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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34988 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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I was reading this article about Amazon Prime's streaming service:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/inside-amazon-studios-jen-salke-vision-shows-1235364913/

Mostly it's not particularly culture war related, talking about how the executives are blowing huge amounts of money on niche shows that don't bring in enough viewers to justify their costs, or paying big salaries to writers and directors that don't end up producing much.

But this part made me chuckle:

Another complaint is that Sanders relies heavily on feedback from focus groups, which tend to favor broad and less inclusive programming. Several Amazon insiders say the reliance on testing and data led to a clash late last summer, when an Amazon executive said in a marketing meeting for the series A League of Their Own that data showed audiences found queer stories off-putting and suggested downplaying those themes in materials promoting the show. Series co-creator Will Graham became greatly concerned about bias built into Amazon’s system for evaluating shows, which multiple sources say often ranked broad series featuring straight, white male leads above all others. One executive calls A League of Their Own “a proxy for how diverse and inclusive shows are treated.”

Graham launched into an interrogation of the system, questioning multiple executives about it. Amazon took the issue seriously and dropped the system of ranking shows based on audience scores. Insiders cite this show as one that Sanders did passionately support, but for months after it dropped, there was no word on whether it would be renewed. Ultimately, Amazon agreed to a four-episode second and final season. Still, several Amazon veterans believe the system remains too dependent on those same test scores. “All this perpetuation of white guys with guns — it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says one. And another: “Relying on data is soul crushing … There’s never, ‘I know the testing wasn’t that great, but I believe in this.'” Graham declined to comment.

I've seen people argue that big companies aren't ideologically woke, they're just doing it for good publicity with the ultimate goal of making money. I think if that was true then Amazon would tell their producers and directors to make the type of content that people want to see: white men with guns (apparently). And if they didn't want to get on board they should take a hike. That's what a company that wants to make money would do. Instead they're trying to change their audience's preferences which is a much harder and less profitable job.

The part that I don't quite understand is why Phoebe Waller-Bridge, an English feminist? comedian, is being asked to star in and produce action shows. She was asked to star "with Donald Glover on a Mr. and Mrs. Smith series, based on the 2005 film." That failed due to "creative differences" and now "Waller-Bridge would write (but not star in) a Tomb Raider series." Both of these were roles that Angelina Jolie had, and she is among the handful of women who can carry an action movie.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge's standout hit is Fleabag. I have seen (part of) the first episode. I find it hard to describe the genre, but it is British scatological humor. Think French and Saunders or a "Carry On" movie but with more toilet humor. It is about as far from action movies as it is possible to get. Perhaps the show is good, as "In 2022, Rolling Stone ranked Fleabag as the fifth-greatest TV show of all time" (beaten by the Wire, Breaking Bad, the Simpsons, and The Sopranos, beating the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mad Men, Seinfeld, and Cheers) but it is not anything to do with action. The other English shows on the list are Monty Python at 33, The Office at 53, Fawlty Towers at 68, and I’m Alan Partridge at 83.

Rolling Stone writes:

Sure, it’s rewarding when a TV show can provide dozens of hours of mirth across many seasons. Sometimes, though, the most satisfying experience comes from series that have a few things to say, say them perfectly, and then shake their heads and walk away before you can follow them into less-interesting story arcs. Never has that short-and-sweet approach been more impeccably executed than with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s tragicomic tour de force, where she played a self-destructive woman so lonely that her healthiest relationships were with her unseen television audience, and with the Hot Priest (Andrew Scott) with whom she fell madly in lust in the second season. And whether she was talking directly to us or not (in TV’s best-ever use of breaking the fourth wall), Waller-Bridge held the audience in the palm of her hand throughout. She made Fleabag as raunchy, as funny, and as sad — sometimes more than one of those at the same time — as she wanted it to be. And then she said goodbye.

Perhaps they intend to make a raunchy, funny, sad, Tomb Raider movie. Maybe it will be great.

Amazon recently renewed The Peripheral, a sci-fi drama from Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy that cost close to $175 million for eight episodes (sources say their final eight-episode season of Westworld at HBO cost about $140 million). Amazon has ordered six additional hours of The Peripheral despite what sources say has been lukewarm audience engagement. “It probably should have been canceled,” says an insider. “But they made a megadeal and the political capital they would lose with Lisa and Jonah would be too great. And they have other shows coming.” Fallout, the next show from Nolan and Joy, is also “extremely expensive,” says a source.

