The carnage continues.

Hollywood is suffering like it never has before. It is actually interesting to watch the demise of an entire industry. This is happening in real time.

While it is tough from a human perspective, as thousands of families are affected, this is going to be an interesting case study in the future. History will have some interesting things to note about the demise of Hollywood.

There is a lot of blame to go around. We have covered this from a number of perspectives over the last few years.

One area where the studios are stuck holding the bag is with streaming. This was suppose to be the new Magna Carta for the industry.

Instead, it is a lame duck.

Peacock Losing $550 Million - Death of Hollywood

Every major studio jumped into streaming. They allure of the Netflix profits was simply too great.

Studios that were licensing their libraries out to the streaming king decided they would be better served by cancelling that idea and setting up their own streaming business. Today, Netflix is still profitable but the others are eat dirt.

Peacock announced that it is losing more than $550 million despite an in crease in subscribrers.

Peacock, the streaming service of Comcast’s entertainment unit NBCUniversal, has posted a widened fourth-quarter loss of $552 million, compared with $372 million in the year-ago period.

Subscribers go up but the loss jumps 50%. That does not appear to be a good business model.

Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong on a morning call said Peacock had “reached meaningful scale,” and “in 2026 we expect Peacock losses to meaningfully improve again” as the media conglomerate continues to navigate a disrupted landscape for traditional Hollywood studios. Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts discussed the wider market backdrop for Peacock amid continuing industry consolidation that had the company eyeing and then calling off any run at Warner Bros. Discovery.

Of course he did. Part of the job of any executive at a publicly traded company is to put a positive spin on things.

It is like putting lipstick on a pig.

YouTube Dominance

The rise of alternative content creators is having a major impact. Let us consider this the rise of the middle class.

While things could change, the present situation is millions of people are earning money from the likes of YouTube for their content. While this is a fraction of the total user base, it does show how smaller players are now in the game. The gatekeepers were removed as anyone can post content on YouTube (it does take a bit to get monetized).

From a view perspective, billions of hours of non-Hollywood content is watched. This is time away from the traditional avenues of entertainment distribution. It is a trend that is only going to get worse.

What can Hollywood do?

Here is the problem. We are rapidly moving into an AI world. Even on YouTube, the amount of content that is AI is increasing. This means that we are looking at human generated videos becomes a smaller portion of the whole.

My guess is that most information will be delivered by AI. That said, we will see niches for human generated content. The market could be rather large, so it isn't all negative.

However, to gain a following, authenticity is required. This is a downfall of Hollywood. It is the world of pretend. When we actually learn about many of these people, we find they are rather unlikeable. Their behavior over the last couple decades as social media became a thing is clear.

On the extreme is someone like Diddy, who turned out to be a ruthless predator. We know this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Then we couple in the lectures, hypocrisy, and general arrogant tendencies and we can see why things are imploding. I think that we are only a few years away from AI stars being created. That will be the celebrity of the future.

Jobs in the industry are going away. There is simply no way around it. Our future is going to be radically different with regards to most industries. Entertainment is no exception.