Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Tuesday, November 1st, 2022

I can't believe it's November.....

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, November 1st, 2022.

A QUICK THANK YOU
October was a good month for me, thanks to all of you. AllYourScreens topped 2.64 million unique visitors, I added about 600 free subscribers to this newsletter as well as some paid subscriptions.

I appreciate the support, your emails and the many of you who pass this newsletter along every day.

PERCEPTION IS HALF THE BATTLE IN THE STREAMING WORLD
Every streaming service - even the smallest AVODs - realize that having something original is just one more reason for customers to visit and hopefully stay. But as anyone in the industry can tell you, it's not enough to just have some random piece of filler that you can label as "original." That content needs to be engaging enough to feel worth watching. And just as importantly, people have to be able to find it.

This is more than a marketing or promotional issue. It's the much more elemental question of how that original content will be displayed in the app's UX. 

Where to put stuff is one of the biggest challenges for engineers at any streamer, because it requires juggling a number of conflicting priorities. That rotating promotional carousel at the top of most pages is its own specific battle. But the real dirty work is deciding on the order of those horizontal rows of content. Where do you position the stuff that was just added? Things that customers are in the process of finishing? The latest hit movies and TV shows? Suggestions for other titles that might be of interest? Popular genre content? And of course, where do you place the links to the service's original content?

The question of where to highlight original content is even more challenging for services that don't have a lot of new, original stuff in the pipeline. You don't want customers looking at the lineup of original stuff and have it feel stale and rarely updated. But you do want to somehow highlight the original content that is worth promoting.

Freevee is the Amazon-owned AVOD service, and the upside of its UI is that it's painfully simple. Unlike the look of Prime Video's app, which even after a recent refresh is difficult to navigate or search.

And like Prime Video, Freevee is wading into creating original content, ranging from Judy Justice and the upcoming America's Next Kitchen: The Next Generation to scripted dramas such as Leverage: Redemption, Bosch: Legacy and the recent Tegan & Sara series High School.

The new season of Leverage: Redemption is premiering soon and I am doing some cast interviews tomorrow. So I decided to rewatch a few episodes of season one to refresh myself and hopefully ask fewer dumb questions.

I thought there would be a horizontal row named "Original Shows," and when I searched the Freevee app I did find it. But it wasn't easy. On my Roku app, the originals were 21 rows down, which I think qualifies as not being a high priority. But it was even worse on my Apple TV version of the app, where the originals were located 37 rows from the top, which is literally about as far as you can get from where anyone would go looking.

Yes, the originals are scattered in the various genre rows, but they are mostly buried in there as well. And of course, I can search for the show. But if I don't know it exists, how is that helpful? If all I can remember is that Freevee has a new series based on Tegan and Sara's life, how do I even begin a search?

I'm not arguing Freevee should be highlighting its original programs in the number one spot. But maybe put them into the top ten? After all, what good is it producing these shows if they just get buried in the mix?

ARE CONSUMERS OF AD-FREE AND AD-SUPPORTED PLANS DEMOGRAPHICALLY DIFFERENT?
Antenna just released some fascinating information that seeks to answer a couple of basic questions: who are the customers for ad-supported streaming services and are they different demographically than people who pay for the ad-free version?

What the company discovered was that when aggregating the Subscriber bases of the five Premium SVOD Services with Ad-Supported options—Discovery+, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock—the demographics of Ad-Supported and Ad-Free Subscribers are overwhelmingly similar in distribution in terms of age, ethnicity, gender and income:

The study also reported that ad-Supported subscribers skew slightly more Female, with women representing 53.4% of Ad-Supported users, compared to just 48.8% for Ad-Free plans. Ad-Supported subscribers also skew slightly older, with 43.7% over the age of 50 compared to Ad-Free plans where 41.7% of subscribers are over 50.

Subscribers of Ad-Supported plans skew slightly lower in household income with 33.9% of Ad-Supported plan subscribers at a household income under $50K, compared to 31.9% of Ad-Free subscribers. For those subscribers with household incomes over $150K, 16.8% opt for Ad-Supported services, compared to the 18.8% that are Ad-Free. 

THE WHIP WATCH REPORT - STREAMING ORIGINALS

ODDS AND SODS
* ABC has greenlit the new unscripted comedy series The Prank Panel. Johnny Knoxville, Eric André and Gabourey Sidibe will serve as the show’s panel of "pranxperts."

* Fate: The Winx Saga has been canceled by Netflix after two seasons.

TWEET OF THE DAY

WHAT'S NEW FOR TUESDAY:

Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:

Another Christmas (Roku Channel)
A Royal Christmas Match (Xumo)
Below Deck Adventures Series Premiere (Bravo)
Bobby's Triple Threat Season One Finale (Food)
CNN This Morning Series Premiere (CNN)
Gabby's Dollhouse Season Six Premiere (Netflix)
God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down A Dynasty (Hulu)
Little People, Big World Season Premiere (TLC)
Mary McCartney Serves It Up Season Premiere (Discovery+)
Meeting Mr. Christmas (Chicken Soup For The Soul)
Missile From The East (Popcornflix)
The Takeover (Netflix)
The Daily Show With Trevor Noah Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers the Midterms - America Unfollows Democracy (Comedy Central)
Young Royals Season Two Premiere (Netflix)

Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.

SEE YOU WEDNESDAY!

If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.