Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Thursday, October 26th, 2023

Jason Kilar is usually right...but not this time.

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Thursday, October 26th, 2023. 

RANDOM OBSERVATION
Being able to do Zoom/Teams/Google video calls has made my reporting life so much easier. In part because I have easy access to stars and sources from across the globe. The upsides? I spent some time this afternoon interviewing a veteran producer in Spain for an upcoming piece. The downsides? Technology can bring on some weirdly embarrassing situations. No, I'm not talking about the time my son broke into a call to inform everyone that his bathroom toilet was overflowing. Today, I was on a call and someone kept talking about my virtual background - which I thought was one of my house that I use as a default. Instead, I realized after the call that I had accidently selected a generic background, so I must have sounded insane. And no, I couldn't see my background for technical reasons that don't matter here. Ah...what a day....

JASON KILAR IS USUALLY RIGHT. BUT MAYBE NOT THIS TIME
If you were to ask me which TV/streaming industry person I would most like to sit down with over coffee or a drink and pick their brain, Jason Kilar would be tops on my list. Throughout his career, he has continued to approach the challenges of streaming in an innovative way which hasn't always been well-received.

He penned a piece for Variety today and many of his points will sound familiar to regular readers of this newsletter. For instance, his point that streaming video isn't a bad business. But some of the current business models aren't working:

The distinction is important. Netflix is in command of a sound streaming strategy, which has been to invest and execute consistently such that it can substantively replace the linear pay TV bundle. Netflix has attracted just about 250 million paying households as of this writing and is going to generate over $6 billion in cash flow as a result of the company’s streaming strategy. These results are remarkable for such a relatively young company that has only one business. By the end of this decade, Netflix has a credible chance, given the high growth rate in its cash flow, to generate more cash flow annually than any entertainment company in the industry’s 100-year history. Just from streaming.

The big question confronting and confounding the industry is how can companies not named Netflix generate attractive cash flow from streaming? I believe it comes down to one of two paths.

The first path is the one that I believe he was trying to execute at Warner Media before it merged with Discovery:

This path requires offering enough compelling series, movies and other programming such that members of the household consume hours each day, every day of the year. There are no shortcuts. This path is not in the cards for the vast majority of companies, as it requires creative scale and an unusually large amount of disciplined investment over a long period of time. It also requires a balance sheet that makes it possible to do so.

His second path is the one you are seeing executed by companies such as Hallmark and to a lesser extent, AMC. Figure out ways to leverage other people's scale to highlight your content and promote your core business.

His solution is essentially something like a better Hulu. A service that encompasses as many different content sources as possible, providing consumers with the one-stop shopping choice that they had back in the golden days of the cable bundle.

The thing is...as much as I appreciate Kilar's worldview of the industry, I think he's wrong. At least in part. He spends a lot of time in Variety piece going through the history of the cable bundle and he correctly notes that at one point 90 percent of the possible customer base was subscribing. He attributes that to the cable bundle being able to offer everything someone wanted to watch, all in one interface.

What he doesn't mention is that a large part of the reason why that worked was that customers had no where else to go. Cable systems had consolidated to the point where most towns had only one option available for TV fans. Those monopolies were part of the reason customers found satellite TV offerings so compelling. Yes, they had their own flaws. But they were at least another option.

But that lack of an option also extended into the industry side of the business. Consolidation meant fewer big media companies owning more channels. Massive regular price increases were built into the model and no one complained much because they knew their customers didn’t have any choice but to suck it up and pay. They didn't have another option.

Kilar's "let's create a place where most of the content lives and most people will want to subscribe" is a nice theory. If this was 2017. But with the success of Netflix and other viewing options expanding everyday, while I agree that building a 200 million subscriber service is the goal, there are ways to get there that don't involve wishing for a customer base that doesn't exist anymore.

He is right that streaming success only comes with "creative scale and an unusually large amount of disciplined investment over a long period of time." The challenge for the industry is that management disfunction is at an all-time high. Disney+ has spent billions on original content and still struggles to create a hit that isn't part of the Star Wars or Marvel universe. Peacock sees its sweet spot as a combination of next-day linear programming and live sports. But as we see in the latest earnings numbers, while live sports helps bring in new and engaged subscribers, it's also massively expensive.

Max's biggest challenge are the financial constraints that come as the result of an ill-advised merger that constrain its ability to create enough scripted original content to justify its subscription price. As I wrote earlier this week, the addition of Discovery+ content has helped boost engagement. But it isn't enough of a gamechanger to solve Max's core problems. CEO David Zaslav does seem to want to create his own "everything app." But as I noted above, sports are expensive and it's unclear to me if Max can create the value proposition it needs to continue to grow.

And as for Paramount+....sigh. There are some core products there that make sense. But the service seems to suffer from the same conflicting priorities and lack of cohesion that have plagued Paramount Global since the days when it was still two separate companies. The slow-rolling g addition of Showtime doesn't seemed to have helped as much as I suspect company executives had hoped. And while some outside deals like the one with Walmart+ will grow subscriber numbers, Paramount+ just feels like an also-ran. Which is a dangerous place to be in this market.

One of the interesting trends to ne in recent months is watching some of America's biggest media companies decide they can't compete across-the-board internationally. They're scaling back planned rollouts, partnering up with local partners in order to distribute content. They have decided that having a broad approach to an international audience is too expensive and too difficult. Which ultimately means there is a natural ceiling to their growth, And that means a natural limit to their profitability.

