Considering today’s film/TV ratings, do you think they reflect audience fatigue, industry shifts, societal changes, and new viewing habits, not quality drop?

It's definitely a drop in quality. Just look at what is out in movie theaters these days. 90% of the movies are either sequels, marvel movies, or live action remakes of films that were already made. The amount of original storytelling or unique content has dropped rapidly in the past 5 years. As someone who grew up loving going to the movie theater, it makes me so sad, and I rarely go anymore.

Whether you like or hate Barbie or Oppenheimer, they were pretty much some of the only completely brand new high production value movies that came out in the last year, which I believe is part of why they were so popular. People are craving originality, even if a lot of them don't realize it

I think it has to do with how corporate and formulaic content as become.

There are fewer risks being taken, studios take what they know and refuse to learn something new.

This means that the content they produce is very generic and safe.

The rise of PG-13 killed a lot of interesting projects.

Add to that an ever evolving media market by creators, they might not be able to compete on scale yet, but it is comming.

Documentaries and video essays are really great now on youtube, I mean we have hbomberguy, wendover productions, Peter Dibble, Calum, Side Note, Barely Sociable, Map Men, Mustard, Paper Will, Retro Bytes, TheEpicNate315 and Tom Scott, just to name a few, that are producing brilliant content that in many cases is more interesting than generic post apocalyptic show 537 that just started on Netflix this week.

Some of the best movies/TV I’ve seen have come out in the last 10 years. I’ve watched a lot of movies and TV too. So I always find these takes funny because y’all are ignoring the 80% shit that came out in decades past like they don’t count but the 80% shit that comes out now counts more.

Watch the south park special that perfectly summarised why movies are declining. Pandering means watered down no risk projects that frankly are just a bit ass for everyone.

Quality drop resulting from devotion to "safe" and "cheap".

Let me use marvel as the best example, regardless of the fact that there are many others. The marvel movies used to be something you needed to see. But of the shows and movies recently, there have been some true garbage offerings to the modern viewer: Black widow, Falcon and winter, Ms marvel, Secret invasion, Wakanda Forever, Eternals, (for some, not me) she hulk, Hawkeye… pretty much everything but Shang chi and Wandavision, have been absolute garbage. True dreck trash that had no business flying the marvel banner, and it wasn’t fatigue, regardless of what many like to say, instead they were just poorly made garbage. The writing and production on these things are barely mediocre at absolute best. Other examples are WW84, the flash, and pretty much all DC titles ever since The Dark knight (short of The Batman and Joker). All of these things are such garbage that it truly is an embarrassment to the entire genre, and makes me think more and more that the cancellation of Batgirl was actually a good thing. The only good DC in the recent times besides what I held is Aquaman (not an Original WW fan, so idk what to tell ya). None of these are fatigue, they are very clearly poorly produced products that are just pushed out for the money of it all, and not the actual art that could be made, or the adherence to the original story that could be maintained. If another phenomenal hero title comes out, then I’m there day one to see it. But if they keep offering failures at story telling, then what’s the point?

I’m sure that most of society feel like they’re feeling some fatigue of some kind, but it’s bad story fatigue whether they know it or not. The studios need to find better and more compelling stories to tell, or the public will truly convince itself that it is actual superhero fatigue and the stories will depart for decades until a nostalgia wave hits. Hopefully the studios realize this, and start putting out quality content, otherwise, those of us who are true fans, will be doomed to the same crap from the early 00’s that we had before. Yes some of it was good, but really think back to the heyday of the marvel flicks, right after the first avengers when the Thanos anticipation was truly palpable, and it seemed like marvel could do no wrong. Then think about stinkers like Dark World or Ultron, and consider how they were capable of recovering from that. Long story short, it’s the writing and production, not fatigue.

No, it's mostly drop in quality.

With the whole superhero stuff it's also a consequence of their own success. Back in the day there weren't many super hero movies, so we watched them even though they were campy and mediocre (batnipples come to mind).

Then they had some real bangers mixed in with trash and the whole thing took off. The Dark Knight trilogy for example and the first Iron man movie, just to name some. People have then come to expect that level of quality, while most of what they put out is mediocre and a lot of it is total trash.

Instead of working on quality they worked on quantity, riding the wave as hard as they could. But people only give it so much chances, there need to be some good movies to keep on coming back. Instead the quality declined and went back to mediocre/trash levels, but since people remember the good ones it's not acceptable anymore.

It feels like there are two types of productions since Covid.. $200m+ epic productions, or Netflix style lazy cookie cut crap. I hope one day we go full circle and resurrect some forgotten genres that just don’t get funded anymore

Quality fluctuates, there are good and bad years. During the pandemic there were very few actually good releases but this last year has been pretty great. Of course when I talk about a 'good year' I mean there were a handful of great releases, not that everything released was good. Most of new releases are trash (always have been) but you can happily ignore those if there are enough of the quality shows/movies.

The thing is both audiences and TV shows/movies evolve. Once you see something revolutionary it's hard to go back to some of the old stuff that now feels stale or lacking. So in order to release quality content, I would argue, you actually have to do better every year.

Also, studios love repeating what works already. This grants them safe, repeatable profits, but reduces experimentation and means they release similar movies repeatedly year after year. Take a look at the Marvel movies since Endgame. I would actually say that quality hasn't actually been dropping necessarily, (at least not on average) as many say. It's just that the premise of a Marvel movie in 2023 is so boring and played out, everyone already knows how the movie will flow. But I think a 2017 audience would enjoy Guardians of the Galaxy 3 just as much as they did the previous movies.

Finally, Hollywood seems to love tropes. In the 80s and 90s it was macho action man, the 2010s we had a superhero craze, and this last decade it seems to be female empowerment. As with anything after a few years it starts to become stale and the best movies are usually the ones defying the industry because, as you said, fatigue sets in. (the 2000s seemed great in this regard I can't really pin an overarching trope on them)

So I think the quality of cinema is increasing but so are our expectations. And we can get bored by seeing the same movie over and over again.

I dunno but im watching as much media as ever. Just not much current stuff.

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100% quality drop, but it is due to the other reasons you listed.

VC has entered the industry, this is what media is now.

I just tried to watch “Barbie”; had to turn it off. Unwatchable. Yet, it was WB's fastest film to cross $1 billion in just 17 days.