Private equity and monopoly capitalists will destroy anything to make a buck, and they’ve turned their sights on TV and film. If you hated cable’s

Welcome to the Era of Garbage Film and Television Streaming

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2024-06-10 13:00:06

Private equity and monopoly capitalists will destroy anything to make a buck, and they’ve turned their sights on TV and film. If you hated cable’s high prices, endless ads, and copycat programming, you’re going to loathe the future of streaming.

The story of the decline of streaming is a tale of deregulation and big finance’s monopoly capital model, which comes in hard and, when it leaves, trails devastation. (Riccardo Milani / Hans Lucas via AFP via Getty Images)

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If there’s an iron law for twenty-first-century capitalism, it’s that private equity and big corporate capital will enshitify anything it can get its grubby hands on. Most recently, the finance class was in the news for destroying the Red Lobster chain, depriving us regular folks of a decent meal out. The same forces are also setting out to ruin the entertainment industry and those who work in it.

Writing in Harper’s Magazine, Daniel Bessner, a contributing editor at Jacobin, penned “The Life and Death of Hollywood,” a must-read feature on Hollywood. He deconstructs the streaming industry, tracing the history of film and television through their early years, into the deregulation 1980s and ’90s, through to industry consolidation and derisking. He highlights how the promise of creativity, freedom, and decent work in the industry have been slaughtered at the altar of intellectual property milking, worker exploitation, and the race to profit.