Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Thursday, December 1st, 2022

The challenges of adding a social component to streaming.

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

WHY ISN'T THERE A 'SPOTIFY UNWRAPPED' FOR SVOD'S?. PART DEUX
After my piece in yesterday's newsletter arguing there should be an SVOD equivalent to "Spotify Unwrapped," someone reached out on Twitter to remind me of this, which I had entirely forgotten:

I was reminded about the Hulu attempt by a couple of people yesterday. The funniest response was from an engineer at Hulu, who told me the feature had been "kinda lame. So I'm not surprised you don't remember it."

SPEAKING OF SOCIAL EFFORTS AND SVODS
I've written before about attempts at various SVOD's and vMVPD's to build some sort of social element into their interface. In fact, back in May I speculated that adding a social component to these services would help with content discovery:

But what if your profile was more like one you'd have on a social media platform? You could add custom icons, and create "playlists" that could be shared publicly and that other users could subscribe to. You could follow favorite actors or directors, so you'd be informed when anything new by them was added to the service. And because you would be providing additional data points about your viewing habits, the service would be able to weed out some of the noise in its recommendation engine.

I was walked through a very early Alpha test of the idea and at least on the face of it, the experience is as jarring as it was the first time I logged onto a streaming service. The UX is extremely unfamiliar at first, but it quickly becomes clear that this could be a massive sea change in how users interact with the service. Users can temporarily hide content that doesn't interest them, and there are content verticals that surprisingly haven't existed before, such as "every new item added in the last week." Users can follow other users, which means they can see which content the other person has been watching (it's very similar to the feature available on Spotify). Users have the ability to decide which data they want to share with others, ranging from profile names and viewing choices to playlists. But they can also decide to not share anything, and there isn't a way to message other subscribers.

That lack of messaging is by design, said the engineer, who told me they had real concerns about potential abuse, ranging from spam to more personal attacks. "We don't this to become Twitter with videos. The primary function of this is discovering new things to watch and tapping into the expertise of people you trust."

This morning, I was given a look at another streamer's effort at a social component and while I'm very limited about what I can say publicly right now, there were a couple of aspects of their effort I liked a lot. Like Spotify, your ability to connect directly with others is purposely limited. But you can "follow" other people and one thing the software did was to create dynamic "trending" and "most popular" lists based on the users you are connected with. It's not clear how that idea scales or if the software needs a minimum amount of connections to work well. But seeing in real time what other people are discovering feels like a real useful tool. 

This is one of those ideas that seems as if it's right on the cusp of exploding. Various services have worked on versions of profile-based personalization internally, but no one has been confident enough about the accuracy or usefulness to roll it out to the public. And I have a fear that in this period where cutbacks are happening across the board, spending money on an idea that doesn't have a direct impact on revenue is going to be a tough sell.

That being said, I am having people reach out asking if I’ll do some consulting work on social and UX questions. So it is definitely an idea that is percolating at a number of places.

CNN'S BIG CUTBACKS
In a memo sent out to all CNN employees today, CNN Worldwide Chairman and CEO Chris Licht outlined a significant round of job cuts at the company. Here is the mem, in full

To my CNN colleagues,

As promised in my note yesterday, I am following up with an overview of the changes we have made across the company. Our goal throughout the strategic review process has been to better align our people, processes and resources with our future priorities, strengthen our ability to deliver on CNN’s core journalistic mission and enable us to innovate in the years ahead. At the highest level, the goal is to direct our resources to best serve and grow audiences for our core news programming and products.

To achieve these goals, we will be reducing open job positions, reimagining our workflows and aligning our staffing, investments and focus around three key strategic priorities: programming, newsgathering and digital. All decisions are designed to strengthen the core of our business.

While it is not possible to capture every impacted role in an email like this, I want to walk through the broader changes we are making:

HLN

Beginning December 6, CNN will no longer produce live programming for HLN and instead will simulcast CNN This Morning. HLN Crime programming will move under the WBD Networks led by Kathleen Finch and will be merged with ID. I want to take a moment to thank Robin Meade— she is not only an exceptionally popular anchor, but also one of the longest-running morning hosts in history. I know the HLN audience will miss her and the other HLN talent.

CNN International

CNN International is reorganizing some of its teams and bureaus, and effective immediately, the 5:00-5:30pm ET show will be replaced by a simulcast of CNN US for that half hour.