But a showrunner with considerable experience at Amazon sees it differently: “They don’t learn from their mistakes. They [say], ‘We can’t do any more deals like that.’ You turn around and they’re right back to — the impolite term is ‘star-fucking.'” For creative executives at the studio, the result has been exasperation. “They say, ‘We don’t want to buy from outside studios,’” says a former Amazon exec. “Then packages come and they buy everything that comes through the door, and our development is thrown out.”

One executive says it was different when Salke first took charge at Amazon. “She shot from the hip, she went with her gut, and she didn’t let data overrule her,” this person says. “But she hired a staff that was in over their heads in terms of being able to get those shows produced at a number. I think if we had [FX boss] John Landgraf or [HBO’s] Casey Bloys or somebody who had more credibility and direct interaction with the development of shows, it would be so much easier to spend less. But we kind of act like it doesn’t matter if we have deep conversations with talent. A guy like Donald Glover would think, ‘No way in hell I’m doing a deal with these guys unless they overpay me.’ I know we’re third or fourth on their priority list. Agents are direct about it: ‘You guys pay a premium for being Amazon.’ They have clients who would much rather work at other places.”

The general theme here seems to be bad leadership that believes it can shovel money at projects to make them succeed and who seem more interested in relationships with industry insiders who don't trust or respect them (and again, trying to paper it over with money) than developing a coherent plan.

Series co-creator Will Graham became greatly concerned about bias built into Amazon’s system for evaluating shows, which multiple sources say often ranked broad series featuring straight, white male leads above all others.

...

Still, several Amazon veterans believe the system remains too dependent on those same test scores. “All this perpetuation of white guys with guns — it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says one. And another: “Relying on data is soul crushing … There’s never, ‘I know the testing wasn’t that great, but I believe in this.'” Graham declined to comment.

As someone who grew up in an environment where third wave feminism was just taken for granted as the obviously correct thing (well, really 2.5th wave, I suppose, and it was just called "feminism"), I'm reminded of the basic attitude that I noticed there, which I'd sum it up as "feminism can't fail, it can only be failed." I've noticed this sort of attitude being a very strong feature of the downstream cluster of ideologies that have followed since, i.e. "identity politics," "SJW," "woke." There's this strong and constantly reinforced idea that we know that our ideology is the obviously correct one that we only need to present to others whose sole correct response is to agree and submit. Any sort of pushback is necessarily a failure on the part of those pushing back, reflecting their bigotry/stupidity which we have no responsibility to account for. This is the core of a lot of the very popular and influential memes in this space like "sit down and shut up," "white fragility," or "tone policing."

But when you're making products for a business, you run into the issue of actually having to appeal to potential customers so that they give you their money for the product. I think the principal-agent problem is certainly at play here, where the decision makers are motivated to push the kind of media they believe ought to be produced, regardless of their profitability. And if the audience doesn't reward them with their money, then so be it; these people are stupid bigots, and even if our company fails, at least we were morally righteous along the way.

But the reality of the market is that without that income, you eventually run out of people willing to fund your videos. This can take a long time, but most people still understand that it's unlikely to go on forever, which I think leads to a couple of different strategies. One is to use the same bullying tactics referenced above in sociopolitical situations, to try to shame the audience into giving them their money. I believe Amazon's Rings of Power's marketing had some of this with the emphasis on the diverse cast and accusations that believing that the racial diversity of some of the isolated population groups would take away from the immersion was bigotry. And more broadly, it's been a popular tactic in the industry with the creators of films like Bros, the Charlie's Angels reboot, and Terminator: Dark Fate outright saying that supporting their films was what good open-minded people would do. This tactic has worked extremely well in sociopolitical contexts where social or outright coercion are options, but I think in media it has had very little success at all.

The other strategy I see, a much more long-term one, is emphasizing socialism or some similar variant of anti-capitalism as the obviously correct way to move society towards. The idea being that without capitalism, video producers would be free to create whatever without constraints based on the audience and as such the media landscape would be more full of the morally correct kind of media, which would then help to reinforce the morally correct sort of sociopolitical views in society. Whether or not this kind of scenario is realistic, I think many people truly believe it, and that's why someone like, say, Anita Sarkeesian, one of the most famous and influential 3rd wave feminists in media in the past decade, has openly come out against capitalism.

