Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021

NBC Weather Plus and the art of making a decision.

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021. I'm writing this from the Twin Cities, where AllYourScreens HQ is still trying to figure out who I am voting for today in our local school board election. 

THE CHALLENGES OF DECISION-MAKING
This piece in the NY Times about the reasons why the FX series Impeachment: American Crime Story won't be on any streaming platform for ten months is being shared a lot today and is being used as an example of bad decision-making:

Fans of “American Crime Story” who miss an episode can still stream it, but only if they are armed with their cable-subscription user names and passwords. And in 2021, a show that’s not easy to stream risks becoming almost invisible.

The reason for its absence from the big streamers has to do with a deal worked out in 2016 by FX’s parent at the time, 21st Century Fox. For an undisclosed sum, the company sold the streaming rights to all editions of “American Crime Story” to Netflix. Both sides agreed that the series would be available exclusively on FX for roughly a year. From then on, Netflix would make it available to its subscribers.

In 2021, this deal feels like a terrible idea and if it was made today, it would be. But five years ago, there was still hope that keeping a potentially hot title as an FX exclusive would help the cable network retain an audience and some cachet with viewers. While the money from Netflix would provide a second stream of eventual income.

It's easy to mock the deal in today's context and while I don't know that I would have made the deal even in 2016, it's not a crazy decision in the context of five years ago. If you're an executive in an industry that is evolving quickly, you make the best decision you can based on the information at hand. Sometimes you end up being a visionary. Sometimes, you look like an idiot.

In the early aughts, I was working as the managing editor of the website for an NBC O&O station. The NBC station group had suddenly realized that the Internet was a thing and they were throwing all sorts of ideas against the wall in hopes that something would work. I sat through a presentation where some high-end consultants unveiled an idea to "daypart" the O&O web sites. The colors and look of the web site would change throughout the day and they had spent what was probably an unfortunate amount of money on original video "shows" by people such as chef Kat Cora. If you don't remember the idea, it's because it was a disaster. My recollection is that when they tested it on a couple of web sites, traffic dropped by about a third.

Station group execs also mandated the web sites should have three original video productions a day, ideally from the news department. Which was fine at a larger station, but I worked at a smaller O&O and we didn't have the budget or staff to crank out the videos. So I pointed a camera into a spare edit bay and shot a morning assignment editor popping in tape and talking about the stories the station was working on (which actually had a great behind-the-scenes feel). In late afternoon, I had one of the evening anchors walk around the newsroom and talk to reporters. And I anchored a five-minute late morning web-only newscast, which highlighted stuff we had just finished discussing in the morning news meeting. Well, I anchored it until the news director told me that I "don't have the look for Internet news." Which I think is equivalent of telling someone they have a face for radio.

But the other idea that came out of this period was a really good in the context of 2021. And it shows how easy it can be to make a decision that turns out a few years later to be the wrong one.

NBC's station group wanted to figure out some way to repurpose local affiliate reporting and aggregate it for a national channel. Digital subnets were coming and an easy solution would be to create a network that relied primarily on existing footage. Local sports wasn't an option for a variety of reasons. Aggregating local news for a national audience was possible, but it required a substantial investment (see CBSN). And the reality is that most network affiliates don't create enough original lifestyle or entertainment programming to build a viable network around (see ABC's Localish).

But weather was a much easier slog. NBC had O&O's in some weather-centric markets such as Miami and nearly all of the affiliates already had built-out their weather team. It would require an upgrade to most of the affiliate's Doppler radar capabilities, but building a national weather service based around live coverage from local affiliates was doable.

And so was born NBC Weather Plus. A joint venture between NBC and its affiliates, the service was carried as a digital network by many of the affiliates and also appeared on a number of cable systems. Launched in 2004, the channel carried a mix of reporting from a staff based at CNBC headquarters in New Jersey, along with coverage from local meteorologists. Weather Plus staff did weather cut-ins for MSNBC and NBC News as well as the Today Show (when needed). Network reporters even showed up on Sunday Night Football, providing a pre-game local weather report. The network didn't have the glitz of rival The Weather Channel, but it was a solid product and at the time the only other national weather rival was the Local Accuweather Channel.

Unfortunately for NBC Weather Plus, rival network The Weather Channel was put up for sale in 2008. 

In September of that year, Landmark Media Enterprises sold The Weather Channel to a consortium of NBC Universal, and private equity firms Blackstone Group and Bain Capital. NBC announced the following month that NBC Weather Plus would be shut down at the end of the year. Network executives claimed at the time the shutdown would have taken place even without the acquisition of The Weather Channel, although even in 2008, that sounded like a bit of spinning on the network's part.

After the purchase, NBC did what all media companies are genetically drawn to do in this situation. Longtime Weather Channel reporters were gradually replaced by NBC meteorologists and the channel added some original programming such as a live morning show with Al Roker. 

The downside of partnering with private equity firms is that they eventually want to cash out. So the non-television assets of The Weather Channel were sold off to IBM in 2016 and the network was sold to Byron Allen's entertainment company two years later. So by 2018, NBC was out of the national weather business.

