THB #128: How We Stream

You know the conversation. You are your friends offer each other shows and “movies” you are liking on your streaming apps and then try to figure out which app they are on and when.

I decided to try to lay out the full picture of how all this is working - and not working - for the streamers and started down the road of research. But what I quickly realized is that it’s really a story of what I would consider the Top 8 streamers (Netflix/Disney+/Hulu/HBO Max/Amazon Prime/AppleTV+/Paramount+/Peacock and that none of them do it quite the same way, sometimes showing varied strategies within individual streamers.

Let’s start with that last notion first. If you are a regular on Hulu, you saw The Girl From Plainville launch on a Tuesday with 3 of what would be a total 8 episodes, released weekly. (Last episode is tomorrow.)

But Pam & Tommy was on Wednesdays, also launching with 3 before going weekend.

The new doc series, Captive Audience, launched on a Thursday with all 3 episodes.

Life & Beth? Fridays. And they dropped all 10 episodes in one day.

Then you have your FX shows, which air on Hulu the day after they launch on FX, always as weeklies. So it could be any day. The late, great Better Things arrived on Hulu on Tuesdays. The new limited series, Under The Banner of Heaven, lands on Thursdays, as does the final season of Atlanta. Both started by releasing 2 epsiodes.

But at least the Hulu shows have dates on them. They don’t tell you such details as when the next episode will air or how many episodes to expect this season, so good luck with that.

On HBO Max, no dates of any kind. No indication of when the next episode might air (not even knowing when the last episode aired so you can do the work of assuming it will air the same date the next week). I watch Julia every week… but after watching this week’s episode (on Thursday), I have to scroll down 25 rows to find the show on HBO Max and if I want to remember when to watch its finale next week, I need to look on IMDb for God’s sake.

I know the idea is that all content is floating free in the ether like candy from the heavens, but at some point, people just want to watch the shows they like… and if they roll out weekly, they want to know what day, be prompted to watch, etc… not because they are old fashioned, but because every damned streamer does it differently and it is not our life’s work to remember to watch TV wherever it is dumped!

This, of course, all started with Netflix, which wouldn’t spend an inch of space to tell you a new show was coming until it arrived and often, not even when it arrives, waiting for it to fit a niche before it kicks into you algorithm.

How did I get to the 2nd half of the final season of Ozark? Search.

How long are they going to try to make me watch Marilyn Monroe audiotapes before the NC-17 drama comes on? Do they know that I think Guy Ritchie is a hack 4 out of every 5 films when they shove The Gentlemen in front of me?

Recently Added? The Lives of Lea, Metal Lords, Hold Tight, The Marked Heart,and Silverton Siege. WTF? Are any of them any good? Maybe. But how could I ever know? Nothing familiar in any of them. Okay… I know who Peter Sollett and D.B. Weiss are… but people in real life don’t. Some people buy oranges in bags. I don’t. I pick each one. Netflix doesn’t give me the chance to do that.

I don’t know who reads all these “What’s going off Netflix this month” stories I avoid like the plague. But again… not my job. I am paying to be entertained, not to be a human TV Guide.

AppleTV+ has some nice features, including an Up Next section that shows you shows from other apps that you my want to continue with or when a new epsiode of a show you watched pops up. They also offer dating and the date of the next episode episode of their weely drop series. But they are better at promoting everyone else but themselves.

How many days in a row will I see the same shows promoted under What To Watch followed by banners with the same shows, another row of the same shows, etc. And I like the AppleTV+ programming for the most part. But Insecure, The Chi, Yellowjackets, and Curb Your Enthusiasm? Watched them all when they were new, thanks. And I am being pitched Shining Girls 5 times in the top 15 promo lines. At some point, it’s a turn off.

On Peacock, they at least have a “New Episodes on Thursday” on the front page of Below Deck Down Under, their streaming exclusive spin-off of the Bravo show. But again… how many episodes? Are Killing It and Bel-Air over for the next month, forever?

It’s almost as though Netflix succeeded and everyone decided that serving their audience and keeping them engaged was no longer part of the job.

And in doing this, what did I realize about Disney+? They are sacrificing the moment and the potential of movies like Turning Red because they don’t have any actual Disney+ programming. We are a couple years into this project and the only broad audience additions in the last month or so have been Moon Knight, Better Nate Than Ever, and… nothing! “New to Disney+” is, literally, The Sketchbook, Marvel Legends, and 4 excellent, but old episodes of 30 For 30. Seriously?

I’m not dumping Disney+ or looking to… but it feels like a long time since The Book of Boba Fett turned into a Mandalorian preview. I might know how long it’s actually been, but NO DATES. Is the next Moon Knight the last of the series? Don’t know. It’s not on the app. (Yes, of course I can find out… not the f-ing point.)

Amazon drops full seasons. Like Netflix. Plop and good luck… though they drop a lot less, so the shows get more attention. They also live in the date-free zone.

Paramount+… big push for The Offer! Dropped 3 at launch. When are more coming? Don’t know. How many episodes? Don’t know. So it seems to be Thursday releases. How man each week?

Halo also premiered on a Thursday. Do new episodes come out on Thursday? They seem to be at 6 now. How many more? Do all Paramount+ shows drop on Thursdays?

Y’all are putting out so much TV that we all are choking on it. And is your response to try to make it easier for series fans to commit to tuning in as soon as a new show lands - like HBO and the legacy networks - or do you just throw it out there, assuming everyone is working how to figure how when and how to watch your shows?

I like binging. And I like weeklies! But I am drowning in guessing when things are on. And I see a lot of it early and have access to all of the streamers. But I end up watching aging programming a lot of the time - often happily - because no one is really wokring to make watching their shows easier. I end up with a vague idea that 2 shows I like on 2 different streamers drop the same night. Or that Minx and Julia dropped the same night, but damned it I could tell you which night off the top of my head. I can actually remember they both are on HBO Max, but few of my friends can.

Geez… I ended up watching an episode and a half of Bullshit: The Game Show because I ran into it scrolling right on some line of Netflix promo code and there was Netflix doing a game show with Howie Mandel. Of course, I didn’t know it existed. I don’t know when they launched it. And I know that it really sucks, because they took a funny idea and make game play so slow that I just wanted to be able to fast foward to the next question, answer, and BS panel. (I would have to kill myself if I explained.)

But my point is… they have to like something they released because Russian Doll. But my patience for finding something gets shorter and shorter as I have to run around the globe like Indiana Remote Jones to figure out what I want to watch. Just let me settle on something!

I don’t know if this will be accomplished by an outside company gathering and disbursing information or if will be something accomplished as a group. But this is one area in which, even with all the endless content, these companies are not best serving their customers. And they should. For their own sakes.

Until tomorrow…