The entertainment industry faces a troubling paradox: while audiences retreat to familiar comfort viewing and automated content floods platforms with minimal effort, investment in original programming is producing diminishing returns. Research from Kapwing reveals a startling truth about the modern content ecosystem. Analysis of YouTube‘s recommendation algorithm shows that roughly one-fifth to one-third of videos ... Read more
From that headline, one might assume that nothing new coming out is any good these days. That’s not true at all, but I will admit that it’s harder than ever to find the diamonds in the rough. Out of the hundreds of new shows that came out this year, probably less than ten of them were good imo. That may be one factor leading people to just rewatch old stuff.
It’s hard to get motivated to invest time in a show that may not be good, may get cancelled, or might take a turn for the worse after a few episodes or seasons. I recently watched the two seasons of Poker Face. I loved the pilot episode, really enjoyed some episodes, and hated others. And it had been cancelled anyhow. So I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone with those caveats.
When there are hundreds of shows to choose from, and you have experiences like that, it can be paralyzing. The days of breaking bad and game of thrones being a part of a monoculture are over. You can’t just wait for people to annoy you into giving a show a chance and then seeing they had a point. You gotta dig through tons of trash to find the good stuff. Most of the shows and movies I enjoy these days aren’t anything my friends and family have ever heard of. And yeah, AI is going to make this all worse. Not only by adding more crap to the pile but also likely causing content quality to vary wildly. The golden age of television and the garbage age of television are both true right now.