It Wasn't Television: The Court Ruling That KILLED Old Hollywood

Television gets the blame for killing the studio system, and the dates do not support it. On 3 May 1948 the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in United States v. Paramount Pictures that the studios had to separate distribution from exhibition and stop block booking. By 1945 they had owned 17 percent of American theatres, which produced 45 percent of film-rental revenue - the first-run city houses. The suit had been filed in 1938 and settled once, in 1940, and that settlement is the real hinge. Television arrived afterwards, to an industry already taken apart by court order. The decrees were finally terminated on 7 August 2020, by which point streaming had rebuilt the exact structure they banned.