Actually, there was plenty of rubbish cinema and musical dreck in the decades before 2000. The eighties were particularly bad, if you ask me. But all those mediocre films and uninspired singles have been forgotten, simply because there was nothing memorable about them. That's why we remember only the Classics.
In fact, in any period the majority of new music, films, books, etc. will be bad. Twenty years from now on, most of the music and films of 2014 will have been forgotten (and justly so, in most cases).
It's true that there have been changes in the way media companies work. But that's not because their leadership changed. It's probably in large part due to the development of the internet. Releases, advertising, distribution, and so on, had to become global. This will have stifled creativity, since the music/film has to appeal to a global audience. And yet niche markets find it more difficult to compete, since they cannot hope to approach the profitability of a global crowd-pleaser.
But it's not as if Hollywood and the music industry were beacons of creativity and art before 2000. They were always in the business of making money.
But this is going off-topic. Should I move this discussion to a thread of its own?
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