A QUICK STRIKE NEGOTIATION UPDATE
Renewed negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP resumed today, with word from both sides being that they are returning on Friday for more discussions.

These talks are complicated by the fact that while a great deal of attention in the industry has been focused on the wrangling over whether or not there will be some sort of additional payment (or "levy" as Netflix's Ted Sarandos describes it) imposed on the studios, several other major issue are also unsettled. Including the issue of AI and how it can and can't be used moving forward.

I've learned not to make any predictions about how this will play out. But in the end, this strike will only be settled after both sides agree to take less than what they wanted. And I don't know that we're there yet.

I have seen a couple of stories in the trades that framed various comments from the studio side as thinly veiled threats. Comments that if a strike isn't settled soon, some shows will have be canceled, for instance. Or that if the SAG-AFTRA strike isn't settled soon, production might not resume industrywide until early next year. And while there might be threatening involved, both statements are also just commonsense. Some TV shows didn't return after the last prolonged industry strike. For that matter, some didn't return after the prolonged COVID production hiatus. The programs most at risk are ones that are fairly new, with ratings that aren't great, but good enough to earn them a renewal in normal times. 

As for the production timing issue, I think it's accurate to say that with the holidays coming up at the end of the year, time is running out for broadcast TV shows hoping to get in even a ten-episode season for the 2023/24 schedule.

SPEAKING OF COMPLICATED STREAMING ISSUES
Joe Adalian's latest Buffering newsletter is out and I would link to it if I could find it on Vulture's web site. He writes about five things he hates and loves about streaming right now. And some of them - such as bad home page user experiences - have also long made me a bit crazy. But he also includes some thoughts on the reluctance of streamers to warn subscribers before classic TV disappear from the service:

The situation is even more frustrating with free ad-supported streamers, which might make viewers scroll through an endless row of “leaving soon” programs to find out if something is on the way out, if they even offer that courtesy. Plus, because they have so many titles and might not get opened as frequently as a paid service, it’s very easy to miss on-platform notices: I didn’t know the excellent 1970s drama Family was leaving Tubi — where I’d been watching it on and off —  until I saw a tweet about it. And as far as I know, it’s not currently streaming anywhere else.

I have the same challenges when trying to cover this stuff. The reluctance of SVODs is one issue. But I suspect a lot of the problems with AVODS comes from the fact that they apparently don't believe most subscribers are looking for anything in particular when they sign in, so providing availability information is a waste of time. I think they're wrong, but I don't know how I can prove that without conducting some expensive usage surveys.

Oh, and to answer one of Joe's questions, a few full episodes of Family are available on one of Sony's YouTube channels.

ODDS AND SODS
* Carol & The End Of The World will premiere December 15th on Netflix. The 10-episode season comes from Community and Rick and Morty writer Dan Guterman.

* Paramount+ has canceled its Fatal Attraction reboot as well as its Kiefer Sutherland thriller Rabbit Hole. The streamer made a point of stating it has no plans to remove the shows from the service, a move it has made with some of its other recently-canceled originals. Rabbit Hole was one of the shows that deserved a bigger audience, but it just never connected with audiences on Paramount+.

* The Mountain Kitchen hosted by Annie Starke, self-taught cook, and Glenn Close’s daughter premieres Sunday, November 5th on Magnolia.

* This site has only a minimal connection to TV, but The Museum Of Internet Artifacts offers up a fascinating look at the earliest years of the Internet, ranging from the first live performance ever streamed to the iconic AOL dial-up sound. This is a magnificent way to kill some time.

* Vulture's Lane Brown tries to answer the question I personally think about nearly every time I watch a new TV series: why do computer-generated flames still look so cheesy?

WHAT'S NEW TODAY AND TOMORROW:

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26TH, 2023:
American Horror Stories (Hulu)
Everybody Else Burns Series Premiere (The CW)
Explorer: Lake Of Fire Season Premiere (NatGeo)
Ms. Christmas Comes To Town (Hallmark Movies And Mysteries)
Pluto Series Premiere (Netflix) 
Run The Burbs Season Premiere (The CW)
Sebastian Fitzek's Therapy Series Premiere (Prime Video)
Stalked By My Stepsister (LMN)
The Despaired (BET+)
The Haunted Museum Season Premiere (Travel)
The Vanishing Triangle (Sundance Now)

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27TH, 2023:
Christmas By Design (Hallmark)
Curses! Series Premiere (Apple TV+)
Five Nights At Freddy's (Peacock)
Lego Marvel Avengers: Code Red Series Premiere (Disney+)
Lil' Stompers Series Premiere (Peacock)
ONEFour: Against All Odds (Netflix)
Pain Hustlers (Netflix)
Penn & Teller: Fool Us Season Premiere (The CW)
Shoresy Season Premiere (Hulu)
Sister Death (Netflix)
South Park: Joining The Panderverse (Paramount+)
The Enfield Poltergeist (Apple TV+)
The Girl Who Killed Her Parents - The Confession (Prime Video)
Tore Series Premiere (Netflix)
Where Evil Lurks (Shudder)
Yellow Door: 90s Lo-Fi Film Club (Netflix)

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.