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Disney/ABC TV has begun making long-feared layoffs as part of a broader restructuring of its broadcast business, with rumors swirling that bigger moves—including a possible sale of ABC—are coming.
Deadline first reported the staff reductions on Thursday, saying they could impact up to 200 employees across Disney and ABC properties. An ABC source with knowledge of the situation said that the cuts will hit upward of 40 of its employees on the East Coast and still more out west.
Multiple people at ABC told Splinter that there is a widespread belief at the network that the belt-tightening could be tied to a prospective sale by its corporate parent.
Disney's broadcast division, which includes ABC and its local TV stations, is suffering from slumping ad rates and new competition from streaming services. The network's top producer, Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away With Murder, decamped from ABC for Netflix in August.
Will pride goeth before the fall?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday October 15 2017, @02:52PM (3 children)
Pretty good summary. I'd agree with and extend the remarks to include:
1) They aren't taking the conversion from leading culture in the 60s/70s/80s to trailing culture badly in the 10s. In the 70s, the poz being pushed by 3s company or happy days was leading culture. In the 10s the poz being pushed is only still believed in by lost 60s hippie boomers, political ideas that are so obsolete and out of touch.
2) Hyper risk adverse for a variety of financialization/merger/oligopoly reasons. Better to nearly certainly have 3% of the population watch a "hit" show with near certainty than to risk 50:50 odds of having, say, 7% of the population watch a show. This is the narrowcasting phenomena. Sometimes you'll read semi-self reflection commentary on how sick america is because of our hit TV shows, but they narrowcast to such a small number of freaks that a "hit" show means nothing in the 10s compared to the 70s. In the "old days" like a third of the population (or more!) watched MASH or all in the family or I love lucy. Essentially no one watches "hit" TV shows anymore. Even something supposedly dominant like "Game of Thrones" in a room of 30 people you'll find like 1 person who watches.
3) Death of broadcasting and cultural leadership. The numbers above are not made up. TV has no cultural reach anymore. We're literally reaching fringe religion percentages. Depending on who's wikipedia articles you trust, there are twice as many new age practitioners, roughly half as many "moonies", and my favorite minecraft youtube "lets play" guy has a tenth the number in the USA as a typical TV show. TV, culturally, is backwards and dead. Which really pisses off boomer leftists because they used to use TV as a weapon against their hated lower tech rural white people, and the tables have turned such that decades later TV is now culturally "dueling banjos in the Deliverance movie".
4) Intense lower class downward mobility on TV. Part of the reduced risk is trying to drag in every sub 80 IQ viewer possible by dumbing down everything to Kindergartener levels. Reality TV is low functioning (usually because of alcohol) spoiled kids saying gimmie gimmie gimmie while playing playground games to see who "wins" along with elementary school playground level primate dominance games to see who's the "winner". This repels higher class people. I'm not going to watch trailer park TV partially because I'm above it but partially because I just don't share the ideas and interests of the trailer park. Also its strong signalling by them for me, or folks like me, to go away. OK, bye. Remember when McDonalds was cheap crappy but fast food for everybody, and then their marketing went hyper downscale about a decade ago, they don't want "uppity" people, like from their perspective, high school graduates, to eat there, well, bye, won't miss ya.
5) For a variety of reasons in the USA, we have no adult content on TV. "Adult" has been co-opted to mean swear words, tits, and gore-pr0n while everything else such as writing and character development remaining at a grade school or lower level. Essentially "adult" programming in the USA is "Sesame Street" with tits and guns. The only source of adult entertainment videos, in the sense of entertainment that appeals to adults, is foreign countries.
6) We have a similar problem in the music industry which is also of, by, and for minority 13 year old "daddy issue" leftists and everyone else can go away there is no place for them. Its a cultural sickness not an oddity of TV or video. Some similar entryist attempts have to take over and shit up a genre, see gamergate.
7) Most people no longer watch TV, not like the old days. In the old days watching ST:TNG when it was new and I was a young adult meant sitting on a couch and staring into the idiot box for an hour. Now a days watching reality TV means I play on my laptop connected to a freebsd box in another state working on a contract project while my wife checks out family and friends on her phone using facebook and in the background there's a noise source when we get bored. I DVR and often neither of us are paying enough attention to notice a commercial.. "Is is over? Did I miss it? Who got voted off?" The level of engagement of modern TV viewing makes a boring middle school math class on a spring day look focused and intense. People used to watch TV. Now its a noise source. Sometimes my wife and I put on music because we're not watching anyway, but see #6 above for that problematic area.
Some BBC imports are remarkable. My wife binged "downton abbey" and its not really my taste, but its not as pozzed as it could be, not to the point of unwatchability like American TV, some of the content is kinda witty and entertaining and IQ over 80 level. I mean it says something when an average show of a genre I'm uninterested in from a foreign country is none the less more appealing than locally produced crap.
In summary American TV is dead and doing its chicken with its head cut off routine right now. You wouldn't expect much higher cognitive function from a headless chicken, likewise American TV. Its just kinda running around pointlessly in a crazy show of spurting stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @04:33PM
Also remember that TV has pretty much always been a wasteland of crap programming. We just have the luxury of seeing what was good and ignore the rest.
(Score: 2) by bornagainpenguin on Sunday October 15 2017, @06:26PM
I agree with much of what you said and would love to hear more of your thoughts on this subject. Are these off the cuff remarks or do you have some sources I can read to know more? Have you posted on this subject before?
Thanks!
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 16 2017, @08:12PM
Many euro shows seem easier to watch than similar themed US shows.
The thing I like about BBC and most other Euro shows is that they are allowed to END.
A couple of seasons, maybe 4 and most of them are done.
In the US we've been watching the same preachy SVU crap for decades. The show needs to end.
I've been watching a series of Icelandic (!!!) police procedural shows. With subtitles for pete sake! Very well done, well acted. I would not have imagined there there that many actors in all of Iceland. I imagine some must be imports. The camera work is top notch, the writing is better than most, and its not juvenile.
And of course part of the appeal is I stream these things without commercial interruption so there's that.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.