"The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive"
About this Quote
The sharpest move is the causal chain. Child doesn’t romanticize “quality” as an abstract ideal; he shows how it’s structurally produced. If you hollow out budgets, you don’t just get cheaper sets and thinner scripts. You lose the accumulated intelligence of “the old hands” - the veterans who know how to make constraints sing. Calling them “too expensive” is the tell: expertise gets rebranded as inefficiency, and institutional memory becomes a line item to be cut.
“Quality just fell off a cliff” is deliberately blunt, almost unliterary, and that’s the point. It mimics the speed of the decline and refuses the soothing language of “transition” or “modernization.” Child’s intent isn’t nostalgia for a vanished golden age; it’s indictment. The quote reads like a warning from a genre writer who understands systems: change the incentives, and the ending writes itself.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Child, Lee. (2026, January 17). The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-british-regulatory-system-was-revised-so-that-69983/
Chicago Style
Child, Lee. "The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-british-regulatory-system-was-revised-so-that-69983/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-british-regulatory-system-was-revised-so-that-69983/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.
