I have a theory…

There was a time when mass appeal was practically guaranteed. Five channels on TV. A handful of movie releases. Two or three comic publishers dominating the entire market. If you made something decent and got it in front of people, a huge audience was almost a default outcome because consumers had nowhere else to go.

That world is gone. Now there are hundreds of streaming platforms, thousands of independent creators, and the barriers to entry have dropped across every medium. You can make a game without a massive studio. Publish a comic without a major publisher. Produce music without a label. The tools are cheaper, distribution is more accessible, and the consumer has more options than at any point in the history of entertainment.

When people have options, they get specific. They find their niche. They find the creator or community that speaks directly to them and they invest in that. The audience that used to be one massive pool is now a thousand smaller ones. And that’s not a crisis — it’s a shift that fans and producers both need to understand.

For fans, it means recalibrating what success looks like. Something can be great without being a cultural event the whole planet talks about. For producers, it means rethinking budgets. If your project needs 200 million dollars to break even, you’ve already set yourself up for failure in a world where mass appeal is harder and harder to achieve. The smarter play is to right-size the investment to the realistic audience.
The creators and companies that thrive in this next era are going to be the ones who stop chasing everybody and start serving somebody. Mass appeal was a product of limited options. Options are no longer limited. Adjust accordingly.