From my experience in the media industry some producers/higher ups like making arbitrary changes to a work/show/whatever just so they can say they had an impact, or to say that they made that change at the end, most of the time it ends up making the final product worst.
There is a joke among audio engineers that they need to have a button specifically for this - I forget the exact name used ( I have heard several) but essentially it is a button that does nothing. The Exec or higher up asks for a very small tweak and the engineer obliges (by pressing the button) and then plays it back again. Nothing has changed but the Exec feels satisfied.
This reminds me of stories about directors intentionally putting ridiculously over-the-top violent or sexual scenes in their already quite violent or sexual movies for the rating board to focus on, and getting a PG-13 rating (instead of an R or NC-17) by removing it.
The Black Keys talked about this on Joe Rogan's podcast. Pat Carney, the drummer, calls it "the guy with a degree from Pepperdine who wants to tweak the high hat."
I've been annoyed at this but some of the changes are based on focus groups and other data suggesting that it will appeal to a larger portion of the local public when changed.
