AI Summary
5 min readHollywood Was Cooked Before AI, and Now It's Only Getting Worse
The numbers are stark. In 2016, Los Angeles logged 40,000 shoot days — the standard metric for production activity across film, television, and commercials. By 2019, that had already drifted to 37,000. After the pandemic collapse and a brief rebound to 2019 levels in 2022, the 2023 strikes dropped shoot days to 25,000. The following year, when many hoped for recovery, they fell again to 23,000. Then came the phrase that haunted the city: "Survive till '25." Instead, shoot days dropped below 20,000 — half of what they were eight years earlier. As Hayes Davenport, a former writer for Family Guy and Eastbound & Down who now serves as creative director of LA Material, put it: "I think a lot of people heard in the city was survive till '25. That was like a phrase in the entertainment industry here. And instead shoot days fell again to under 20,000."
The Streaming Shift and the Mini-Room Economy
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Open & Guest Introduction** - Tracy and Joe introduce the live show at the Vermont Theater in Hollywood and guest Hayes Davenport, a writer for *Eastbound and Down* and *Family Guy*.
- 2 (03:07) **Is Hollywood "Cooked"? The Shoot Days Data** - Hayes gives the hard numbers on production decline, starting with the peak in 2016.
- 3 (04:47) **Why the Decline Started Before COVID & The Streaming Shift** - The 2016-2019 drop is attributed to the rise of streaming and the collapse of cable.
- 4 (05:43) **Where Unemployed Writers Go** - The exodus from traditional writing jobs and the rise of alternative careers.
- 5 (06:42) **The Influencer Economy vs. Traditional Hollywood** - Hayes contrasts the "industry" (studios) with the "economy" (influencers) in LA.
- 6 (09:33) **Why LA Is Losing Production to Other Locations** - The race to the bottom on tax breaks is pulling shoots away from Los Angeles.
- 7 (11:54) **The Death of the Big Writers' Room** - Hayes explains the shift from large, collaborative rooms to the "Mike White model" of single writers.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Is Hollywood just screwed? Writers are earning less. There are fewer shoots taking place in Los Angeles. And people are freaked out about AI. But according to Hayes Davenport, things were starting to feel bad in Hollywood before chatbots showed up to the scene. Davenport — who’s written for shows like Family Guy and is now creative director of LA Material and the co-host of the fantastic Hollywood Handbook podcast — joined us on stage at the Vermont to give us a history lesson on Hollywood's steady decline from the pandemic to now. We also get into the changing norms of AI use among entertainment professionals and why Davenport is jealous of New York right now.
Read more:
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Paramount to Settle Lawsuits, Paving Way for Warner Bros.
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