Adding to that, I suspect artists have always been upset at the requirement that their projects be profitable, and when you combine that with woke ideology holding itself out as more important than profits, the results are truly big.

I avoided seeing Disney’s Moana in theaters because all the marketing was “wow brown gurl much diversity so hype”

When I finally did watch it, I enjoyed it. The glam crab was the only near-woke thing, and that segment was clearly over-the-top and based on the voice actor, and thus fun. The rest was a real treat, and The Rock’s “You’re Welcome” is one of the greatest Disney songs of all time.

I had a very similar experience with Moana myself. And I remember a friend at the time bitching that the movie didn't do very well, despite being super feminist etc etc. And I just wanted to shake him and say yeah, that's because people made the idiotic decision to try to sell the movie based on how feminist it was rather than trying to highlight that it was just a nice story told well.

In principle, I could see this making business sense. If you want to get as much viewership as possible, you would want to produce both mainstream, broad-appeal content and content that appeals to various niches. Focus groups only represent the median viewer, so basing everything on their opinions would systemically exclude the potentially profitable minority viewerbases. And by minority, I don't just mean queer women of colour etc., it also applies to less-popular genres and such.

I feel like focus groups in theory could be amazing, but in practice are complete garbage.

Problem one is the randomness. You don't want random. You want tastemakers, and obsessive critics. And you need to make sure you are only selecting tastemakers for niches you want to appeal to. Rings of Power should have gone and found ten people from YouTube that have made videos about the simarillion. Or that have reviewed the Lord of the Rings movies.

Problem two is the temporary nature. You should want them to stay on for a long time and track if you are doing better with them.

Graham launched into an interrogation of the system, questioning multiple executives about it. Amazon took the issue seriously and dropped the system of ranking shows based on audience scores… Still, several Amazon veterans believe the system remains too dependent on those same test scores. “All this perpetuation of white guys with guns — it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says one. And another: “Relying on data is soul crushing … There’s never, ‘I know the testing wasn’t that great, but I believe in this.'” Graham declined to comment.

Am I out of touch? No, it's the audience who are wrong.

The principal-agent problem allows executives and middle managers to express their open hatred for white men through corporate operations, hiring, and promotions at little to no personal cost. Even personal gain. And there’s nothing anyone else can do to stop them.

It’s funny how normalised this all is nowadays.

This reminds me of Iger’s recent complaints about Trump. Iger basically said “Disney exercised its first amendment rights over an issue and DeSantis attacked it.” Iger is probably right on the specifics, but there is a big problem in what Iger said.

Investors didn’t give Disney a bunch of money to make political statements about issues far from Disney’s core business. While Delaware courts have wisely limited their review of what is ultra vires, as a pragmatic issue what Disney did was in fact ultra vires. That means in a real sense Disney executives used other people’s money to say things Disney executives wanted to say. Indeed it didn’t seem to occur to Iger that making political statements unrelated to core Disney business was morally dubious. The fish doesn’t understand water.

But there is a word for what Disney did — stealing. Principal-agent problem is a more fancy specific term but that essentially theft is what P-A problem is.

Disney is a media empire with a very carefully curated public image critical to their business operations.

If they believed their silence on a political matter in the state they are massively associated with would adversely affect their brand, or the productivity of their 200k+ employees, it would be negligent of them to do nothing.

While you can disagree about how they addressed it, it was well in scope of their business.

That reasoning proves too much. By your logic, nothing whatsoever is ever out of scope of someone's business, because it might possibly affect their reputation.

No one is saying they can’t as a legal matter do what they did.

But taking a strong political position relating to what k-3 kindergartners are taught relating to sexuality in Florida is so far removed from any effect on their brand or workforce that de facto it is ultra vires. If doing that isn’t ultra vires, then nothing is ultra vires as everything can affect brand or workforce.

But maybe you are right. Maybe in our culture where everything is political the company was merely engaging in business practice. That speaks very I’ll of our society.

