[otachack]

I'm not sure if you noticed the amount of content made in the past decade but it's limitless. Each of the streaming services have countless new shows and they all need, or needed, writers. With those streaming services came lower pay and higher minimum pay workers. We've been living through the "golden age" of TV in part due to the work of these writers.

You really think ChatGPT is capable of just plug-n-play? It'll be interesting to see the results of it. I'm rooting for it's failure if it's tried for many reasons but one especially because workers are continued to be treated as trash in this country and it'll get worse with yet another unregulated and half baked technological alternative.

[bluefirebrand]

> We've been living through the "golden age" of TV in part due to the work of these writers.

I feel like the ratio of good to bad shows is heavily skewed towards bad.

Yes, there are more good shows out lately than there were in the past, but I think it's basically because of the volume of shows that are being pushed out at all times nowadays.

Looking at it from the perspective of Netflix, Disney, etc... They are being critically panned these days. Netflix in particular is a joke with how many shows they are producing that they cancel after one season.

Now it's unfair to lay that all at the feet of the writers, but arguably only stuff written by some top % of writers are taking off.

So why would they want to raise the pay of all writers when a large majority of them are writing stuff that gets cancelled?

[tehwebguy]

There will probably always be more shows you don’t like than shows you do. They aren’t all for you / me / that guy.

Every show gets canceled eventually, except Jeopardy and The Simpsons I guess. The studio still owns the IP and can re-release, reboot for as long as human life exists.

Industry never wants to raise wages for anyone! A handful of companies own all TV & film media, meaning it’s even harder for folks to negotiate. That’s why unions and strikes are necessary.

[bluefirebrand]

Don't get me wrong, I'm generally pro union as long as it is securing higher salaries and more benefits for workers and not just benefitting the union reps. I wish the writers well in this.

But this isn't just "I don't like these shows", it's "no one likes these shows, sometimes they are cancelled before the first season even finishes airing"

I think they would be in a better bargaining position if more shows weren't getting absolutely trashed by both critics and audiences over their writing, that's all.

[tehwebguy]

Not every show is getting trashed. Some shows fail immediately and some don’t. This has been the case for a long time! Plenty of shows haven’t got 2 seasons going back many years.

What it seems like you are really asking for is that no or not many shows are canceled, or they all or most shows appeal to you / everyone. I don’t think that has been possible since the invention of cable, or certainly since the invention of YouTube.

There is too much content out there to waste time on content you don’t like. Honestly it’s a huge win for basically everyone.

Additionally every new show is competing against every show you’ve ever liked (including canceled shows) since they’re no longer relegated to reruns and syndication. You can probably get the whole series on DVD for a way lower price (I remember when each season of X Files was like $80 on DVD) or on a streaming service.

There are still new “mass appeal” shows and movies —- they are often panned as being broad, formulaic slop but they still do crazy numbers. Maybe it’s not actually hard to make content that appeals to most people, but maybe that’s not most content creators’ intention.

[Kye]

The 2008 strike led to way more reality TV. I don't think studios care about quality as long as it draws monetizable eyeballs. They're certainly going to try to replace writers with LLMs! It might even work. Just...not with any semblance of quality.

On the other hand, it seems a brief renaissance of quality sci-fi TV followed that strike. Though that could be the tax incentives Vancouver offered and the abundance of sci-fi writers who cut their teeth on Stargate.

[JohnFen]

> I don't think studios care about quality as long as it draws monetizable eyeballs.

And, even more bizarrely, their audiences don't seem to care about quality either.

[bdavbdav]

> I'm not sure if you noticed the amount of content made in the past decade but it's limitless.

More training data, better models :)