The year 2020 accelerated plenty of uncomfortable trends in Hollywood: the shift from theatrical windows, the consolidation of corporate attention on streaming platforms and, perhaps most immutably, the steep decline of broadcast television.
Sure, the death knell of the Big Four seems like it's been ringing for a decade — but never as loudly as it has during the past 12 months.
COVID-19 kneecapped pilot season, prompting diminished comedy and drama series loads for networks already more interested in reality, and NBC and ABC no longer even have dedicated executives.
Instead, they're overseen as smaller, decidedly less sexy parts of larger portfolios. But the pandemic, which hastened all of this, could also bring a silver lining.