I think if that was true then Amazon would tell their producers and directors to make the type of content that people want to see: white men with guns (apparently).

Any executive in that position knows what would happen if they did that. Maybe it would sell more for a bit, but then the vocal minority would start loudly complaining, and claiming Amazon is white supremacist, and this executive would have to answer for it.

Having a job at a place like Amazon makes you a different person, wherein you must constantly portray yourself as squeaky clean. I frequently find myself acting like a very different person at work than I actually am, and operating contrary to my own values. The most important thing is avoiding controversy from both inside and especially from outside the company. This always makes me think about egregores, and how within the company it's possible that absolutely everyone is operating against their own interest, because the entity of the company "demands it" in some way.

Jack Reacher was fairly good, I thought. Not woke at all, and pretty good action.

Yeah acting and plotting was decent, the dialogue was refreshingly... not braindead? Can't say the same for the terminal list.

What I find funny is it's almost certainly the "action" part of that formula that provides 90% of the appeal. I think that writers rooms are way to the left of the median American on values. The median American is still basically heterosexual, pro-family, pro-achievement, pro-justice, and generally in alignment with what we might call Western virtues, which cash out by starting as Aristotle described - courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, ambition, patience, friendliness, truthfulness, wit, modesty, and justice - and probably add some Nietzchean virtues on top of that: health, strength, and a will to power.

Make your show about a protagonist of any color that strives to achieve those virtues and you have a pretty solid foundation. What people are mostly not enjoying are shows that attack these virtues or celebrate vice. People do not enjoy the anti-social, the self-destructive, the celebration of weakness or bitterness or mediocrity. They generally don't sympathize with losers and incompetence.

I think this also explains the perennial unpopularity of Christian media even during periods when the vast majority of people consider themselves Christians. For many, their Christianity is a moral counterweight to the ancient virtues they actually implicitly believe in.

I think the explanation is a little more prosaic. Explicitly Woke and explicitly Christian both tend to suffer from the same defect as any ideological fiction: being sanctimonious and preachy, with quality taking a back seat to message. This means the finished product tends to not be very good and unlike more subtly written material it is hard to get past themes you don't like (or, indeed, achieve basic audience buy-in to begin with).

There's also probably an argument that the association flows backwards - if something is good, we downplay its ideological content. Stuff like Ben-Hur and Prince of Egypt are pretty well regarded.

I've certainly noticed that "woke" pieces of media that have action in them tend to be mediocre at best in terms of the action, though I never connected it to the idea that action films/TV shows implicitly have that sort of right-wing philosophical worldview. What stood out to me mostly was just how awful and disconnected from reality the choreography tends to be, with fights not showing the basic intent that's present in each and every blow that's thrown, or with physics breaking suspension of disbelief far beyond what's expected of an action film. Amazon's own Rings of Power which famously easily had enough of a budget to film top quality fight scenes, suffered from this according to clips I saw, and so did The Matrix: Resurrections and even the older arguably minimally "woke" film Wonder Woman. I just figured that if the creators considered the messaging a priority, they let other aspects falter such as hiring someone who understands how to put together a good action scene, but now I also wonder if there's some sort of subconscious distaste for action scenes that caused an intentional sabotage of those scenes.

What I find funny is it's almost certainly the "action" part of that formula that provides 90% of the appeal.

Yes, but the showrunners are mostly constitutionally incapable of doing an action show with "diverse" characters that doesn't try to shove the diversity in your face. And it's harder to do with female, homosexual or trans characters than with race because that sort of action is part of the formula also.

But their “white male action” shows are equally bad.

Certainly not, at least not the first season. "Reacher" was great. The first season of "The Boys" was really good.

Their show about Zelda Fitzgerald was also really good. They cancelled it after one season though.

They actually renewed it and then spent 5 million dollars on pre-production of the second season and then cancelled it. I mean it's not HBOmax renewing Minx and filming the entire second season and then cancelling it but it's clearly an executive decision-making problem. I wouldn't call any show that they've ever made an organic "hit" besides The Boys.

If you look at the Nielsen weeklies of time watched and compare A League of Their Own to Reacher it's probable that the entirety of minutes watched up until for for A League of Their Own was probably equal to the first couple weeks of Reacher. And Reacher is a mild hit for Amazon and Amazon in general has a much lower bar for being a hit than Netflix.

