Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Monday, January 8th, 2024

Today felt like some bad news aggregation Olympic event

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Monday, January 8th, 2024.

TODAY FELT LIKE SOME BAD NEWS AGGREGATION OLYMPIC EVENT
I have written in the past - only partially joking - that one of the best ways to get attention from other journalists and from readers is to write a piece highlighting some perceived problem at Netflix. If most baseball fans claim to hate the NY Yankees (while also watching their games), most Netflix critics heap snide hot takes on the company while secretly binging a new season of Love Is Blind: Liechtenstein. 

The consequence of all of this unbridled snark is that any story that is reported out with a less-than-favorable Netflix headline will end up aggregated across the Internet faster than you can say "reportedly."

The latest example of this is a Lucas Shaw piece yesterday in Bloomberg that had the headline "Netflix Cuts Over 100 Shows In Major Programming Shift." Based on the headline, you might think that Netflix had culled over 100 shows from its library. Or that the company has stopped production on over 100 shows that it had previously given a green light. But if you thought that, you would be wrong:

As two strikes shut down production across the US, Netflix Inc. did something it has never done before: It released fewer shows.

The company released about 130 fewer original programs in 2023 than the year before, according to What’s On Netflix, a site that covers the streaming giant. That is a dip of 16%.

Now to be fair, Shaw is a very good journalist, so he highlights the reason that is likely behind the bulk of the slowdown:

The aftermath of the strikes will continue to impact Netflix’s release schedule for at least a couple of years. Streaming services had finished work on many of the shows scheduled for release in 2023, but they were just starting many titles due out in 2024 and 2025. Many of those programs have been delayed (or canceled).

He also provides this interesting but slightly off-topic feedback from a Netflix executive, given that the executive is talking about Netflix's film slate and not its TV plans:

But this also isn’t just a temporary dip. Netflix plans to make fewer shows going forward. Film chief Scott Stuber has outlined a strategy to make fewer (and hopefully better) projects. And while the strike may have reduced its output of new scripted programs, the service also released fewer new documentaries and stand-up specials -- two genres largely unaffected by the labor stoppages.

Now the Bloomberg piece is fine, although it ignores a couple of additional datapoints. As I mentioned when I put together my recent estimate of the total number of scripted English-language originals that were released in the US last year, focusing on the number of shows can be a bit misleading. Six BET shows from Tyler Perry are a lot different than six Marvel Universe shows created for Disney+. But this type of list conflates them together.

The piece also doesn't highlight an additional piece of context. Producing fewer English-language scripted shows doesn't mean the streamer produced 16% fewer TV shows overall. In fact, based on some back of the envelope estimates I've made, non-English original scripted production seems to have increased at Netflix in 2023. Although I haven't been able to accurately come up with a percentage.

But while I may have quibbles with the framing of the Bloomberg piece, the aggregated takes of the piece range from clumsy to insane.

This piece in Decider can best be described as a recap. It is essentially a rejiggered take on the Bloomberg piece, along with a bunch of links to other Decide articles. There's nothing technically wrong with it, but other than a link to a TechCrunch piece on declining film production at Netflix, there's absolutely nothing original in it. Which is disappointing, given the outlet and the length of the piece.

The piece in the GwinnettDailyPost is a bad aggregation of a bad aggregation. The piece includes a barebones recounting of the original Bloomberg piece. And a headline that provides absolutely no clue to what a reader might find in the body of the story But it also ends with this perplexing paragraph:

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And I realized that while it's not noted in the byline, this is actually a poorly formatted version of a piece that was originally posted at the financial web site The Street.

Remember at the top of this piece where I argued the Bloomberg headline made it sound as if Netflix was cutting 100+ titles from its service? Apparently, that was the lesson a writer at Cord Cutters News took from the piece:

Netflix reportedly plans to keep a slimmer content catalog going forward after cutting more than 100 shows last year. It’s unclear what shows are no longer available.

And props to the writer for throwing together this word salad take on what's going on in the streaming industry:

Netflix reportedly plans to keep a trimmer catalog going into 2024, focusing on quality over quantity, after cranking out hundreds of titles over the last decade to dominate the streaming market.

In addition, the streaming veteran has had to content with audiences cutting back on spending, so an attractive catalog is also crucial given the sea of streaming service options viewers have to pick from.

And the competition is only expected to heat up this year when Hulu on Disney+ launches the full version of its new app in March.

Netflix wasn’t immediately available for comment.

I don't want to think badly about anyone, but I suspect the reason why Netflix wasn't available for comment was that no one at Cord Cutters News bothered to ask anyone at the company.

But leave it to the fine folks at Forbes to create the most shameless SEO-driven take on the Bloomberg story. From the bullet points designed to be search engine friendly to the weirdly framed pros and cons section, this piece is in a class of its own. And no, that is not a compliment.

