For two decades, the television industry convinced us that peak TV was a form of high culture. The correction is now underway, and it turns out that peak TV was something rarer and stranger: a convergence of circumstances that will not repeat.
The prestige TV era produced some of the greatest drama in the medium's history. Then the economics that made it possible collapsed, and we're only beginning to understand what we've lost.
Streaming made music free and live performance the only real revenue source. The result has been spectacular for stadium artists and catastrophic for everyone else.
Spotify didn't just change how we listen to music. It dismantled the architecture of meaning that the album spent seventy years building.
The studios didn't kill the mid-budget film by accident. They killed it on purpose — and the consequences for American cinema are now visible everywhere.
Broadway revenue hit a record $1.8 billion in the 2023-24 season. Regional theater attendance is recovering faster than film. The live experience that technology was supposed to obsolete has found its moment.