For a comparison Reacher had around 1500 million minutes watched in its first week and A League of the Their Own had around 500 million minutes. Reacher stayed on the charts for a couple more weeks but League was gone after its initial appearance.

Another, more sad comparison is that Friends/Seinfield/The Big Bang Theory/Gilmore Girls/Supernatural routinely get around 500 million minutes weekly, they pop in and out of the top ten but they're pretty consistent and usually come back. For whatever reason the show failed spectacularly but nobody noticed because nobody probably knew it existed (a wonder how that works).

Though all of this is moot. A League of Their Own is a clout chasing prestige show made to show off diversity or be artistic and maybe nab awards. It's competition is never going to be Reacher or Jack Ryan but maybe something like the Night Sky which premiered even lower than League and was promptly cancelled. It seems pretty clear that Amazon, like every other network and streamer makes a few clout/award shows and doesn't stick with them if they're not successful.

The fact that they're getting a second season and complaining about it is just a stupid way to bite the hand that feeds. Aside from writing for the Onion, and Movie 43 Will Graham has two episodes on a sitcom for Bravo which I'd never heard of and wasn't aware that Bravo made sitcoms, and his other two shows were both Amazon shows. The guy wrote for the Amazon show Alpha House, executive produced and wrote for Mozart in the Jungle and then created and wrote for A League of Their Own. And then he shits on Amazon, I hope that shield of saying "diversity" can keep them from noticing/remembering this when they want to offer him another show to make. It's funny how it's the white guy complaining about this and the other creator who has a career outside of that show isn't instigating diversity investigations into Amazon because her show was only renewed for a second and final season.

I've also heard good things about Terminal List and the last season of Jack Ryan.

The last season of Jack Ryan was laughably bad.

Standard Hollywood writing where supposedly brilliant characters make completely stupid decisions to advance the plot. Confusion on which countries are NATO members or border Russia. Spec ops dudes travel undetected from the Black Sea to west of Athens in a zodiac.

They’ve also murdered the character of Jack Ryan. He’s no longer a Catholic with a wife and kids, but a rather amoral man with no apparent interest in women beyond casual sex. Book Jack Ryan would end a fight if he found himself in one, but wouldn’t use violence as his first option, typically coming up with some trickery to avoid it. Show Jack Ryan shoots a lot of people as an expected consequence of his uncreative plans.

Yeah. Show Jack Ryan seems to have no arc or development. This is a character who is supposed to be on the trajectory to be selected as a presidential running mate (and eventually be elevated to president). Instead we have a cavalier man-child who conspires with Russians on dubious evidence.

feedback from focus groups, which tend to favor broad and less inclusive programming.

I feel like I just had a stroke, because if something truly is "inclusive", shouldn't it have broad appeal?

I know, of course, that this is the newspeak progressive definition of "inclusive", which means "alienating to the majority", much like "diverse" just means "less white people."

But I'm really beginning to feel like we all owe an apology to all those people we derided as deranged racists for saying as such back on the internet of yore. "Anti-racist is code for anti-white" ended up being 1000% true.

Graham launched into an interrogation of the system, questioning multiple executives about it.

It's horrifying to think that there are really people who think "If the fact finding process isn't giving me the answers I want, it should be changed until it does."

Anti-racist is code for anti-white" ended up being 1000% true.

Their issue is that they were too broad minded, it isn't anti-white, it is anti-social.

It is a continual issue I have with such types, caught up in broad strokes rather than drilling down into the issue.

It pretty much explicitly is anti-white. It might also as a byproduct be anti-social, but that's by the by as far as I'm concerned. The motivating factor is a general hatred of whites. Many activists do not even bother to hide it.

I read the article and found it all amusing. I'm all for auteur-driven storytelling, but it seems at Amazon they want it both ways - they want their shows about niche interests to have massive budgets and be tentpole hits. This queer baseball comedy cost >$10 million per episode to make; that's blockbuster TV territory, not what you pay for a single creative vision.

I'm no fan of The Big Bang Theory, but if you actually want a show to hit that kind of viewership yeah, maybe you do need to play to the common man. And if not maybe you need a way to control costs. Amazon seems to want to have the prestige of HBO, and thinks that spending a couple billion dollars oughta do it. But HBO didn't become HBO through financial largesse. They had a very deliberate vision of what they wanted to be.

