Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Tuesday, September 13th, 2022

Another reminder that the biggest challenge for the streaming media business is content discovery

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, September 13th, 2022.

THE CHALLENGE OF CONTENT DISCOVERY
I write a lot about content discovery because it really is the core challenge of the streaming media business. Finding something to watch has become an existential issue for nearly everyone and it's only getting more difficult as new streamers launch and content moves around from streamer to streamer without warning. That's why the recent study from Plex which suggested the average person spends nearly a half hour searching for something to watch has resonated with so many people today. Even if you're in the business, it can be nearly impossible to keep track of everything you'd like to watch or might enjoy if you even knew it existed.

The problem is the result of a lot of well meaning decisions that have made a complicated content discovery problem even more challenging. So let's go through a few of them and I'll make some recommendations.

The entertainment press certainly bears its share of blame for the lack of helpful content discovery. If you look at the front page of any of the industry trades - or nearly any of the smaller competitors - you'll find a content mix that would feel familiar to a reader from twenty years ago. Breaking news, some interviews and recaps. Maybe some executive comings-and-goings and a hot take or two. But what you won't find is the answer to the question that most readers probably have at the moment: what should I watch tonight? This doesn't mean a list of every show airing that night (although I can tell you from personal experience those are very popular). 

Readers need articles that are essentially content discovery calls to action: "Five Shows Worth Watching Tonight," "Shows To Watch While Waiting For The New Season Of 'Squid Games'," "Six Comedies To Watch If You Love 'Ghosts,'" etc. These types of articles don't have run 5,000 words, but they shouldn't be listcicles, either. People want help with finding stuff they'll love and while it's not the sexiest reporting you can do, it's perhaps the most useful to your readers.

This also ties in with my frequent complaints about publicity and marketing. I get it - every company has limited resources and bandwidth. Too many projects and not nearly enough manpower to effectively promote each show.

But let us help you. There are things you can do to make it easier for journalists to discover and highlight new and returning programs. Things which don't require huge outlays of time or resources. Have information about every upcoming show on your press site. This is especially important for services such as Netflix, Prime Video and HBO Max, which can sometimes have a firehose of new content. Have photos, helpful synopsis on the page as a minimum. Ideally, some cast and crew information. And for all that is holy, include a specific press contact. For instance, Netflix tends to just include this generic PR email address on global shows that aren't a priority in North America. Which wouldn't be an issue if anyone ever answered those emails. I've had to spend time compiling local PR contacts for a lot of territories, in hopes of making it easier to track down info. But to be clear, none of the major streamers are much better when it comes to providing in-depth info on their shows.

Make screeners available and make them easy to access. I can't recommend a show based on one episode. And if it's a choice between reviewing a show I can watch on my TV and one I have to watch on my laptop, guess which one I'll prioritize? I know that tight production schedules can make getting screeners out in advance a challenge. But don't send out screeners two days ahead of a premiere and expect much attention unless you're working on an extremely high profile show.

And if you work at Discovery, drop me a line. At this point, I feel as if your publicists have joined the witness protection program.

Most entertainment journalists love television and enjoy introducing readers to a great new show they were unfamiliar with until now. As I said at the top, help us help you.

Streaming services have their own role in this content discovery Armageddon. It's not just the clunky UX or the content suggestion algorithms that don't work. It's that none of the services are set up to provide the service that subscribers would find useful: curated, personalized watch lists driven by past viewing behavior.

The services also have a lot of odd quirks in their UX. I was looking around at the various major streaming services today, curious to see how they handled their Emmy wins from last night. I noticed that Prime Video has a small banner on "The Wheel Of Time" hyping the show was Amazon's "#7 In The US." But as far as I can tell, Amazon doesn't have a public list of their top ten titles available anywhere on its app. So the #7 claim is pretty much just meaningless if there isn't the slightest nugget of additional context. One other thing and it's something that continues to be a challenge for Prime Video. Since it is the only major streaming service that prioritizes both free and ad-supported video as well as paid rentals and purchases, the UX is still a confusing mess, even after the recent reboot.

One example of the mixed priorities is the top promo carousel, which has ten slots. The top one is a promo for NFL's Thursday Night Football (which Prime Video now streams). There are slots for the Prime Video Originals Flight/Risk, The Wheel Of Time and The Rings Of Power. But the other six slots are devoted to hopefully generating revenue - from hyping Top Gun Maverick rentals to offering free trials of a number of smaller streaming services that are part of Amazon Channels. I'm all in favor of a company making money. But even with this new UX, you might be hard-pressed to know what is available to watch on Prime Video, much less what might be new or in your wheelhouse.

To Hulu's credit, each time I logged on today (and I have Hulu Live TV, so it was a few times), the top promo spot was highlighting another Emmy-nominated show. But this was a time when Hulu's lack of a rotating top promo carousel is an issue. It would be nice for the service to be able to promote multiple titles at the same time. In part because it would highlight the amount of Emmy-worthy content Hulu has available.

HBO Max seemed to be working under the assumption that everyone who had watched their Emmy winners had already seen the shows. So despite HBO's big night at the Emmys, their top promo carousel promoted the newest episode of House of Dragons, the movie Moonfall and the latest episode of Industry. Then it's highlighting the Emmy winners Succession and The White Lotus. Then Thursday's season finale of Harley Quinn, and the Emmy-winning Euphoria. 

There is an argument to be made that if you are playing the long game, one of the larger streamers should build in a database that showed where every possible show is streaming - even if it's at a rival service. Yes, you run the risk of sending your subscriber to another service. But if you create a database that is useful enough, the traffic to rivals is offset by the engagement and stickiness provided by a really useful service. And a clever addition would be a tactful list of several suggestions if the show or movie they are looking for isn't available anywhere or is on a service they don't currently subscribe to. The challenge with those suggestions is that those suggestions would work best with some human curation. Which is labor intensive, but probably well worth the investment on at least the major titles. 

The other upside of this database is that it would provide all sorts of useful search data, some of which you could include in the search function. From "other people searching for this also searched for these titles" to combining someone's watch history with their search history to provide more accurate content suggestions. 

WHIP WATCH REPORT MOST WATCHED-STREAMING ORIGINALS
The weekly ranker features TV shows that are SVOD exclusives. As a result, House of the Dragon does not qualify for this report. However, looking at how all shows, both on streaming and on linear TV, stacked up last week, Dragon would rank second overall.

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:

Academy Of Country Music Honors (Fox)
Becoming Iconic: Jonathan Baker (Fandor)
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (Netflix)
Deadliest Catch: The Viking Returns Series Premiere (Discovery)
Facing Suicide (PBS)
Jo Koy: Live At The Los Angeles Forum (Netflix)
M*A*S*H: When Television Changed Forever (Reelz)
Oprah And Viola The Woman King (OWN)
The Alligator (MHz Choice)
The Come Up Series Premiere (Freeform)

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.