America has lost 200k of jobs in media, film and the arts. How much is AI?

commiepatrol

Have you seen media, arts and film that America produces recently? It's garbage.

OgsyedIE

"You're going to begin to see demand destruction based on the pricing environment." - Bob Jordan, CEO of Southwest Airlines, April 23rd

ViktorRay

I think some of it may be demand side. Many people spend hours browsing Tik Tok rather than watching film or television. Even long form YouTube videos are highly popular. Many folks spend time watching those rather than movies or tv. I believe Tom Hanks was speaking about this many years ago. That being said…. I remember growing up and my teachers would always emphasize the importance of reading. I’m sure it would be a great thing for humanity if everyone spent their free time reading books rather than on film or television. In such a scenario would people complain about job loss then? This could be a fruitful idea for a science fiction short story come to think of it.

jalev

Some of these graphs don't support the hypothesis. The movie one for example shows that employment is just slightly below what it was just after the financial crisis of 2008, and shows record job loss after the covid bump which we all know resulted in massive hiring sprees in a lot of sectors followed by massive layoffs. Is the movie and movie production sector really experiencing an apocalyptic downturn where the line will reach zero, or just returning to its median? Apparently the amount of movies actually being produced has barely recovered to post 2008 levels. https://www.statista.com/statistics/187122/movie-releases-in...

wewewedxfgdf

Interest rates and inflation have vastly more impact than AI.

999900000999

No one has any money and entertainment is the first thing you cut. Every streaming service feels more and more user hostile. If I want to watch South Park it’s a 15$ a month subscription just for that . Paramount Plus has nothing else. I want to watch Lanterns, another 30$ a month. Maybe King of The Hill , 20$ a month. The Reboot has this weird lazy animation style.

dodger-dog

How much is TikTok?

arjie

Based on the rise of short form video content, this seems like amateurs are just outcompeting professionals for eyeballs.

beedeebeedee

The only thing I’ve been watching lately are Soviet films on youtube. Mosfilms and Gorky films have their full catalogs on there. Sergei Bondarchuk’s films are deeply moving. Seventeen Moments from Spring is incredible as well- the Soviet answer to James Bond. For some reason it feels deeply refreshing to watch these films instead of what the US has been producing.

sjdh76

Before AI showed up the UN released a report on the Attention Economy. It said Supply of content had vastly outstripped Demand. It decoupled because entertainment/media was being used to push other products. The telcos, amazon, google/fb and many others were all subsidizing content to push some other product. Exploding info chasing finite non growing eyeballs and time.

tracerbulletx

Very little. It's that America's tax incentives are not competitive. They fly crews to make game shows from LA to london because its cheaper to shoot a show there. There's strong momentum to change that at the moment, there's a bill that might actually get passed that will make the tax environment competitive again in the states that stack theirs on it.

Lerc

Before I dive into a relatively long article here, can someone tell me if it does, in fact, say how much is AI?

redwood

I find it odd that this article ignores live theater when that is the natural parallel to "live shows" or "tours" for film and television. Also how much is the end of ZIRP and how much is jobs moving abroad? I'd love to see the article go a bit deeper

gnarlouse

Honestly: our media and film is largely pretty terrible. The arts may be worth a lament.

tayo42

The outsource comment was interesting. Gaming didn't come up in this article but seems similarly hit. I was recently surprised to see how much game dev work is done outside the US for American companies. Also thought the graphs around covid were interesting, there wasn't a spike up or anything it's just been consistently down. The article said we're not in a recession. I thought we were lol

jparishy

I liked this article. I appreciate that it didn't try to say it is or isn't AI. To me, the entertainment industry suffers from a lot of the same problems in most other industries that chase "efficiency", in terms of resources used and profit made. Economies and industries and labor are interdependent and more "alive" than balance sheets and bank accounts. For the film industry, when you start moving things away from LA to "save money", it has knock on effects that happen over long periods of time. Multiple Quarterly Earnings Reports long, if you will. Local businesses that depend on the film industry close due to less work, so then there is less expertise available. Less expertise means it can command high prices. Suddenly it's too expensive to film in LA altogether. So the rest of the jobs leave too. This pattern seems super common, not just in the film industry. It is a narrative that interweaves with AI, too. AI is supposedly an efficiency boom. In the macroeconomy, who is the "efficiency" we are chasing for, who benefits? Who is getting the money that was "saved"? Regular people do not have more more money or time. The "efficiency" is for people who are already very rich, to get richer. Is that worth the price we're paying? I know my answer. The article gets close to it by mentioning the consolidation in Hollywood, but I do not see how we fix this without enforcing our antitrust laws. It is embarrassing what we let rich people do in the name of stock price go up.

geraneum

How does one consider, depression, inflation, interest rates and investments, purchasing power, and other impactful economic downturns for such analysis? During this window a consequential war in Europe, another one in Iran leading to an energy crisis, has happened as well which could accelerate the existing trends in one way or the other. I think any serious comparison should control for these factors.

j45

AI is a definite possibility, part of it makes me wonder how much it's about the new skills needed for film/media are tied to technology or AI. Technology has almost always been adopted in Hollywood. Media grew to become social media, and skills of social media became relevant and new positions.

adverbly

How much of this is globalization? International media is much better than it used to be.

bananamogul

Not factored in is the fact that there is just so much media now. I think we could stop all content creation today and everyone would still have enough to last through their grandchildren's lifetimes. And unlike a lot of things, media doesn't expire. I still regularly find albums, movies, and books from decades ago I enjoy today. Media of all forms is just worth less now due to oversupply.