I also think that there is something more here. For instance after ideological 60ties and crushing/burning 70s came 80ies with their yuppie culture. These were free market hedonistic know-it-all youth, often in love with Ayn Rand and similar radical thought. Even then this was not the culture that would be predominant in the general population, but this was something in the air.

Similarly I think that wokism today has its function inside corporate governance structures. It provides executives with convenient moral cover for various things they want to do and it offers huge toolset to narcissists and psychopaths inside the organization. Remember, today's wokeness is often viewed as a successful turn where former radicals marched through institutions such as law, education, media but also government administration. There is rich tradition such as that from Dwight Waldo preaching that there is no "value-free" governance and thus we should adopt governance that promotes equity.

Again, I think that the mistake here is to evaluate wokeness in its own idealistic terms, or maybe in terms of alternative structures. I think wokeness should be evaluated in its own practical terms of its inevitable end state, which would look more like Chinese state today. Everything is political, everything is argued for as implementation of one noble government goal or another. But bellow the surface you have vicious struggle of elites for power inside beurocracy where identifying where the wind blows from is crucial for commercial success. For politically well connected CEO, it is easier to squash competitors by making sure they have low ESG score by taping ones social network as opposed to market competition. It does not matter if population wants or does not want ESG, what matters is what elites want and how they compete for power. Similarly in China it does not matter if you provide service that people want, as soon as you are not protected politically, you end up like Jack Ma.

I think wokeness should be evaluated in its own practical terms of its inevitable end state, which would look more like Chinese state today.

Yes, that's called "corruption", the natural consequence of technological stagnation such that the multiplicative effects that should come from serving the population's needs and driving it forward are outweighed by any other factor (in China, this is complicated by raw population making any gains sufficiently seizable and replaceable; in the US, it's... other things).

When the woke say that more economically equal societies form a type of bulwark against this kind of corruption, they're right (and trivially so); it's just that literally everything they do is designed to create an unequal society that uniquely privileges that corruption with appeals to morality as its cover- and that should be predictable behavior from the more corrupt part of that society bifurcating into high and low because the ways to be middle (and thus having to compete on positive-sum merit rather than a zero-sum purity corruption spiral) have been enclosed or obsoleted.

The problem with the US is that, in its 250 year run, it's only ever had to deal with this once, and that was after the mass industrialization centered around 1900. If you think "citizen perceived stability and prosperity" has anything to deal with TFR, you'll notice that by 1920 TFR was down barely above replacement in a country that was still 50% agrarian (so if the rural areas were still averaging 3 kids, that means the urban areas were down to South Korean TFR).

Now, to be fair to the American public, the then-unnecessariat would get a massive amount of concession from Roosevelt in the 1930s, but those reforms were for a different time, in a different place, under different economic conditions- what needs to be tackled now is the corruption inherent in free-trade laws (that are, from a macroeconomic standpoint, indistinguishable from the legalization of slavery; the fact that you're allowed to violate American worker rights laws so long as those crimes aren't committed on shore has not gone unnoticed by the now-unnecessariat).

Interestingly enough, "massive influx of slave labor" is arguably the thing that destroyed the Roman Republic- slave labor from conquests pushed everyone into the city, and Caesar was able to take advantage of it before it died out. I could believe an argument that the current socioeconomic policies of the US are designed to stretch the tail of this population out and dilute it enough there won't be enough support for a Caesar- but this is probably just a convenient side-effect, and events could still transpire that makes him a reality (for instance, if AI shrinks the pie more).

Another complaint is that Sanders relies heavily on feedback from focus groups, which tend to favor broad and less inclusive programming.

[...]

Still, several Amazon veterans believe the system remains too dependent on those same test scores. “All this perpetuation of white guys with guns — it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says one. And another: “Relying on data is soul crushing … There’s never, ‘I know the testing wasn’t that great, but I believe in this.'” Graham declined to comment.

