Yet another Hacker News

America Has Lost 200k of Jobs in Media, Film and the Arts. How Much Is AI?

86 points gnabgib 1 hour ago 51 comments

commiepatrol 1 hour ago | parent

Have you seen media, arts and film that America produces recently? It's garbage.

cute_boi 1 hour ago | parent

I can't watch youtube due to all these garbage. Youtube should allow me to blanket ban on publisher who use full AI for full video.

0c3ca83 1 hour ago | parent

They can't, as far as organizational politics goes. Tech is all in on AI.

ion_trapper 9 minutes ago | parent

Being all in on AI doesnt mean they have to be all in on bottom of the barrel slop videos. Youtube actually does a great job of not serving you slop if it gets to know you well enough. And it does notify you if it detects the video is AI generated. I would hope tech companies are awake to the fact that people’s feeds being deluged by the absolute uncanniest and disturbing visuals you’ve ever seen is feeding into anti-AI sentiment, and they probably shouldn’t be further enabling that.

loloquwowndueo 1 hour ago | parent

I just stopped using YouTube for entertainment years ago. Try it!

(I still jump in for the occasional video tutorial etc but it’s always targeted - go for one thing, swoop in, close it when I’m done.

bubblemoth 36 minutes ago | parent

Where do you find entertainment now?

dylan604 25 minutes ago | parent

I just listen to one of many of the voices in my head and see what they have to suggest. Things get interesting

Dove 10 minutes ago | parent

I'm not who you're replying to, but I tuned out big movies and TV long ago, and just recently, YouTube became a hostile enough environment for me to start limiting it.

I had been replacing it with podcasts, but they are so ad-infested now that it's been pushing me more and more to audiobooks. I also watch a fair bit of content on smaller special interest platforms, like CrunchyRoll for Anime or Pepperbox for guns. They're easy to sub and unsub depending on what I'm interested in. I often rent old movies. And more and more... I read.

I had used Prime's videos for a while when they had something I liked, but the ads have gotten so bad that I now go out of my way not to emotionally invest in anything they produce.

wellthisisgreat 1 hour ago | parent

There is some resurgence in quality here and there but then there is Avengers, MCU, Star Wars and idk how you can balance that with any amount of quality indie products

Arubis 57 minutes ago | parent

This might be (unintentionally?) part of the reason for the original subject: how many jobs does the Avengers IP pipeline support? How about for a single artifact output by it--one TV show, for example?

And how many people work on a well-loved indie artifact of about the same market position?

Gonna guess the latter supports way fewer jobs. (This isn't meant as a judgment in taste or moralizing--my own entertainment tastes run indie towards pretentious, so economically I'm part of the problem.)

drivers99 10 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

add-sub-mul-div 53 minutes ago | parent

Vague takes like this scream Facebook boomer. There's lots of great media and lots of bad media. It's the nature of trying to monetize creativity.

46283737292 27 minutes ago | parent

In contrast, thought-terminating clichés like "facebook boomer" show critical thinking on your part.

OgsyedIE 59 minutes ago | parent

"You're going to begin to see demand destruction based on the pricing environment." - Bob Jordan, CEO of Southwest Airlines, April 23rd

combobyte 22 minutes ago | parent

"We've finally gone too far on pricing" is a wild thing to hear a CEO say out loud in 2026.

ViktorRay 58 minutes ago | parent

I think some of it may be demand side.

Many people spend hours browsing Tik Tok rather than watching film or television.

Even long form YouTube videos are highly popular. Many folks spend time watching those rather than movies or tv. I believe Tom Hanks was speaking about this many years ago.

That being said….

I remember growing up and my teachers would always emphasize the importance of reading. I’m sure it would be a great thing for humanity if everyone spent their free time reading books rather than on film or television. In such a scenario would people complain about job loss then? This could be a fruitful idea for a science fiction short story come to think of it.

dodger-dog 31 minutes ago | parent

This is my thinking. TikTok is very entertaining. I can’t do hours, but 30 minutes to an hour is great. Compare it to an unswipable hours long sporting event, 30 minutes looking for the right movie you quit 30 minutes in or have to pause till another day because something comes up, or tv shows with unresolved endings that leave you feeling like you are in a toxic relationship-hating the commitment but afraid of the sense of loss.

forgotusername6 23 minutes ago | parent

Habitual use of shorter and shorter form content trains you to expect gratification faster and faster. There is most certainly a better reward for delaying gratification. A really good movie can leave you on a complete high or completely devastated. I'm pretty certain tiktok cannot. It's cheap quick entertainment but if you get used to that fast shallow enjoyment you can't hold on long enough for the good stuff.

jalev 55 minutes ago | parent

Some of these graphs don't support the hypothesis. The movie one for example shows that employment is just slightly below what it was just after the financial crisis of 2008, and shows record job loss after the covid bump which we all know resulted in massive hiring sprees in a lot of sectors followed by massive layoffs. Is the movie and movie production sector really experiencing an apocalyptic downturn where the line will reach zero, or just returning to its median?

Apparently the amount of movies actually being produced has barely recovered to post 2008 levels.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/187122/movie-releases-in...

vasco 49 minutes ago | parent

Yeah but the total hours of content produced are way up. Most video content that needs to be produced and is consumed nowadays isn't movies.

alephnerd 9 minutes ago | parent

> record job loss after the covid bump which we all know resulted in massive hiring sprees in a lot of sectors followed by massive layoffs. Is the movie and movie production sector really experiencing an apocalyptic downturn where the line will reach zero, or just returning to its median?

