The Jobs Aren’t Coming Back

I’ve been lucky. I launched my company, and I’ve been busy, busier than most of my peers.

But luck doesn’t erase the pit in your stomach. The silence when you’re waiting on a pickup. The endless refresh of your email, hoping the call comes. I know that feeling as well as anyone.

Here’s the truth no one wants to say out loud: the jobs we remember aren’t coming back.

A System Shift, Not a Pause

For a long time, people framed the downturn in cable and unscripted as a pause. “Things will come back when the ad market recovers.” “This is just a contraction before the next wave.”

That’s comforting, but it’s wrong.

Look at the numbers. In May, streaming accounted for 44.8% of all TV usage in the U.S. By July, it climbed to 47.3%. Cable has slid under 25%, and broadcast keeps bleeding share. Basic cable’s audience isn’t young families or 30-somethings anymore, it’s viewers in their mid-60s and 70s.

That isn’t a growth demo. It’s a sunset.

And if you flip through the programming grids, you see what sunset looks like: zombie TV. Entire weeks filled with reruns and marathons. Original orders that once fueled thousands of jobs simply aren’t there.

The Corporate Play: Harvest, Don’t Rebuild

Executives know this. That’s why Comcast didn’t double down on its cable brands. Instead, they spun them into Versant, a new holding company for Bravo, Oxygen, USA, E!, CNBC, Syfy, and others.

The spin isn’t about reinvention. It’s about harvesting. Squeeze every last dollar out until the math no longer works.

Inside those networks, I’ve heard the same story over and over: the creative teams are gone. What’s left are number-crunchers tasked with stretching budgets and scheduling marathons. It’s venture capitalism at its finest: extract as much value as possible on the way down.

That’s not a system preparing for a comeback. That’s a system managing its decline.

Unscripted Takes the Hit

If you’ve worked in unscripted, you’ve felt it most acutely.

According to Ampere data, U.S. unscripted premieres fell about 8% year over year in 2024. On cable, they fell 15%. That’s not a wobble, that’s a cliff.

Streamers did add unscripted shows, but not enough to offset the losses. And the ones they did order came under stricter economics: smaller episode counts, lower budgets, higher demands for measurable ROI.

So when people say, “The orders will bounce back,” I have to shake my head. They won’t. The system is intentionally shrinking them.

Where the Audience Goes

You can also see where the audience is moving.

Some migrate to streaming giants: Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video. Others shift to FAST channels like Pluto and Tubi, where ad-supported libraries deliver cheap volume. And a growing share is consuming creator-driven content: short-form, modular, platform-native. Goldman Sachs estimates the creator economy will double to nearly $500 billion by 2027. Sony Pictures just hired an executive specifically to expand creator partnerships.

That’s where energy and money are flowing. Not back into the cable jobs we remember.

I’ve Felt It Too

I don’t write this from a distance. I’ve been lucky, but I’ve felt the sting too. The waiting. The silence. The pickup that never comes.

I know what it means when colleagues say, “Maybe next season.” And I know the truth underneath it: there might not be a next season.

I’ve watched entire teams disappear from networks. Editors, APs, producers—people with years of experience—let go because the orders simply aren’t there. And I’ve felt that gut-level uncertainty myself.

Nostalgia vs. Arithmetic

The hardest thing to accept is that yelling won’t change it. Protests, hashtags, heartfelt posts about the value of our work. They all have meaning, but they don’t rewrite balance sheets.

This isn’t about fairness. It’s about arithmetic.

Cable isn’t being retooled for growth. It’s being harvested for decline. The viewership is aging out. The budgets are being pulled back by design. Networks are being spun into holding companies, not sold as growth properties.

The arithmetic is brutal: the jobs we remember aren’t coming back.

“The jobs we remember aren’t coming back.”

What Survives

Does that mean everything disappears? No. Scripted and unscripted will still exist. But in smaller volumes, on fewer platforms, with leaner crews and tighter economics.

Some roles will endure:

• creative judgment

• rights oversight

• system design

Others, like repetitive coordination, manual tracking, endless email chasing, are already disappearing.

The work isn’t gone. But the volume is. And nostalgia won’t bring it back.

Where That Leaves Us

So here’s where it leaves me.

I’ve been lucky, but luck isn’t strategy.

The jobs we remember aren’t coming back. The system has moved on. The only real question left is how we move with it.

That’s what the rest of this series will explore.