Past, present, and future of entertainment.

TL;DR: The arrival of the internet created a paradigm shift in communication that is only rivaled in history by the invention of the printing press. We live in the era of the "fifth estate" where anyone can create. As old systems struggle and new systems are in their infancy, we feel a sense of cultural malaise. What comes after? It is yet to be written.

This blog explores the past, and what that might tell us about the future.

The Distant Past

Before the printing press, the written word was gatekept by elites—primarily the Catholic Church, which controlled the resources to hand-write books. The illiterate working class communicated verbally in villages or through whispers along trade routes.

The invention of the printing press democratized book production, unleashing unprecedented grassroots knowledge sharing. This catalyzed the rise of the "Fourth Estate" (the free press), where new publications and voices rose to prominence. The 350 years post-printing press had greater societal evolution than the thousands of years before—this invention sparked creative and technological fire, creating space for rapid ideological mutation.

In the 100’s of years after the printing press, slop filled the streets. There was satire, and comics, and flyers, the list goes on.

But simultaneously we received the Reformation - one of the most important periods of theological production, the Enlightenment and all its ideas (at the time radical), and modern society.

The cat was out of the bag.
 

Past

The Studio model gave rise to a golden age in the 1930-50s, in an arguably monopolistic era where the studios controlled the entire stack of distribution, financing, and creation.

The law of gravity of the industry is consolidation: studios owning distribution, IP, finances, production, and signing talent. In 1948 the studios are regulated (US vs. Paramount Pictures) to not be able to own distribution, as it would be a monopoly. This is why studios and distributors (networks) got separated.

In tech there’s the established idea that distribution (platforms/networks) and IP are separated because distribution is more valuable. In the studio system/Hollywood, it was actually that IP was more valuable, and so valuable that it wanted to consume everything, so the government forcibly separated out the distribution via anti-trust laws.

Cut to, a spry 30 year old Michael Steven Ovitz. The year was 1975 and Creative Artists Agency had just been born. Distributors monopolized access to audiences, with network executives as sole gatekeepers—akin to the pre-Reformation Catholic Church. Yet at the time, this monopoly furthered culture by enabling a functioning business model that created hits, rewarded bold bets, and moved the human spirit.

CAA got big off of the novel model of packaging - what if you just put the director, the script, and the talent together, and then go out to the networks?

CAA commanded a premium package price by having a track record of breaking out the biggest hits. CAA discovered rising stars - and invested in their careers. For this toil, CAA took 10% off the whole package, proving to be a fantastic business model.

Many of the greatest hits of the 90s/2000s were put together in this way, and quite literally wouldn’t have existed without some agent putting it all together and ramming it through.

CAA became famous for betting on creatives/artists, almost similar to betting on founders in the VC world.

In this era, you had the colorful, contrarian figures like Spielberg; Michael Ovitz; (unfortunately) Harvey Weinstein… It’s where the swashbucklers were going to make their name. Every film was its own rocketship startup. New stars were minted overnight.

It was by no means perfect, but it was very American Dream core.

Michael Ovitz even says this in his book - when he went to Silicon Valley in the late-2000s, he said that Silicon Valley felt like what the heyday of Hollywood used to feel like, the stomping ground of the spunky, bright-eyed dreamers and visionaries.
 

Current

Today, we're crossing the chasm—the old too far gone, the new not yet crystallized. Traditional players are lost—everyone is not well, and they know it.

Network execs have lost their Mandate of Heaven. Their benevolent dictatorship ossified into oligarchy, with cluelessness at best and disdain at worst for their key stakeholder: Middle America audiences. The current execs inherited a system too large and bulky to change fast enough and adapt to the pace of the internet. YC philosophy is clear: once you lose touch with your users and once you cannot adapt, you no longer deserve to exist.

There are many fantastic and talented individual creatives still fighting to get great storytelling made in Hollywood. These ideas just aren't being greenlit, because the system at large is buckling under the weight of technological advancement.

The rise of Youtube, and most recently TikTok, Reels, YT Shorts, etc has democratized distribution to unprecedented levels. Now, anyone can be a star overnight; you can launch any concept and prove that someone cares (ideally a lot of people).

In this new world, everything is coming full circle, so that it almost feels old school again. It turns out that the best way to beat the power law is to simply have the best storytelling, execution, and talent discovery.

When we at Mad Realities posted the first episode of Shop Cats, there was no frills - no influencer marketing strategy, no PR, no anything, just plain posting. And it got 2m views overnight and was immediately a viral sensation. We were able to prove that with <5-figures.

Simultaneously, they (you know who) have films with $300m budget that are total trash? Of course the scrappy way to prove an audience is the way to unseat giants, especially if you get that compounding 10% WoW growth! This is the YC School of Thought applied to new network formation, beating the goliath PE-ification of the current Hollywood system.
 

Future

In the future, everyone is in competition for the same attention.

The question becomes how do network execs and creators operate knowing that they’re in competition with each other? The network exec answer has been to not change. Denial is a river, and it’s deep.

I would argue that digital creators and creatives are yet to wake up to our competitive landscape. We view the internet as our home, and the speed of the internet laps the network exec many times over, it might as well not be a conversation. We view our competition as only each other online. But as Lorne Michaels hires more digital creators to join SNL and traditional players take note and explore digital, everyone will continue to wake up to the fact it’s all connected.

To succeed and break into large-scale attention, you need to be running a true creative process engine. This means moving away from the isolated structure digital creators often find themselves in, and moving towards having a whole team behind you. It’s no longer really possible to do it alone - this is why so many creators burn out — because they have failed to realize the competition landscape and their own limitations.
 

But this shift IS the opportunity.

Similar to the “100x engineer” is “vibe coding” and is able to do the work of an army by being superpowered by Cursor — we have the opportunity to live in the greatest imaginative era yet. Where our wildest dreams can be translated directly into storytelling for anyone in the world to consume.

In this dynamic, new models of financing will appear, and you will also see creators pooling together under new networks. It’s more efficient at every level: sales infrastructure; shared gear; shared know-how and process standards; studio space.

Projects that were previously too expensive or infeasible are already becoming possible - and those projects will flood spaces where they never could economically exist, like TikTok and Reels.

Again, the key law of physics remains that there is a finite amount of attention in the world. Even as various players adopt AI, it is impossible for the tool alone to dictate winners. Hit-makers will continue to have the edge on breakout production that cuts through the growing noise.

It’s these hits that will earn the right to be IP. And that IP is the opportunity to stay above the general slop, and give people something to buy into.

Mad Realities’ reason for existing is to build an IP factory that frees us from slop. Not by holding onto antiquated notions of “what is art”, but by not only utilizing - but building every technical advantage possible to make hits.