Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Wednesday, April 6th, 2022

I'm already tired of hearing about the Discovery/Warner Media merger..

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Wednesday, April 6th, 2022. 

SAVE ME FROM ALL OF THE COMING INSIDER STORIES
With the closing of the Discovery/WarnerMedia merger just a couple of days away, the "which executive is getting pushed out the door?" stories are all over the entertainment trade press today.

And then there are the stories where incoming Discovery executives and investors are trash-talking various CNN personalities

While all of this palace intrigue is fun to follow, it's not the most important thing about this upcoming merger.

There were always inevitably going to be lots of layoffs and cost-cutting. That's how executives are able to justify these types of mega-mergers in the short term. We are also likely to see spending cutbacks on all fronts, including HBO. 

But this merger will have an immense eventual impact on consumers and not in a good way. Remember all of those stories about how marginal cable channels were going to go away, lowering the price of the average cable TV package or vMVPD? That didn't happen, in large part because as the big media companies merge, there is a financial incentive to use your size to force MVPD's to carry every one of your channels. Because even if no one is watching, you make millions of dollars a year off of the small subscriber fees.

That trend will only get worse once Discovery Warner is able to use its immense size to force MVPDs and vMVPDs to carry every one of the crappy channels no one cares about. So consumers will continue to be stuck paying for networks like American Heroes Channel and Destination America if they want access to Discovery and CNN. And I can't help that think that Philo's current deal with Discovery is going to be in trouble during the next go-round of negotiations, which would likely either force that service out of business or to beef up its channels and include all of the Turner networks.

The point of any large merger is to make it easier to use the combined company's size and market share to force consumers to give them more money. The impact on consumers is a part of this story that is underreported in the industry trade press and it's an important consequence of the merger.

PLEX ADDS UNIVERSAL WATCHLIST, SEARCH AND DISCOVERY
Plex rolled out new universal search, watchlist and discovery features Tuesday that are designed to help people find and keep track of all of the shows and movies available across a growing universe of streaming services:

Plex has been teasing plans for its universal watchlist for some time on its website, as Protocol was first to report in December. The new app integration goes further and bridges people’s personal media libraries with all the content available across the streaming universe. Movies recorded with Plex’s DVR show up alongside streaming titles from Netflix as well as Plex’s own free, ad-supported movie library, and registered users can select the services they subscribe to as their default results. People can also add a movie or show to their watchlist and then get notified when it appears on a streaming service they subscribe to, or keep access to it even if it moves from one service to another.

In addition to universal search and a universal watchlist across multiple streaming services as well as personal media, Plex is also launching a dedicated discovery section in its app that highlights new titles on Netflix and other services. Over time, the company plans to further personalize these recommendations by adding social features and more. Also planned for the coming months: the integration of transactional VOD content, aka paid movies and shows.

When media industry folks talk about "the great rebundling," they are generally describing something that looks like an old school cable lineup. Some interface that would present linear TV channels next to stuff from various streaming services.

But I think this Plex idea is where the industry will likely end up. Not content aggregated through channels or some other traditional interface. But an interface that allows consumers to pick and choose what they want to include and then seamlessly allows them to search across various services and then click directly into the appropriate app through deep-linking. This is a much better consumer experience than you get when you subscribe to various SVOD's through a third-party marketplace, which then forces you to watch that SVOD's content through the third-party marketplace's less than stellar interface.

I'm going to play around with this new Plex interface over the next couple of days and will let you know what I think.

THE RISE OF THE DIGINETS
Variety has a piece on diginets and while it doesn't provide a lot of info you probably don't already know, it's worth reading because has a breakdown of the 59 diginets that are currently live, along with their owners and associated FAST channels.

While the article doesn't get into this part of it, some of the diginets are also available on various vMVPDs, although it's a very scattered approach. 

PEACOCK NABS MLB GAME PACKAGE
Major League Baseball continues its apparent effort to see how many new programming packages can be created out of one season by signing a new deal with Peacock. 

Starting May 8th, the streaming service will present one Sunday morning game exclusively for 18 weeks. This deal comes just after Apple TV+ signed its own deal for a slate of MLB games.

While the games themselves likely won't be huge draws for Peacock, they will be another sports offering the service can use to convince subscribers to choose Peacock's premium packaging tier (the games won't be available on Peacock's free ad-supported tier)

But once again, this is a move that is a terrible idea for consumers. I suspect very few baseball fans have been thinking "oh,  I hope all of my favorite team's games can be scattered across as many different platforms as possible."

TWEET OF THE DAY

ODDS AND SODS
* Animal Kingdom premieres its sixth and final season on Sunday, June 19th on TNT.

* The third season of HBO's A Tiny Audience premieres on Friday, April 22nd.

* Season five of Somebody Feed Phil premieres May 25th on Netflix.

* YouTube TV has added five linear TV channels to its programming package. The rebooted tech/gaming channel G4 is now included, as well as four Bryon Allen-owned channels: The Weather Channel, Comedy.TV, Recipe.TV, and Justice Central.

WHAT'S NEW FOR WEDNESDAY
Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:

Body Parts Series Premiere (TLC)
Furioza (Netflix)
Green Mother's Club Series Premiere (Netflix)
Jimmy Saville: A British Horror Story (Netflix)
Michela Giraud: The Truth, I Swear! (Netflix)
The Hardy Boys Season Two Premiere (Hulu)
The Ultimatum: Marry Or Move On Series Premiere (Netflix)

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

SEE YOU THURSDAY! 

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