It sounds like the argument is that the pro-diversity people think the metrics are measuring the wrong thing. It's a common complaint, especially about older TV shows but also about high-budget movies, that they are targeted at the broadest possible audience so they end up being utterly inoffensive but also completely soulless. That may really be the most profitable strategy. But it's also possible the most profitable strategy is appealing to multiple narrower groups with different shows but getting them very invested. The creators of shows probably prefer the latter because no one wants to be part of a designed-by-committee production.

But it's also possible the most profitable strategy is appealing to multiple narrower groups with different shows but getting them very invested.

It's possible in theory, but it hasn't played out in practice, and all the pro-diversity people have to answer that with is denial.

I think Warhammer video games, of all things, shows that the "shotgun" approach can work.

It sounds like the argument is that the pro-diversity people think the metrics are measuring the wrong thing.

What metric would the pro-diversity people accept as showing them that they're just wrong? Seeing these sorts of arguments unfold in every conversation from the gender wage gap to racist policing, I get the feeling it's turtles all the way down.

utterly inoffensive but also completely soulless.

no one wants to be part of a designed-by-committee production.

But then why are all the pro-diversity productions soulless designed-by-committee schlock?

When it comes to representation in media I still do think it's mostly about the bottom line. Even if most people prefer seeing white men on tv that doesn't mean the profit maximizing strategy is to make all your shows feature only white men. I suspect adding a token x character/story line is almost always a profitable decision because most people that don't like it won't stop watching because of it, but the people that do like it might actually watch it when they otherwise wouldn't have.

Having said that, I've recently moved away from thinking big corporations make woke decisions only because it directly improves their profit. It's hard to explain things like really aggressive diversity hiring at tech companies.

One possibility is that the best hires care a lot about progressive ideals. Even if the ideology causes the product quality to take a hit, it's still a better product than you would get hiring someone else. That seems to be the case with Will Graham.

Another possibility is that in elite circles progressive signaling gives you more status than the extra money you would have made not signaling.

Even if most people prefer seeing white men on tv that doesn't mean the profit maximizing strategy is to make all your shows feature only white men.

Sure but suppose you have 10 shows, and you want to add token diversity by having 10% LGTB representation.

You could make 1 of them have a central LGBT focus, you could make all of them have 10% lgbt themes or anywhere in between.

When you go with 'everything has to be a tentpole, you end up with worst of both worlds where 3 of them are LGBT focused and the other 7 have 10-20% LGBT themes, and you've lost any diversity that includes "not about LGBT"

When you decide that "Not-LGBT" doesn't have any place in your definition of positive inclusivity, fine, that's a value you can have, but you are clearly leaving profit on the table for the sake of values. There is clearly a large an audience in America that is interested in content which doesn't feature progressive values. If you go with the tolerance includes intolerance of intolerance view, fine. But stop the pretense of the 'profit-maximizer' explanation

But you haven't said why it's clear studios are leaving money on the table. Even if some people prefer shows without woke content, do they care enough to stop watching? Do the people that care enough to stop watching outnumber the new viewers that are brought in? Sure, for the people that actually refuse to watch you could say there is untapped market share, but it's not like there's literally no shows without progressive content. Maybe whatever amount that is out there now reflects the actual demand.

My prior is that in the face of cold hard cash most people don't cling to ideology, particularly people that end up in positions to make lots of money in the first place, and particularly large corporations. Really, how much market inefficiency can a business tolerate? If viewership of every woke show literally went to zero, do you think they would continue pushing them? If we look at the most successful shows and movies now, they are diverse and progressive (marvel, last of us, etc). I think that "big corporations only do things to maximize their profits" is usually a strong default assumption and you need an even stronger argument if you want to argue against that.

I suspect adding a token x character/story line is almost always a profitable decision because most people that don't like it won't stop watching because of it, but the people that do like it might actually watch it when they otherwise wouldn't have.

More often I see it work out the other way; people who would've watched it end up skipping out (usually fans of whatever established franchise is being mutilated), and the "new fans" never appear, the agitators for change were never going to watch your show in the first place. Mostly those people only care about taking things away from their enemies, white men.

One possibility is that the best hires care a lot about progressive ideals. Even if the ideology causes the product quality to take a hit, it's still a better product than you would get hiring someone else.

This, again, doesn't seem to track. I'm reminded of the Witcher controversy -- the actor committed to the source material who actually brought in the eyeballs, and the production staff obsessed with ideology who tried to kneecap him and the show at every single turn and ultimately ended up putting people off it.

