I think we’re going to start seeing this across the board as tv channels become streaming platforms. Showtime just announced they’re entering a period of “tightening the belt” and are looking to fund low budget projects.

You can point to spending on tv being higher than ever, but that doesn’t change the fact that dilution is happening.

Broadcast TV Channels like AMC had to mostly worry about filling 3 to 4 hours of one stream per day: Primetime television.

During that golden 3 to 4 hour period per night advertising revenue was at its highest often with companies bidding higher and higher to get the sweet spot when everyone was watching the same thing. Obviously not everyone, but enough that you can say everyone and mean someone you know.

Change the name tv channel to stream. Imagine all of us tuning into one stream at 9pm every night to watch a broadcast of a tv show. We see ads but there’s so many of us watching at once the primary cash dollar money that goes to budgets is from advertisers keen to get that one slot where we’re all looking at the same time.

But now we’re in the age of streaming and people expect to see a “platform” of content which means as much choice as can be thrust upon someone at any one time. It’s not about seeing great entertainment, it’s about having more of a choice of entertainment than the other company charging roughly the same.

Instead of funding prestige content with most of the huge income coming from advertising money on primetime, now there is no primetime, people watch whatever they want whenever they want and they expect something different every time or at least a massive catalog of content to ignore but feel like they own and that justifies the monthly payments.

So instead of one stream aka tv channel of which there’s only maybe 100 of total and they’re showing fun reruns all day with ads, and then they show brand new content at primetime with advertisers who bear the brunt of the huge budgetary costs, we have plateaued subscriber growth meaning there’s a budgetary ceiling on almost all content.

We have entered the Lowest Common Denominator era of TV because instead of being chosen gourmet chefs who present us a curated dinner course, they showed us the supermarket and told us could have whatever we wanted and that we can eat it any time we want.

They used to call television “programming” back when it was used to inform, educate and entertain, in that order. I’m in my 40’s and I remember that phrase.

Garbage in, garbage out. We’re entering a time of constant information that does not inform or educate but solely exists to entertain. Combine that with a free market monetary interest in funding content produced by businesses with investment capital instead of public tax funded models like the UK’s BBC and you can see how the educate, inform, entertain model has now become entertain, entertain, entertain because you as the customer could open the app at any time of the day and expect something absolutely brand new. I am the king of run on sentences. I’m sorry.

Where we are is not better than where we were.