Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 188 posts

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#171

Post by WalterBright »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #170
WalterBright wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what on earth you're talking about. I'm talking about your statement: "Maximum profit extraction, the kind of product is irrelevant, as are the customers" The Soviet movies were not about profit at all. Why didn't they make better movies than Hollywood? > We're getting ever crappier products in nearly every consumer category, because short term profits for shareholders are prioritized over the long ter…

Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and any company that sells appliances made in China these days. I don't short stocks, requires way too much attention. > The Soviet movies were not about profit at all. Why didn't they make better movies than Hollywood? Because they were propaganda, which is a lot of what Hollywood has been producing. Since it's failing, the execs are moving to squeeze out writers and actors rathe…

> Because they were propaganda

Quite a sweeping generalization. Besides, many Hollywood movies are good in spite of being rather excessive propaganda.

> today's Hollywood execs don't understand story, don't understand viewers, and don't care to build that kind of understanding

If someone is running a profitable business in X, I'd pause before concluding they are ignorant fools. It's a competitive business, the fools get squeezed out.

It's the job of a CEO to generate maximum revenue while minimizing costs. It's also the mission of every worker to maximize compensation. It's how markets work. It is not inherently evil. Don't you want to get paid the most you can get? Don't you want to pay as little as you can when buying things?

BTW, even the Beatles had a bunch of duds on their albums.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#172

Post by slowmovintarget »

WalterBright wrote: post #171
slowmovintarget wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and any company that sells appliances made in China these days. I don't short stocks, requires way too much attention. > The Soviet movies were not about profit at all. Why didn't they make better movies than Hollywood? Because they were propaganda, which is a lot of what Hollywood has been producing. Since it's failing, the execs are moving to squeeze out writers and actors rathe…

> Because they were propaganda Quite a sweeping generalization. Besides, many Hollywood movies are good in spite of being rather excessive propaganda. > today's Hollywood execs don't understand story, don't understand viewers, and don't care to build that kind of understanding If someone is running a profitable business in X, I'd pause before concluding they are ignorant fools. It's a competitive business, the fools…

That didn't used to be the only job of the CEO, though. CEO pay used to be roughly 4 times the pay of the average worker, not 30 to 40 times the pay. It also used to be the CEO's job to ensure the health of his company in the form of the health of his workforce including their ability to stay in the middle class.

Publicly traded companies end up being driven by perverse short-term incentives.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#173

Post by soundsgoodtome »

cudgy wrote: post #158
soundsgoodtome wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t we reduce this down a bit? Hollywood studios are businesses. Businesses exist to create value for owners. Hollywood talent is expensive. AI tends to be much less expensive. Hollywood studio execs believe they might be able to replace expensive talent with cheap AI, thus creating more value for owners. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

How does destroying the industry you are in and making it easier for competitors to enter with crappy product create value for owners?

Most of these people seem to think one to two quarters at a time, so anything longer than that doesn’t matter. Just my $0.02

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#174

Post by DropInIn »

taeric wrote: post #5

I support the strikes and hope it comes to a good conclusion; but this feels a touch forced, honestly. I get that it is in vogue to blame silicon valley, but hollywood has a littered history of killing their goose, as it were. For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable. You don't need a special license to buy a dvd and rent it out to anyone. Just as you don't need a s…

> You don't need a special license to buy a dvd and rent it out to anyone. Just as you don't need a special license to loan or sell a dvd to a friend. You bought it and you can do that.

Allow me to introduce you to British Columbia, Canada:

"By law, any person or business that distributes or publicly exhibits motion pictures or Restricted or Adult DVDs (adult motion pictures or “adult videos”) in BC requires a licence. To “distribute” means to rent, lease, sell or supply (or to offer to provide any of these services)."

https://www.consumerprotectionbc.ca/get-keep-licence/motion-...

There's also a whole industry for supplying dvd for rental purposes which charges serial multiples of the retail price per copy and you are legally required to purchase those version and are not permitted to rent out retail dvds.

I learned this when I was going to try to have a used dvd club in a small town and fell afoul of these issues, as it was a for profit venture.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#175

Post by Apocryphon »

WalterBright wrote: post #104
slowmovintarget wrote: post #76

I think the more compelling tale is that Hollywood execs are infected with Wall Street thinking. Maximum profit extraction, the kind of product is irrelevant, as are the customers.

Do you enjoy watching the hit TV shows and movies produced by the Soviet Union? Who is your favorite Soviet movie star?

Have you ever heard of Andrei Tarkovsky before

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#176

Post by DropInIn »

WalterBright wrote: post #156
pests wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's easy for you to say because you have no skin in the game. Imagine a service where a system can scan all your programming and engineering knowledge and expertise into an AI that then can be hired out to other companies infinitely and forever. You might care then because this obviously reduces the profit you can now extract from your labor.