And for double ineptness points, this piece also confuses "fewer shows in 2023" with "canceling existing shows in 2023":

Original shows that were canceled at Netflix in 2023 include “Sex Education,” ended after three seasons, "Firefly Lane," "Sex/Life," "Human Resources," "Welcome to Eden,” “Shadow and Bone,” “Dead End: Paranormal Park,” “Bling Empire” and its spinoff, “Bling Empire: New York.”

I've spent a couple of decades working in digital news. I understand the economic pressures to quickly aggregate stories for your own web site.

But given the number of ill-informed takes out there, I do wish journalists would at least correctly comprehend the stories they are rewriting on the fly.

SPEAKING OF SEO OPTIMIZATION
The Verge has a great piece on the lengths to which web sites have to go in hopes of nabbing search engine traffic. This example hit close to home, especially since it involves a TV show:

As the 14th season of Bravo’s Real Housewives of New York City came to a close this fall, I found myself on Reddit, reading rumors about the marriage and divorce timeline of one of the show’s stars. Redditors wanted more clues about a fishy relationship history to see if they could uncover a cheating scandal.

Were divorce papers public record in New York? I wondered. I did a quick Google search to find out.

The search results page was filled with my question’s exact words, repeated across site after site — websites for law firms, posts on forums, ads for creepy lookup tools — but the answer to my actual question was harder to find. At the top of the results page on my phone, Google offered two featured snippets of information quoting different websites. The first one: “Divorce records are not public in New York due to the sensitive nature of many divorce proceedings.” The second: “Due to the state’s underlying legislation regarding family law cases, each divorce is a matter of public record.”

Google bolded both snippets, but it wasn’t clear to me how they squared. I clicked on both.

The two law firm websites were part of an ecosystem I didn’t know existed until I accidentally went looking for it. Law firms across different fields — family law, personal injury, employment lawyers — have blogs full of keyword-addled articles being churned out at a surprisingly fast clip. The goal for firms is simple: be the top result to pop up on Google when someone is looking for legal help. The searcher might just end up hiring them.

DON'T EXPECT TO SEE A LOT MORE OF THOSE NETFLIX INTERACTIVE PROGRAMS
The Substack Game File News has some information about the future of Netflix's interactive program slate. And the information is that you shouldn't expect to see much else in that genre from the streamer:

“We're not building those specific experiences anymore,” Netflix’s head of gaming, Mike Verdu, told me in December after I asked how they related to the company’s gaming work (I was interviewing him for Axios but couldn’t fit this detail in at the time).

“The technology was very limiting and the potential for what we could do in that realm was kind of capped. But we learned a ton from that.”

“Where you're going to see that learning come to life is actually in these interactive narrative games,” he added, citing Netflix’s early efforts with games based on its shows "Love is Blind” and “Too Hot To Handle.” A new show tie-in game, Money Heist: Ultimate Choice launched last week. 

The goal: “It will start to feel more and more like you really are playing the show,” Verdu said. “I think that's sort of the spiritual evolution of what you saw there. But we learned a ton. And Bandersnatch is a phenomenal experience.”

I’m sorry to learn there likely won’t be more interactive programs. They weren’t all creatively successful, but it’s an approach to telling a story that no one else has tried in the streaming video world.

WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND TOMORROW

MONDAY, JANUARY 8TH:
*Antiques Roadshow Season Twenty-Eight Premiere (PBS)
*Cash Cab Series Premiere (AXS tv)
*Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project (HBO)
*High Card (Crunchyroll)
*Hoarders Season Premiere (A&E)
*Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! Series Premiere (Crunchyroll)
*90 Day Diaries Season Premiere (TLC)
*Secrets Of Polygamy Series Premiere (A&E)
*The Foolish Angel Dances With The Devil Series Premiere (Crunchyroll)
*'Tis Time For "Torture," Princess Series Premiere (Crunchyroll)
*TSUKIMICHI-Moonlit Fantasy (Crunchyroll)

TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH:
*Big Little Brawlers Series Premiere (Discovery)
*Caught In The Act: Unfaithful Season Premiere (MTV)
*Echo Series Premiere (Disney+/Hulu)
*Found (NBC)
*La Brea Season Premiere (NBC)
*Love & Hip Hip: Atlanta Season Premiere (MTV)
*Once Upon A Time In Vigata (MHz Choice)
*Pete Davidson: Turbo Fonzarelli (Netflix)
*Synduality Noir (Hulu)
*TMZ Presents: UFO Revolution (Tubi)
*Villainess Level 99: I May Be The Hidden Boss But I'm Not The Demon Lord (Crunchyroll)

SEE YOU TUESDAY!