Rob Long On How Hollywood Lost The Plot

The Unspeakable Podcast

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2023

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Unspeakable, Meghan Daum talks with veteran television writer Rob Long about the state of the entertainment industry. They discuss the Hollywood writers' strike, which according to Rob, mainly resulted in pay raises but didn't address systemic issues for writers. Rob and Meghan also discuss how streaming services like Netflix made a mistake trying to compete with studios by producing expensive original content, when they could have thrived by simply buying content.

Rob also shares some perspectives on how "Sound of Freedom" became such a box office hit despite scoffing from Hollywood elites. He also shares his view on what the future looks like for the entertainment industry and how TV writers' rooms have lost the plot when it comes to hiring quality talent.

GUEST BIO

Rob Long is a writer and producer in Hollywood. He began his career on Cheers, serving as co-executive producer. He was the creator and executive producer of The Texanist and showrunner of Kevin Can Wait. He co-founded the podcast network Ricochet and hosts the podcast Martini Shot with The Ankler. He is a contributing editor for National Review, as well as a contributor to TIME, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, and his books include Conversations with My Agent and Bigly: Donald Trump in Verse. He continues working in film and TV in LA and New York.

Find Rob at The Ankler, Commentary, and on Twitter at @rcbl.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You cannot look at any major entertainment business now and say, you know, that's a really well-run company.
0:08.6	When you're laying off thousands of people, that's not because you make good decisions.
0:13.9	And in a world, I mean, so I think it's been more than 10, it's been probably a long stretch of 20 years where
0:19.3	interest rates have been basically zero.
0:21.2	So money is essentially free.
0:23.1	And so these people lived in the world where they go and they bought, I mean, Netflix grew by unborrowed money at zero percent.
0:29.4	And they borrowed it all.
0:30.9	And they made all these TV shows that sit unwatched on their servers.
0:35.3	And they're wondering what happened.
0:37.6	And what really happened was these guys had too much money.
0:40.5	They spent it building stupid companies.
0:42.6	There is no reason on earth why the world needs or economically rational choice would be to build Paramount Plus.
0:52.2	Right?
0:52.6	That's just dumb.
0:53.6	We don't need Paramount Plus. Right? That's just dumb. We don't need Paramount Plus.
0:57.7	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast.
0:59.7	I'm your host, Megan Dom.
1:01.3	I don't cover the entertainment business too much on this podcast, but a little over a month
1:07.1	ago, which seems like a long time ago now. I was reading and hearing about the end
1:13.7	of the almost six-month-long writer strike in Hollywood and trying to make sense of some of the
1:21.4	various issues therein, as well as just the ever-changing nature of the business of Hollywood more generally.
1:30.0	And I decided to call up Rob Long.
	...

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