I give away for free all my programming output. But programming isn't the only thing I can do. I'd pivot to something else. Or I'd use that AI to enhance my programming productivity. Just like word processors have eliminated the typing pool jobs, and have also greatly improved the productivity of writers. (I know this because my dad wrote a book before word processors, and a great deal of the time was spent typing th…

Labor and Right of Publicity with your Identity are two very different beasts.

You really don't seem to grasp what it all entails to have your likeness taken and used in _any_ fashion some business desires, or that it can be sold to another company who could use it in ways you didn't expect with the prior company.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#177

Post by taeric »

cudgy wrote: post #154
taeric wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have kids in that range. And by and large, I agree that they would be distraught to not have Netflix/YouTube/etc. However, I also know that blockbuster movies are still raking in the money, as I have family insisting on seeing Barbie this week. Super excited about it. Kids also wanted to see the Mario movie. And if you have kids in that range, I am willing to bet that you are also in the demographic of people…

The kids are just as tired as many of the adults of watching super hero x version y movies with a smattering of Tom Cruise action version z. I am hopeful that Oppenheimer will be interesting … The feigned move toward AI generated content would likely make things worse, providing bizarre fake Tom Cruise scripts generated from old real Tom Cruise scripts.

The numbers aren't really supporting this claim, though? They continue to pull in record crowds. The past few years were hit hard, but we have a solid reason for that. Most everything else will be secondary. Not non-existent, but not the primary driver.

Even the concern over AI generated content seems odd to me. Video games have shown that complete photo realism is not needed to attract ever growing numbers of consumers. Such that I can absolutely see AI and procedurally generated content being used in clever ways by creators.

That is, I largely think it will be a new market that exists along side existing ones. But it is definitely coming.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#178

Post by taeric »

pests wrote: post #153
taeric wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I shouldn't have said "still be profitable." For that, I meant they could be in a stronger position to ignore studios. And it is a bit mind boggling to think of 4.4 billion in profit. Wow. Still, my point mostly stands? If the studios decide not to let Netflix stream their movies, then they don't stream their movies. This was far more hollow of a threat in the early days of streaming, but nowadays it is very co…

> It is mind boggling to me that Daredevil is no longer available on Netflix. Something they literally helped produce. Except they didn't. Netflix was the broadcaster. Daredevil was produced by Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and Drew Goddard's production company. In fact, originally those shows did show a Netflix bumper at start but that has been replaced now with Disney+ as that's where it now streams.

Amusingly, I suspect this is me falling for the "engineer" trap. Producer is clearly a technical term in that field that all to many of us think means something more nebulous. Doesn't help with "executive producer" being a thing that I know a ton of folks mean "funded."

So, whatever their technical role's name, my understanding is that they put up a lot of money for the shows to be made. And now can't show them. Is that not the case?

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#179

Post by taeric »

rtpg wrote: post #96
majormajor wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, that makes sense too, but that part of "now stuff will be black holed" is what I think wasn't particularly anticipated from either side. Especially from the streamer's side: now you've spent money on shows that aren't even gaining you "niche back catalog size" benefits.

It’s the streamers making the black holing decision I think? Like the studios aren’t saying “remove this”, but the streamers deciding to not pay residuals. My guess is the higher profile removals are for shows that had special residual deals but most of it is probably just trying to save cash

That seems to be a distinction without a difference?

Sure, you can say the studios are not demanding that shows be removed. But, they are demanding that shows get paid for on each stream. And the streamers have done the math to see that it is cheaper to stop streaming them.

This kind of thing didn't happen at your old rental spots, as they specifically did not have to pay back to studios on each rental out. Just as your library doesn't have to pay on each lend. Moving the streaming into that world is very different.

Broadcast is /almost/ comparable. But there they don't give viewers a choice of what to see. It is them paying a much smaller subset of shows for the right to broadcast them. It is a payment model that doesn't scale up to on demand streaming capabilities.

To be fair, I suspect that the deal was actually on the right to be able to stream. Not per active stream, as that you could probably still find a way to make work. But if I have to pay for the right just to offer a show, and the number of people watching it are low, I can fully understand just not bothering.

Of course, it gets further complicated when you consider it a broadcast, as that also requires some considerations on the music rights that have to constantly be redone, as well. Truly a very baroque system that is exceedingly complicated.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#180

Post by WalterBright »

Apocryphon wrote: post #175
WalterBright wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you enjoy watching the hit TV shows and movies produced by the Soviet Union? Who is your favorite Soviet movie star?

Have you ever heard of Andrei Tarkovsky before

Nope.
Post reply on HN