte explains how that worked:
Entertainment companies made billions from pay TV for decades, year in and year out. But those dollars were not earned on merit. If you’re wondering why you pay $175 a month for a bunch of channels you never watch that still serve up 20 minutes of ads per hour, here’s why: a major chunk of your $175 goes to entertainment companies. So let me repeat my main point: none of that money is based on merit.
When you have free money that doesn’t require any effort, you cease making any efforts. Again, John Nolte explains:
When merit had nothing to do with Hollywood’s massive profits, three things happened to the industry: 1) it got lazy, 2) cocky, and 3) politically divisive.
Why put effort into creating great content if you make the same amount of money for no effort?
One of the primary reasons Hollywood content is so awful and repetitive (Fast & Furious 10, Indiana Jones 5, and all those Law & Order, CSI, and NCIS franchises that never die) is because “awful and repetitive” is good enough when 120 million households pay for all that “awful and repetitive” content (they do not watch) through their pay-TV bill.
There’s no reason to offer anything new or good when three million viewers are enough to describe your TV show (no one watches) as a hit.
Moreover, if you’re insulated from downside risks, you can reveal your true self without worrying about what your customers want. To Hollywood, Ma and Pa Middle-America are stupid rubes who don’t appreciate LGBTQ+ ideology, “gender affirmation,” anti-white race-baiting, anti-police and military animus, Satanism, and all the other fun stuff in which Hollywood’s elite—a creepy collection of college-indoctrinated leftists and status-seeking, un- or under-educated actors—indulge. (Check out The Vigilant Citizen to get an eyeful of the disturbing shows Hollywood is making.) Maybe you won’t have millions watching your pro-genital-mutilation show, but it’s enough if a few do.
Streaming, however, has upset Hollywood’s lovely, profitable, leftist applecart. Once again, money is tied to the number of eyes that watch a show. However, it’s not the big streaming services (e.g., Amazon, Netflix, and even Disney+) that are making money. Instead, they’re losing money because people can turn to free services online (e.g., Roku, Tubi, etc.) that provide content (both old and new) that consumers want to see with the price being commercials.
And this is where the strike comes in: “The strikers,” writes Nolte, “want a higher percentage of profits that don’t exist.” And if the strike really gets down to the nitty-gritty of how Hollywood operates to calculate those non-existent profits, Wall Street will finally learn just how bad things really are in Hollywood.
The worst and saddest thing of all is that this can’t be fixed. Once an institution goes woke, it doesn’t become unwoke. Hollywood, writes Nolte, has locked itself into leftism. The ideologues in charge cannot and will not change their product to bring customers back. All they can do is scramble to hide the desiccated corpse that was once a great American institution.