Gambling in Media

As has been noted many times over the years, Hollywood is largely a "young persons business."

I happened across a quote in the interesting study above, that I think makes a spot-on judgement on the psychology of producers making content (emphasis mine):

A more puzzling question is why the producers persist in the face of declining audience figures. Here Wu and Huberman are a little more convincing. They argue that like gamblers, video producers overestimate the chance of winning when the probabilities are small.

And as one gets older, one tends to get wiser, and realize the truth of the above statement.

Now, that's not to say you can't still build an ok living out of making television shows or films, but I can tell you first hand that every single person still putting in 100 hour weeks as Associate Producers or PA's or whatever, ALL have their own ideas for their own shows, and that we all overestimate our chances of "winning." That is, the chance of selling your show and going on to make lots of $$ on it, are in reality, very slim.

Also, and more interesting psychologically (and sociologically) are the researchers findings that:

...the success of videos uploaded to YouTube suggest that quality has little affect on success and persistence seems to actually reduce it.

Read the short abstract in full - it has some interesting data, and as more studies like this get published, it'll be interesting to see how it changes media creation in the coming generations.

(hint on my position: how many bands and painters are there out there you've never heard of, but have made a living doing what they do? The same will hold true for media creators. Vast numbers will never make a dime at it, and will do it anyway.)