Jon Stewart on The Drawback With Jon Stewart. Credit score: Apple TV+
Comic Jon Stewart says that tech giants like Apple and Amazon have wrought an “earthquake” in the way in which stream-on-demand exhibits like these on Apple TV+ are made.
Stewart, who has returned to “The Daily Show” as certainly one of a rotating array of hosts, spoke with fellow comedian Conan O’Brien on the latter’s podcast about how making TV exhibits has modified. He pointed to Apple and Amazon particularly as tech corporations that at the moment are producing TV exhibits and flicks.
He lamented how tech giants have introduced a ruthless effectivity to tv manufacturing. Stewart likened the change in kinds to the shakeup that occurs when highly effective tech executives take over smaller corporations.
“Silicon Valley walked in, in the way that Elon Musk walked into Twitter and went, How many people work here? 10,000? Make it two'” Stewart mentioned.
Stewart noticed his personal Apple TV+ big-issue dialogue present “The Problem With Jon Stewart” canceled a yr in the past for what he referred to as “different agendas.”
The dying of the “writer’s room”
Stewart particularly centered on the discount of the normal “writer’s room,” the place storylines had been historically hashed out amongst a bunch. He admitted that this “legacy business” mannequin for scripted exhibits was “the most inefficient way” to create packages.
“The ethos of legacy entertainment is we’ve created this incredibly eccentric business where you need an agent and a manager and a lawyer, and they’re gonna take about 60 percent of what you make, but without them, there’s nothing you can do,” Stewart famous. “And you join the studio, and the studio will give you a deal and you’ll sit in your room.”
Apple and different tech corporations’ kinds of creating their very own merchandise, companies, and leisure depends on far fewer folks. Tech executives, specifically, promote solely those that can deal with high-pressure deadlines and but reliably produce high quality work.
“I can’t function like that,” Stewart admitted. O’Brien agreed, noting that his comedy-writer mates are discovering it a lot more durable to get work.
Stewart has beforehand identified that Apple blocked him from having US Federal Commerce Fee Chair Lina Khan on “The Problem”‘s spinoff podcast, which set off a battle that in the end ended his Apple TV+ present.
Streaming TV productions: massive budgets, however tighter management
“That’s the schism, the earthquake that’s been going through it,” he mentioned. “So, now Apple and Amazon, they go in and they go, Writer’s room? Wait, you’ve got 14 writers and they’re with you from start to finish on the production?'”
“Well,” Steward mentioned in reply to the hypothetical abstract of Apple and Amazon’s considerations, “it’s important for the writers to be invested and also we’re showing them how they’re on the page because it’s different about the page to the screen. They’ve got to understand how that works and understand how we interact with the props.”
“And they’re like, They can have three weeks and it’s gotta be on Zoom. And you can have four of them’,” Steward mentioned. O’Brien agreed, saying the way in which TV is being produced is “changing radically.”
“These companies don’t believe in institutional knowledge that allows people to grow and get better and create more,” Steward mentioned. “What they believe now is the auteur system, which has always sort of existed within film and TV … and this idea of ruthlessly efficient content factories, where what matters is the real estate and not the individual creative,” he added.
The interview with Stewart appeared on the September 27, 2024 episode of the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast. The episode is obtainable on YouTube, and will quickly seem on each Apple Podcasts and Spotify Podcasts.