As one personal example of someone I know in the industry who left... an Italian who left was not even getting paid for the subtitle translation work she was doing. For something like six months.
Globalisation seems to be more of a "culprit": once upon a time, a country's local cultural production had a semi-captive audience (there was less foreign content and less of it moved from the original country to others, leaving more room for local production) and a much easier time competing (lower budgets, lower technological finesse and lower economies of scale all around).
Today, there's more high-production-quality quickly-available content than ever, between more people being able to consume anglo content directly and home-grown sub scenes, international mostly-anglo content is easier than ever to access for individuals, and going the other way it's much harder for local content to break international markets because the accessibility is much lower the other way around, which means it's harder for local content to recoup the same production budgets.
Paris is an even worse place for artists to live and work. Make things affordable for artists, and artists won't leave. Society is much better when you have artists amongst your midst.
When a media baron runs the country (like in Italy), it can't be good for the films being produced.
Germany has a license fee twice as much as in Italy. (much Germany cinema is beyond terrible but). The UK also has a higher tv fee.
How does this explain the success of Scandinavian crime dramas such as The Killing, The Bridge, Wallander? These have enjoyed much success in the UK and are always shown with subtitles.
So success for foreign language drama is certainly possible in English speaking markets, and without dubbing either.
Despite?
> Despite?
Yes?