First I saw of constant over-saturation was MTV shows where people fight in a house and talk to the camera. I'd walk by my college roommates' rooms and the neon colors were always BEAMING! Also emotion-leading music every scene. It often means the audience needs hand-holding. Netflix does this plus horrible storylines and characters.

I've seen some good gems but most feels like it was made in a weekend with a title and a thumbnail that let's you know the entire movie. Example: "3 Years", thumbnail is a couple's faces looking not so sure.

I might be wrong, I'm not well versed in this area, but it'd be nice to have some data that backs up claims (either yours or mine).

The first thing is that making a living off of art is hard, so we're really talking about the difficulty pre adoption of widespread streaming services vs. post widespread adoption of streaming services (I guess 2015 or so).

YouTube is a different model but there are many people making a living from producing content. As an extreme example, Mr. Beast is a triple digit millionaire [0].

I've heard anecdotally that getting series made on Netflix, especially if you're a star is (or at least was) easier than getting a green-lit for movie funding.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2022/11/30/could-m...

At least for cinema closures in the US, there's tons of reports from the early covid days until a few days ago [1][2][3]. In Germany, the situation is just as bad - about 70% of cinemas do not have money left anymore for (sometimes sorely needed) renovations or equipment upgrades [4].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/business/media/pandemic-s...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-10/closed-mo...

[3] https://www.sharesmagazine.co.uk/news/shares/cineworld-hits-...

[4] https://www.ndr.de/kultur/film/Studie-zum-Kinomarkt-Situatio...

I guess I wasn't clear. I'm talking about the ability of artists to get funded and the ability to make a living off of it. Maybe also the quality and quantity of new movies or shows.

My belief is that it's easier now than ever to make a movie or TV show by getting a deal with a streaming service. This is in comparison to making a living from the industry that the post is talking about ("hits-based" movie making).

Record stores went out of business when vinyl was replaced by cassettes. Video rental went out of business during the early days of the internet. Brick and mortar music stores declined with the availability of mp3s online. Book stores declined in popularity with the rise of Amazon. So, too, are cinemas declining with the offering of on-demand movies and TV.

I guess your assumption is that small art houses are the drivers of weird, niche culture? I would disagree. The availability of platforms that get media in front of more peoples eyes and the lowering cost of creating and distributing that media are what I would guess as the main benefit of producing weird, niche media.

I love cinemas but the world changes and if their model only exists when the movie industry has a stranglehold on the distribution, then, as much as I hate to see them go, they're just not viable anymore.

I have no idea why "you have to decide if you plan to stream as your distribution, and if so meet their technical guidelines, before filming" is an issue. Can you explain why that's bad?

It makes sense to me that it is an issue if you're a small arthouse, aka you're wanting to do weird stuff that probably violates some technical guideline somewhere. It's like an aggressive auto-formatting on a codebase. Sometimes you do want to break the format because it's more legible in one specific thing. It's fine most of the time, but a small arthouse is very likely trying to be the exception, not the rule. They want to be exceptional.