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These days, when you turn on the TV or visit the cinema do you ever think, hang on, I'm sure I've seen this before? Maybe you've bought the latest crime thriller after seeing it in the bestseller lists and, 50 pages in, you're overcome with a weird feeling of deja vu? And when you聽put the radio on in the car, does聽all the music聽sound, well, the same?聽

If so, don't worry. It's not just you.聽Something strange seems to be happening.

Statistics show that the number of top 20 highest grossing Hollywood films each year which are either sequels or spin-offs has risen from 25% to 50% in the past two decades.

In the 1960s, most TV shows were original formats. Today, a third are spinoffs or multiple broadcasts.

In music, the number of artists on the Billboard Hot 100 has been falling for some time, meaning the big established acts are getting more and more exposure while new acts struggle to break through.

Existing best-selling authors are becoming increasingly dominant in publishing sales.

So is it fair to say that cultural originality is in rather poor health?

Might it even be dead?

Ben Chu spends spends a lot of time thinking about economics, numbers and why the world works in the way it does. In this programme he's going to ask - if cultural originality is dead, who or what killed it?

A Tempo & Talker production for 麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 4

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