Short explanation: it’s popularism...for Hollywood!
Put another way: most average Americans like “bad” shows, but bad means bad in terms of critical acclaim. But they are popular.
(Inspired by Matt, I actually wrote an entire series on the “Average American” for the Ankler.)
Most Americans, after coming home at night from a long day at work (reminder: 70% of Americans left the home to work during the pandemic; they’re not like you!) are tired. They don’t want to watch some intense, political, searing drama about grief, addiction, dysfunction, loss or politics.
There’s a reason WBD choose to advertise Dr. Pimple Popper during the NBA playoff game last night and not Succession. Wealthy, coastal, college-educated elites love Succession; everyone else loves Dr. Pimple Popper (which was also the Hollywood trades fav go-to insult when describing Zaslav, CEO of WBD, and the Discovery channel.)
Again, it’s “popularism” for Hollywood, but replace “Succession” with whatever extreme left wing policy proposal from the last five or so years that countless people on Twitter think is popular when it actually isn’t, and it’s basically the same thing.
They want to watch dumb reality shows, game shows, funny sitcoms, procedurals featuring sexy doctors or lawyers that finish the story in one episode. Heck, even HBO is an example of this! As countless critics dismissively complained about during the 2010s, their most popular show featured “dragons”. And now their most popular show has zombies! Critics love White Lotus and Succession; everyone else loves dragons and zombies.
But for the last 5 to 10 years, Hollywood has completely lost sight of this fact. Why? Three factors:
- No ratings on streaming until 2020. Basically, the only (public) feedback for most streamers were critics (who like “prestige” programming best), not actual ratings. (So guess what data biz dev execs like me were asked to show our bosses?) As a result, the incentives in streaming favored prestige shows.
- No need to make money until 2022. Do to both Wall Street’s love of growth over profit, especially geared to streaming, and ZIRP, well, it was all about growth! So dev execs kept making the shows they wanted, focused more on having a “creative vision” and courting big names and winning awards, to generate buzz, than getting actual eyeballs.
Don’t believe me? Ask yourself why Apple TV+, which is considered widely around Hollywood to have as good a brand/creative vision/content as HBO has virtually no customers
- Social Media. Twitter and TikTok aren’t real life, but countless coastal elites and people working in Hollywood think it is. But how many people know that Pinterest is more popular than Twitter? Or that FaceBook, as of late last year, was still four times as popular as TikTok?
As a result, people use social media reactions as proof of popularity, when the people using these platforms do NOT represent America. (Just like politics. Does Twitter resemble anything close to the average Americans views on politics?)
But since there are ratings now and since entertainment companies have to make money, expect the industry to shift back to making broadly popular fare. Before, Matt asked how
It’s a story as old as Hollywood: the broadly popular fare pays for the elite, critically-acclaimed prestige stuff. And it works!
What’s interesting, to me, and something I might explore more later, is how the same dynamics seem to be at play across multiple industries: elite opinions come to be seen as the norm, when reality says something else. From politics to medicine to Hollywood, there’s a disconnect between both reality and elite opinion/consensus.
It’s probably something that people in every industry need to be aware of.
