News Brief: "Peak TV," Streamer Studio Accounting Gimmicks, and the Precarity of Hollywood Labor
Citations Needed
Citations Needed
4.8 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this News Brief, we talk with Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller, authors of the new book Boom to Bust: How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers, about rising inequality and precarity in Hollywood, studio consolidation, and how the dream of fame and fortune, 100 years on, is still used to concentrate power and drive down wages.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to a Citations Needed News Brief. I am Nima Shirazi. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm Madam Johnson. You can follow the show on Twitter and Blue Sky at CitationsPod. Facebook, Citations Needed, and become a supporter of the show through Patreon.com slash citations needed podcast. All your support through Patreon is so incredibly appreciated as we are 100% |
| 0:21.9 | listener funded. We do these news briefs and in this case, a interview in between our regularly |
| 0:27.0 | scheduled full-length episodes of citations needed now in its ninth season. Today we are joined by |
| 0:33.5 | two guests to talk about their new book. And the book is, Boom to Bust, |
| 0:39.0 | How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers, |
| 0:41.4 | which was published April 2026 by University of California Press. |
| 0:45.8 | It's written by Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmuller. |
| 0:48.8 | Miranda is a professor of film, television, |
| 0:51.2 | and media studies at Loyola Marymount University, |
| 0:53.5 | and author of the book, The Writers, a history of American screenwriters and their guild, and co-editor also of production studies. |
| 1:01.8 | Kate is Associate Professor of Film and Media History at Georgia State University and author of the books, Below the Stars, How the Labor of Working Actors and Extras Shapes Media Production and Hollywood Shutdown, Production, Distribution, and Exhibition in the time of COVID. |
| 1:19.3 | The book, Boom to Bust, is really a look at the rise of what's known as, quote, unquote, peak TV, and we'll get into that a bit, as well as the perfect storm that caused |
| 1:28.9 | a rapid decline in Hollywood work recently. Now, the book tracks the transformation of streaming |
| 1:34.6 | services into studios, the overproduction of series during the so-called peak TV era, as well as the |
| 1:40.5 | fallout of the Me Too movement and the COVID pandemic. We're so excited to have both |
| 1:45.5 | of you here, Miranda and Kate, to really talk about labor and creativity, the conflicting interests |
| 1:52.6 | of studios and their executives with the creativity of the writers and the performers, as well as |
| 1:59.2 | just how workers' unions operate in this current environment. |
| 2:03.4 | So welcome to citations needed, Miranda and Kate. |
| 2:07.2 | Thank you so much. |
| 2:08.6 | Thank you for having us. |
... |
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