Having said that, I've recently moved away from thinking big corporations make woke decisions only because it directly improves their profit. It's hard to explain things like really aggressive diversity hiring at tech companies.

So leaving ESG scores aside.

There's an easy Scylla and Charybdis metaphor to be made for companies deciding their level of wokeness. If a company acquiesces to internal activists with zero hesitancy, it ends up as a "Go Woke Go Broke" anecdote. On the other hand, if it ignores the social justice zeitgeist entirely, it stands out as a tall nail to be hammered down by lawsuits or activist fury.

As for really aggressive diversity hirers? They're just sailing a little too close to Charybdis. This might happen because it's safer/more satisfying for the people in charge of hiring, though not for the organization they work for.

They missed the lesson of the tale. The lesson isn't that you try to steer a course between Scylla (the monster) and Charybdis (the whirlpool). The lesson is you steer for Scylla and take the losses, lest you lose your whole ship and company to Charybdis instead.

it stands out as a tall nail to be hammered down by lawsuits or activist fury.

Nah, it's nowhere near as dramatic. If they lose a particular fight they just start pretending nothing ever happened, and that you don't exist. They might come after you again when the stars align, but for the most part they realize that if they don't score a kill, they're just handing their opponents free publicity.

People love reaching for these structural explanations, but they fail to explain the material reality.

Another Amazon tradition: Only top executives have offices. Until this year, other high-level execs have worked in assigned cubicles. Since January, however, the vast majority have to contend with “agile seating,” meaning they work at unassigned cubbies in designated “neighborhoods,” and are provided with lockers for their belongings.

What's the point of being an executive if you don't even have your own office? Sounds like an unpleasant company to work in.

A boring dystopia.

I enjoy how “hotdesking” has already been rebranded as “agile seating” because it’s so widely despised. The euphemism treadmill strikes again.

Thanks to hotdesking and hotwifing, I’ve been conditioned to automatically hate anything that starts with a “hot” and ends with a “-ing.”

Never hotload your missiles or hotswap your hard drives.

Wait'll you try hotsheeting...

Hotboxing isn't great either.

I like the way you’re hottaking here.

His face is positively spattered with hottake.

It is unpleasant. On the other hand cubicles are unpleasant for everybody and this saves Bezos money. Yachts are not cheap.

Isn't this just a case of individual decision makers having more to gain from impressing and staying on good terms with their peers than maximizing profits? Maybe that's not in the best interest of Amazon, but 'Amazon' doesn't make decisions.

You're half way there. If Hollywood started obsessively inserting Scientology into movies (which would then proceed to reliably bomb), would we be wondering whether it's the profit motive and individuals trying to impress each other, or would we just say "wow, looks like Scientologists really expanded in recent years"?

Amazon's primary source of profit is absolutely not original programming. Or any entertainment programming. Their humdrum commerce business subsidizes this stuff.

That's interesting. Didn't know AWS was quite that behemoth-y.

Turns out “the cloud” is a euphemism for “other people’s computers,” and those other people are Amazon.

That's because 74% of Amazon's operating profit comes from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

www.visualcapitalist.com

It hosts around 40% of the internet.

This strategy is still in alignment with money-making goals. There is profit motive for streaming services to move away from focus-grouping. If the sampling is non-selective, such metrics indeed tend to favor bland, inoffensive pablum. Unlike big-budget movies, which profit on a per-view basis and therefore aim for the "general audience", streaming services are just trying to keep subscribers. They don't need every show to be watched by every subscriber, they just need every subscriber to be invested enough in at least one show to not drop their service.

In this sense it is optimal to adjust evaluation metrics to prioritize more niche programming, which will often naturally involve targeting identity groups. It doesn't matter if queer stories turn off general audiences. As long as "The Boys" (white guys with guns - and superpowers) or other shows keep general audiences subscribed, then it makes economic sense to add something that will get some subset of non-general audiences paying the montly fee.

It makes sense to add something for non-general audiences. But "something" isn't "almost every highly promoted show".

If I was in charge of such a company and could pick a show to be aimed at a small group, I certainly wouldn't pick Lord of the Rings.

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