Westerns use to rule the entertainment world. For decades, something like half the movies and TV shows made in the US were westerns of one form or another. They were relatively easy money, something that the audiences craved. Until they were not. By the 1980s, arguably by the 1970s, the western was effectively dead. There would be the occasional western made, but as a genre they were an afterthought. I think a lot about the western when I read about how TV and books sales and production are declining.
It is not your imagination — there is much less TV being made, of all genres, including heavyweights like reality shows. And book sales have been soft for a bit now. Some of these are economic — a recession appears likely, and inflation is ticking up again due to tariffs, etc. so people are making a reasonable choice to pull back. But I also think that neither industry has learned the lesson of the western.
TVs and movies did not die in the 1970s and 1980s due to the loss of the western. Why? Because the people in charge then did what the people in charge now seem incapable of doing — they made decisions. Now, I can hear people screaming. Of course they make decisions! How do you think someone decides what gets on the air or book gets published! Someone decided to cut back on the number of TV shows produced! Yes, of course, and obviously there is a bit of exaggeration in the comment. But I would argue that most decisions are not decisions in a meaningful sense — they are merely regurgitation of data. And data driven decision making can never prepare you for the future.
Most Hollywood studios and streaming services try to put on things that their data promises them people will like. Since the only thing they have data on is the past, the only things they approve are like things in the past, since they are making “data driven decisions”. I believe that book publishing is a little less slavishly devoted to the algorithm, but when you query, you are expected to provide comps — books that have sold recently that yours can be considered very similar to. Backward looking processes abound.
That backwardness likely contributes to the problems we are seeing in the entertainment industries. Human beings get bored. You cannot show them the same things over and over again and expect our little monkey brains, wired for looking out for new and exciting things that want to eat us, to be happy with them for all time. You need to be open to the idea that new things can sell, can entertain, can be your next tentpole.
The previous generation of executives used to do that, used to be able to see a Jaws or Star Wars or Godfather and know that the property was a risk worth taking. Today? Today it seems as if the people who run these companies just do what the computer tells them to do and nothing more. Data should be a supplement to decision making, not, as it appears more and more, the tool to determine your decisions. The future is more important, and likely more lucrative, than the past.
Weekly Word Count
A couple grand if you count the outlining, etc. for the new project: Encyclopedia Brick — teenage noir informed by the movie Brick and Encyclopedia Brown. Says the man who just spent several hundred words railing about looking toward the past. To which I say: 1) Bite me. 2) More seriously, all stories are derivative. What matters is the willingness to execute them in new and interesting ways, not just copy the same execution over and over again. Now, I am an objectively terrible writer (otherwise I would not be a failed writer) so it is entirely possible that what I produce will be derivative crap (or just plain old crap). But the intention is to take some of the ideas embedded in those structures and do something different with them. We will see if I can do that in an interesting, enjoyable fashion.
Beyond that, still waiting for feedback for the Sarah Smith story. I like to have multiple projects going as there is so much waiting in writing. This way, I am occupied, hopefully improving, and just, you know, enjoying myself.
Have a great weekend, everyone.