Veteran Entertainment executive Kevin Mayer has ringed an alarm bell about Hollywood’s relevance and declining profitability.
“Hollywood will not only become less relevant and less time spent on it, but the time spent is less profitable,” Mayer said at Paley’s dialogue event on Monday in Los Angeles, saying streaming is “fundamentally less profitable” than Pay TV. “There’s a very important, secular challenge that the industry is facing… There were some alarms, but not enough. This is very surprising.”
Mayer, who heads Candle Media along with Tom Staggs, says the “challenge” is reflected in the stock prices of traditional media companies, and “they’ve lie down for years.”
Of course, Hollywood’s loose audiences are linked to the rise of social media, of course. “More and more influencers are becoming young celebrities,” Mayer said.
Mayer said each cohort was “monotone” when it comes to traditional media viewing, from baby boomers through Gen Z. In other words, viewership ratings are “reduced” across generations, spent on social media, and playing video games is growing. “It’s already changed. The center of gravity of young people is not Hollywood,” Meyer pointed out.
“Old cohorts… we’re not around forever. If we continue this path, the younger cohort will see young people born and become more unique consumers, already younger consumers, and relentless mathematics play against Hollywood. “It’s set on stones. That’s going to happen.”
With the downsizing of the landscape seen across the television and film industry, Mayer said it was “inevitable” that more “defensive M&A” could take place over the next few years as companies scrambled to remove external costs from the equation to maximize their opportunities for survival.
“One very efficient way to remove costs from the system is to combine the two companies together,” Mayer said, adding that these “relent” aspects of economics mean reducing employment. “That’s what has to happen to ensure you’re still profitable and you can continue to produce things. That’s inevitable in a reduced business that companies combine.”
Mayer calls YouTube the “most relevant content provider,” but the key difference between traditional media companies and social media Mayer lies in the stories told by each platform, referring to content on YouTube and Tiktok. [or] Travel tips. ”
“It’s not actually storytelling. It’s useful information and information you might just be interested in, and jokes can entertain you, but it’s not really a story,” Mayer said. “Storytelling isn’t really the center of gravity of YouTube. There’s storytelling that you do on YouTube. Most of it isn’t. Most of it is snippets and its nature. But it’s taking up a lot of mindshare.”
Mayer sees value on YouTube through the engagement seen in “Cocomelon,” produced by Candle Media’s Moonbug. This was previously the largest YouTube channel in the world, before Beast had 180 million subscribers.