Some affiliates continued to run a barebones version of the NBC Weather Plus until 2011, under the banner NBC Plus. But that effort eventually ran out of steam and the weather coverage was replaced by the NBC-owned classic TV digitnet CoziTV.

In the context of 2021, shutting down NBC Weather Plus seems like a bad idea. Fox is rolling out its own standalone weather service and there are now about a half dozen semi-automated weather services competing for viewers. I suspect in hindsight, NBCU executives might like to have an existing weather service available to roll out on AVOD services and onto Peacock. That 2008 decision might have made some sense back then. But in hindsight, it was a fumble.

And that's my main point about this. It's tempting to dunk on bad decisions, but it's important to keep the decision making process in context. Was it the best decision based on the knowable facts at the time?

THE CONFUSED COMCAST HULU-PEACOCK STRATEGY
Colin Dixon at NScreenMedia has a good reminder that the Comcast strategy towards its handling of Hulu vs. Peacock is at best confusing:

And who wouldn’t like Hulu’s business model? It has 43 million homes watching the same recent ad-supported NBC episodes that Peacock has, but Hulu’s customers are paying $7 a month for the privilege!

What is more, Comcast is happy to allow Hulu to better monetize NBC content through 2024 and beyond to protect its investment. Never mind that Peacock is the company’s future, not Hulu.

One thing that Dixon doesn't mention is that not only do we not know how many Peacock Premium subscribers there are, we don't know how many of those Premium subscribers only have it because they are getting it free thanks to their Comcast cable subscription (it's offered free to millions of Comcast subscribers).

Revealing your subscriber numbers should be a minimum requirement for any major streaming service such as Peacock. And every time a reporter speaks to an executive, they should be asked about why they don't want to reveal such a basic metric.

ADVENTURES IN SMALL STREAMING SERVICES
There are an astounding number of odd little streaming services in business whose primary model seems to be aggregating a bunch of mostly free streaming channels and then charging a small subscription fee for the "convenience" of being able to watch them all inside one app. And to be honest, it's not clear to me how they're making money and just as importantly, how they convince people to subscribe. I've been digging into this a bit and have a couple of interesting interviews coming up next week. 

Earlier today I saw an online video ad that was promoting the November lineup at the Sony Movies Channel, which despite the name recognition has a limited footprint in the U.S. In fact, according to the Sony Movies web site, the channel is only available on on Dish, DirecTV, Tiki LIVE, WhereverTV, and SimulTV. Now while you'll be familiar with Dish and DirectTV, it's likely you've never heard of the other three services.

Tiki Live seems to be a low budget Pluto TV. There are a handful of live channels and some on demand titles, but the company appears to be mostly promoting its ability to allow producers to create their own "channels." It's free to join, but even then you'll likely decide it isn't worth it.

WhereverTV and SimulTV both seem to be aggregating a bunch of random free channels into their app and offering them to subscribers for a few dollars a month. And for the life of me, I can't figure out how they're staying in business.

WhereverTV has been in business since 2006 and it's a publicly traded company. Their web site does offer the costs of the service, but there is not one shred of information about what channels might be available. Which is a big flaw when you are asking potential subscribers to fork over $14 per month. The Ft. Myers, Florida-based company is reporting about $6 million worth of revenue last quarter, but the biggest possible revenue stream for WhereverTV seems to be a lawsuit it has filed against Comcast, which is set to begin early next year.

SimulTV seems to be a similar type of service, and while you can't see a channel lineup until you subscribe, the web site promises "over 100 channels that you can stream with loved ones anytime, anywhere." SimulTV costs $9.99 per month, although the price drops to $4.99 per month if you spend $149.99 on the STB streaming TV box. Which is in the range of the cost of an Apple TV box.

In both cases, I just can't figure out the business model. Are there really that many people willing to pay $10 a month for service that you are subscribing to sight unseen? 

There are dozens of these marginal services floating around and obviously some sort of a market for them. But I certainly can't see what it might be.

As far as the Sony Movies Channel goes, their web site is a mess. None of the schedule options are currently working and while the web site doesn't mention it, the channel is also available on other services such as Fubo TV.  The entire web site is a mess given that its owned by a major entertainment company.

SOMEHOW, I HAVE BECOME THE ANTI-METVERSE JOURNALIST
I wrote a piece last week laying out my qualms about the so-called Metaverse.  I've received a lot of attention from it, both positive and negative. And given my stance, it's not surprising that I ended up tangling a bit with Matthew Ball, who is a smart guy. But he's also the Pied Piper of the Metaverse idea and I don't think he much appreciates my criticism of the idea. I just tweeted back this response to him and I'm including it here because I think it provides a quick sense of why I have issues with the idea:

TWEET OF THE DAY

ODDS AND SODS
* More classic & obscure TV coming to Crackle TV in November: S1 of the Jack Warden series Crazy Like A Fox, S1 of the Alfred Molina comedy Ladies Man, both seasons of the underrated Joan Cusack & Kyle Chandler comedy What About Joan. ANd HBO Max has added to its collection of 1990s TV by adding Hangin With Mr. Cooper, In The House, Martin, The Jamie Foxx Show and The Parent 'Hood.

* I suppose it was inevitable that a Squid Games-inspired bitcoin would end up being a massive scam.

SEE YOU WEDNESDAY! 

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