The 2023 Hollywood Strike strike, the COVID lockdowns shutting down theaters, and the aggressive film production (UK, Poland, Ireland, Norway, Italy) and VFX (Ireland, India) subsidizes right as American states like California, Georgia, NY, and others began cutting them meant much of the American film and television industry got obliterated earlier this decade.

This is something that has been reported on in the space for a decade now, but not much can be done.

This article is also another example of why HNers should stick to their own lane, as most lack context or visibility into other industries.

wewewedxfgdf 53 minutes ago | parent

Interest rates and inflation have vastly more impact than AI.

999900000999 43 minutes ago | parent

No one has any money and entertainment is the first thing you cut.

Every streaming service feels more and more user hostile. If I want to watch South Park it’s a 15$ a month subscription just for that .

Paramount Plus has nothing else.

I want to watch Lanterns, another 30$ a month.

Maybe King of The Hill , 20$ a month. The Reboot has this weird lazy animation style.

qurren 37 minutes ago | parent

Also, nobody has any time for entertainment. Office workers all working 80 hours a week fearing stack ranking, PIPs, layoffs, needing to scramble to get a new H1B job or risk getting kicked out of the country and having to uproot kids. Service workers are working 120 hours a week across 3 jobs. Single people are working 100+ hours a week studying and interviewing and not getting jobs.

_heimdall 22 minutes ago | parent

Interesting, I have seen people be stretched thin and more stretched but I haven't seen people working 80-120 hour weeks. Different circles maybe?

I do feel for anyone trying to find a new H1B sponsor. I've lived and worker as a foreigner before, its stressful for sure. It is also a tough spot for a country to be in, if your domestic labor is struggling to find or keep jobs itsnhard to justify continuing protections for foreign labor.

cjpearson 22 minutes ago | parent

While this may be true for some people, overall this is not backed up by the data.

The average amount of time spent doing "Relaxing and leisure" activities (mostly TV) has increased 6% in the last twenty years. There was a small decrease after the post-COVID peak, but working time has also decreased in this time frame.

https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables.htm

senordevnyc 10 minutes ago | parent

How dare you bring facts and data to a fight based on vibes!

_heimdall 37 minutes ago | parent

I believe its called South America now.

ajkjk 23 minutes ago | parent

and the content strangely sucks most of the time. like no one can write, edit, direct, or act anymore. Not always but strangely often.

LPisGood 12 minutes ago | parent

I feel like this comment contrasted with the incredible movie releases this since ~May is just not holding water.

senordevnyc 6 minutes ago | parent

Without even looking at the data, I bet both of your hypotheses here are wrong.

I bet the median American has more real disposable income than four years ago.

I bet the median American spends more in real terms on entertainment (and streaming specifically) than four years ago.

Almost without fail, the data in almost any area of modern life seems to be way less negative than people’s vibes about it are.

dodger-dog 37 minutes ago | parent

How much is TikTok?

dylan604 24 minutes ago | parent

More than you can afford if you have any scruples

dodger-dog 13 minutes ago | parent

Scruples likely has something to do with it, but not in the way you suggest. My feed is full of dancing and singing. Seeing a dance trend go viral and with 48 hours people all over the world are posting their rendition of it is remarkable.

arjie 27 minutes ago | parent

Based on the rise of short form video content, this seems like amateurs are just outcompeting professionals for eyeballs.

geophph 24 minutes ago | parent

Not even short form. I found myself watching an hour and a half long YT video of a dude jet skiing from WA state to Alaska and can’t even hype myself up to watch a feature film.

buzzerbetrayed 11 minutes ago | parent

The other night I watched a team of 4 dudes row from America to Europe. In a row boat. No sails. Makes me think of the Tom Hanks quote:

> What actually happened is cooler than what could happen

It’s hard to think of a fictional story that beats actually rowing across the world.

beedeebeedee 24 minutes ago | parent

The only thing I’ve been watching lately are Soviet films on youtube. Mosfilms and Gorky films have their full catalogs on there. Sergei Bondarchuk’s films are deeply moving. Seventeen Moments from Spring is incredible as well- the Soviet answer to James Bond. For some reason it feels deeply refreshing to watch these films instead of what the US has been producing.

sjdh76 23 minutes ago | parent

Before AI showed up the UN released a report on the Attention Economy. It said Supply of content had vastly outstripped Demand. It decoupled because entertainment/media was being used to push other products. The telcos, amazon, google/fb and many others were all subsidizing content to push some other product. Exploding info chasing finite non growing eyeballs and time.

echelon 5 minutes ago | parent

There is infinite demand for content (to the limit that human attention can absorb it).

Most content sucks ass. What may appear to be bountiful content is actually a lot of okay and meh content. Very little of it fits to your actual taste preference. It's a whole lot of mediocre. We as humans do not know what plentiful content looks like. We've never lived in it.

Jobs are disappearing because cheap/free ad subsidized content attracts more eyeball hours than produced and prestige content. It's the optimal pareto frontier of content and does the most bang for buck, most in aggregate eyeball hours.

When the tools enable more creation at scale by tasteful creators, we'll start to get closer to content abundance. We're not there yet.

tracerbulletx 17 minutes ago | parent

Very little. It's that America's tax incentives are not competitive. They fly crews to make game shows from LA to london because its cheaper to shoot a show there. There's strong momentum to change that at the moment, there's a bill that might actually get passed that will make the tax environment competitive again in the states that stack theirs on it.

Lerc 15 minutes ago | parent

Before I dive into a relatively long article here, can someone tell me if it does, in fact, say how much is AI?

redwood 9 minutes ago | parent

I find it odd that this article ignores live theater when that is the natural parallel to "live shows" or "tours" for film and television.

Also how much is the end of ZIRP and how much is jobs moving abroad? I'd love to see the article go a bit deeper