The Entertainment Industry During COVID

January 21, 2020. That was the day of the first confirmed case of the coronavirus in the United States. Many different parts of our lives were affected by the COVID pandemic. One major part that was severely affected was how we, the common people, received our entertainment. Us as the consumers had to see most of daily entertainment be changed in ways no one could predict. This paper is going to focus on how us consumers have to see how the pandemic affects our entertainment while also seeing how the companies are adapting to the changing times.

Delving into the economic part of the pandemic, Haleem and Javaid also said, “Service sector is not being able to provide their proper service.” (Haleem, Javaid para. 5.) This part can be related to how many of us are not able to work during the early days of the pandemic. An example provided by Lafond was “Across the world, many governments have mandated that certain industries deemed ‘essential’ should remain open over the COVID-19 crisis duration.” (Lafond et al. para. 25).While some employees worked from home their source of entertainment was centered right there in their own household. In the United States an example of an essential business was anything related to health. While this was during the beginning of the pandemic, the present shows the progress we have made since the pandemic started.

“Can there be a fairy-tale ending for Hollywood after COVID-19?” is an article by Stefan Hall. Hall said that “the business model is moving from third-party distribution and single-ticket sales towards owned distribution and recurring revenue.” (Hall, Pasquini para. 13). To put it in layman’s terms, the major movie companies have been using streaming services to send out content to consumers. So instead of us waiting for theatres to open up, we turned to these services like Disney+ and Netflix for our movie entertainment. While the streaming services seem like the future of our movie entertainment, people seem to see the pandemic as a catalyst to more of these services coming out for us to fall back on.

Federal, state and local governments are all doing their best to bring back a sense of normalcy for us. Wearing a mask should not be a song and dance, just wear it and have fun with whatever you are doing. Focus on what is in front of you and not some piece of cloth that is meant to protect yourself and others around you. Vaccinations are not widely available so if you can receive them then do it. Even though we are in an age of blatant ignorance, we need to move society back to a place before the COVID pandemic took place. Eventually the restrictions will be seen as a distant memory and seen as something frivolous. But going back to normal will continuously be delayed unless we follow the rules made and not be ignorant in this day and age.