CNN en Español

CNNE’s linear network will seek to expand its audience by diversifying the network’s programming beyond news. We will continue to produce news for CNNE, and throughout next year, we will look to develop a far more robust digital platform for CNNE with the aim of launching it in 2024. We believe that investment will better serve and significantly grow our Spanish-language news audience, and we will have more to share on that in 2023.

U.S. Newsgathering

We are restructuring across some of our beats, realigning resources to staff up in some units and in more areas around the country. This will help us deliver on our goal of covering the United States more broadly. Many of the staff reductions in Newsgathering will be offset by the addition of new roles to best serve our audience across platforms.

Contributors

We are also shifting our approach to paid contributors. In some areas, we will rely more on our CNN journalists. Overall, we will engage contributors who are subject-matter experts that expand and diversify the viewpoints we bring our audience.

Programming

Our programming teams will see some reductions in show staffs and, in some cases, the combination of teams for our dayside and weekend lineups.

Creative Marketing

The Creative Marketing team will see an overall reduction in size, realigning around in-house production and consolidating creative and strategy roles in New York. Roles will be added to both support that work and expand our digital and growth marketing efforts.

Research

Research is reorganizing to focus resources on CNN’s core businesses and to optimize our recently integrated Digital Analytics and Data Science teams.

Operations

The Operations teams are restructuring to align with the changes to other units across the organization.  

CNN Digital

CNN Digital conducted an exercise earlier this fall to ensure they were best structured for the future. They made changes then and, as a result, there are no further impacts in this process.

The changes we are making today are necessary and will make us stronger and better positioned to place big bets going forward without fear of failure.

To our departing colleagues, I want to express my gratitude for your dedicated and tireless service and for your many contributions to CNN. To all employees, I want to underscore the importance of taking the time you need to best be able to move forward. You can find resources to support you now here. I will be holding a town hall on Tuesday to answer your questions, which can be submitted anonymously here.

I am proud of this CNN team, and together we will ensure CNN continues to be the world’s most vital source of news and information.

Chris

ONE OF THE DOWNSIDES OF UNLIMITED DVR STORAGE
This is what happens when you set a vMVPD DVR to record a show and then completely forget about it. You end up with 185 episodes and counting...

ODDS AND SODS
* When you think Christmas songs, you don't usually think of the band Boston. And there's a good reason for that. Today's "Weirdest Songs Of Christmas" is Boston's "God Rest Ye Metal Gentlemen."

* I reviewed the new Norwegian Netflix original film Troll, which is a lot like Godzilla. Except with a big troll instead of a giant monkey.

* Disney+ has announced that season three of The Mandalorian will premiere on Wednesday, March 1st, 2023. There's no truth to the rumor that to keep people coming back to Disney+, they'll be releasing ten minutes of the show every day.

* BBC2 orders the new series Hairy Bikers Go Local. These guys are super popular in the UK, but as an American, I just don't get it.

* While the various entertainment business layoffs in the U.S. are getting the bulk of the attention in the U.S., it's worth noting there are cutbacks taking place everywhere. For instance, today brought many layoffs at ESPN Chile. They're killing their flagship show, F90 and substantially cutting back on live programming.

WHAT'S NEW FOR THURSDAY:

Agatha Christie's Hjerson (Topic)
A Hollywood Christmas (HBO Max)
A Wounded Fawn (Shudder)
Bose (Paramount+)
Branson (HBO)
CMA Country Christmas (CBS)
Dead End (Netflix)
Dolly Parton's Mountain Magic Christmas (NBC)
Flip Or Flop: The Final Flip (HGTV)
Gossip Girl Season Premiere (HBO Max)
Hush (ALLBLK)
Inside The Black Box Season Premiere (Crackle)
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Stone Ocean (Netflix)
Luxe For Less Series Premiere (HGTV)
Qala (Netflix)
Rolling Into Christmas (BET+)
Serving Up The Holidays (Lifetime)
Sort Of Season Two Premiere (HBO Max)
The Master Scammer (Netflix)
The Nutcracker: Starring Elmo And Tango (HBO Max)
The Territory (NatGeo)
Troll (Netflix)
Wicked City Series Premiere (ALLBLK)

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

SEE YOU FRIDAY!

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