Shouldn't "all-hands" events should be reserved exclusively for dispensing information that cannot or should not be dispensed by any other means? And I'm not so cynical to acknowledge the value of, for example, collective celebrations where C-level execs simply want to demonstrate genuine joy and pride for a company achievement.

However, given enough time, any indefinitely scheduled meeting* too often tends to resort to filler when there is nothing to report, since anyone who's job routinely involves setting up meetings probably has some metric attached to such activities, whether explicitly or implied (this typically being a people-herding/middle management/non-production role.) The result being the value proposition of such a meeting plummets and even when the meetings would be necessary, the attendees have already disengaged due to prior experience.

*exclusions might be short, focused events with a well-defined goal inside a specific context such as Agile-style daily standup which incorporate reporting, course-correction, and ad-hoc resource management in a very brief timeframe (<15 minutes)