A Tubi executive told an audience at MIP London that viewers "don't really care" whether content is made by professionals, creators, or users, according to The Hollywood Reporter. And look, I get the impulse to push back against this, but let's at least examine the claim before we dismiss it.

Tubi, for those unfamiliar, is Fox's free, ad-supported streaming service. It's become surprisingly successful by offering a vast library of B-movies, cult classics, and content that would charitably be called "not premium." Their business model is volume and variety, not prestige.

So when a Tubi exec says audiences don't care about professional content, they're speaking from data. Their platform proves that millions of people will watch algorithmically-surfaced content regardless of production values, as long as it hits the right emotional or genre notes.

But—and this is a significant but—there's a difference between "audiences will watch amateur content when it's free" and "professional craft doesn't matter."

YouTube proved a decade ago that people will watch user-generated content. TikTok reinforced it. But neither platform has replaced traditional media. They've created a parallel ecosystem where different rules apply.

Here's what concerns me about this framing: it's often used to justify paying creators less, to argue against proper budgets, to suggest that "good enough" is actually good enough. It's the race-to-the-bottom argument dressed up as democratization.

Ask any working creator whether audiences care about professional quality, and you'll get a different answer. Production values matter. Writing matters. Acting matters. The craft of filmmaking and television production exists for a reason.

What Tubi has discovered is that some audiences, some of the time, will accept lower quality if the content is free and the algorithm serves them something that matches their immediate mood. That's a valid business model. It's not a revolution in how content works.

The real danger is when executives at bigger platforms hear this and think, "Great, we can slash budgets and no one will notice." Netflix has already been testing those waters. The results have been... mixed.

In Hollywood, nobody knows anything—except me, occasionally. And I know that while audiences will tolerate amateur content, they'll remember and recommend and rewatch professional craft. There's a reason The Last of Us became a cultural phenomenon while [insert forgettable streaming drama here] disappeared after one weekend.

Professionalism matters. Even if Tubi's data suggests otherwise.