Why is Older Content often better than New Content?
Content has been created for ages, and as media evolves, it is often seen in hindsight that older content was better than what is being produced in contemporary times. Some call it the nostalgia effect, but the pattern seems clear. Older content felt better because it was created in an environment relatively free from restrictions and standardisation.
Have you ever heard someone feel nostalgic about the TV shows produced during the Doordarshan era, when television had just boomed in India, compared to the daily soap operas that came later? Or someone comparing the old cartoons on Cartoon Network to the ones we see today? Similarly, older Bollywood films often seem to have more soul — though logically flawed by today’s standards — than much of the formulaic content we see now. Even recent OTT shows, despite high production value, often fail to match the cultural impact of the shows produced at the beginning of the OTT boom.
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While everything eventually becomes a business, it is often this commercialisation that leads to decline. Every new creative medium goes through a similar cycle. It begins as something fresh, allowing creators to experiment freely. This leads to a boom, and wherever there is a boom, money follows. As the medium becomes more commercialised, more capital is invested to maximise returns. But this often leads to overexpansion — too many players and too much content flooding the market. To minimise risk and maximise efficiency, businesses begin to standardise formats. What once felt fresh and innovative becomes formulaic, leading to saturation. Saturation eventually results in decline. The medium may continue to grow financially, but it loses the excitement it once had — until someone breaks the mould and creates something entirely new.
Meanwhile, a new medium emerges to challenge the status quo by offering something different. This begins a new cycle of rise, standardisation, and decline. Television once disrupted cinema. OTT disrupted television. Social media platforms continue to disrupt each other. Now AI is entering the space, enabling new kinds of content that previously could not fit into standardised formats.
While most industries thrive on replication, standardisation, and scale, entertainment operates differently. You don’t laugh as hard at the same joke twice, nor are you equally scared by the same jump scare again. Formula reduces the emotional impact of entertainment. Yet industries naturally replicate what has previously worked.
And here lies the paradox of the entertainment industry: To be fresh or to be familiar?
