Jon Stewart Says Streamers Like Apple and Amazon Are Turning Writers’ Rooms Into ‘Ruthlessly Efficient Content Factories’: ‘I Can’t Function Like That’

> “There was this legacy business, and you’re seeing it change now as Silicon Valley comes in,” Stewart said. “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 going to take about 60% of what you make, but without them there’s nothing you can do! And you join the studio, and the studio will give you a deal, and you’ll sit in your room. It’s the most inefficient way. Silicon Valley walked in like in the way Elon Musk walked into Twitter and went, ‘How many people work here? 10,000? Make it two.’”

> Stewart said that companies like Apple and Amazon have disrupted the legacy system by entering writers’ rooms and cleaning house. Stewart imitated a Silicon Valley streamer coming into a writers’ room of 14 and cutting it down to four — “and it’s got to be on Zoom,” he quipped.

> “They’re changing the ethos into this… they’re changing us from an analog business to a digital business,” Stewart added. “And I think that’s the schism, the earthquake that’s been going through [Hollywood]. I can’t function like that.”