Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Wednesday, November 30th, 2022
Why isn't there a 'Spotify Unwrapped' for SVOD's?
Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Wednesday, November 30th, 2022.
WHY ISN'T THERE A 'SPOTIFY UNWRAPPED' FOR SVOD'S?
Spotify rolled out its annual personalized "Spotify Unwrapped" feature to subscribers today and it creates individual lists that show the songs listened to most throughout the year as well as the most popular artists and genres for each specific subscriber. The lists are fun to share and they pop up a lot on social media in December. But they are also thought-provoking. I guarantee that when you see your lists, you'll be surprised at some of the songs on it.
At least based on my list, Spotify interestingly dropped a couple of the social additions they added ot "Unwrapped" last year, including allowing subscribers to earn badges for things such as creating popular playlists or being a very early listener to a song that later becomes very popular. There was also a personalized playlist called "Missed Hits," which included song similar to ones you listened to that you missed throughout the year.
All of this is lightweight fun and while it isn't for everyone, it does create a faux-social experience that is different from what users will find on Amazon or Apple Music. And it got me to thinking that this is type of feature I'd love to see Hulu or Netflix roll out in the future.
While it's not a minor engineering project, it would be fun for Hulu or Netflix to create lists such as "Your Most Watched Shows." These features also could provide a way to glean more specific demographic details from the subset of subscribers willing to provide it in exchange for increasingly helpful content filtering. Asking users to volunteer their sex, ten-year wide age range and state where they are located wouldn't sound too obtrusive to many subscribers. But it would allow services to create content recommendation lists based on what other subscribers in those categories were watching. And from a business standpoint, it would build better demographic info for advertisers, even if only a subset of subscribers agreed to participate.
The challenge for any streamer trying this is that despite all of the money spent on back-end data tracking, crunching the data and organizing it in a way where it could be parsed on a individual level doesn't seem to be the strong point of any of the major streamers. Although I suspect Netflix and Hulu are probably closest to being able to pull it off. Amazon collects a lot of customer data. But based on efforts at personalization I've previously seen from the company, I'm not convinced accurate personalization is one of Amazon's super powers.
NETFLIX'S REED HASTINGS SAYS HE SHOULD HAVE MOVED EARLIER ON ADVERTISING
It's rare to have a media executive publicly admit they were wrong. It's even more unusual when it's done by someone at Netflix.
At today's New York Times Dealbook conference, Netflix founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings admitted that the streamer should have launched an ad-supported tier sooner:
“The big thing that I missed is I was on the Facebook board, so I bought in for a decade to the belief that systems relying on data were going to be able to do higher CPMs than anyone else,” Hastings said, referring to a marketing metric used to calculate the cost per advertising impressions. “So Google and Facebook were going to mop up the world — and they have in non-TV advertising.”
“What I failed to understand is that there is a lot of TV advertising that now couldn’t find the viewers because the 18- to 49-[year old] segment had moved on and were not watching linear TV,” he said.
Advertisers were “desperate” for avenues in connected TV and internet, Hastings said, but Netflix was still on the sidelines.
“We didn’t have to steal away the advertising revenue. It was pouring into connected TV. The inventory was there,” he said.
Hastings said that he wasn't anticipating Netflix was going to be acquired by Microsoft or anyone else. But on the M&A front, he did admit there was one target he wished the streamer had pursued:
Hastings did acknowledge he had eyes for a different acquisition: Wordle, the popular daily word game that’s now a part of The New York Times gaming suite. The game, which gives players six guesses to match a five-letter word, exploded in popularity earlier this year.
“I berated our M&A team that we didn’t buy Wordle,” Hastings said Wednesday.
NETFLIX ISN'T LOOKING TO DO LIVE SPORTS
There is a lot of coverage of the Reed Hastings talk today and much of that is because he rarely gives interviews or talks publicly about the company's strategy. And since the New York Times Dealbook conference is a revenue stream for the newspaper, there was no streaming access to the talk.
(As an aside, I interviewed Hastings back when the company had just launched and still only had one DVD warehouse in the Bay Area. Even then, he was talking about Netflix eventually delivering movies directly to consumers via the Internet. Which was a pretty gutsy call back in 1999. I wish he was more willing to talk publicly about the company's strategy. It would be helpful for investors and for the company).
Vox has a rundown of some of Hastings' other comments, some of which focused on the streamer's gaming and live sports plans (or lack thereof):
Games, games, games: Netflix first announced a foray into video games back in the spring of 2021. In retrospect, that move was a much clearer signal that it was worried about the future of streaming than most of us picked up on at the time. And since then, Netflix has bought a few small game studios and released a couple dozen casual games. But neither the gaming industry nor Wall Street seems to think Netflix will be a real competitor in games. So it was interesting that throughout the interview, Hastings repeatedly talked about his interest in games, without prompting. Netflix, he said over and over, wants to make great TV shows, movies, and games. And when asked about Netflix’s well-reported interest in getting into sports, he answered with this: “Talk to us after we’re a big leader in games. We have a lot of investment to do in games.” Message received.
Speaking of sports: Hastings wasn’t asked directly about Netflix bidding on live sports rights (though other executives in the space have told me Netflix has done so). But when asked about his recently announced move to livestream a Chris Rock comedy special next year, Hastings immediately dismissed the idea that this was a precursor to streaming live sports. “That’s not true.” Livestreaming, he said, will be used for things like comedy, and maybe “contestant shows,” which kind of sound like sports to me but I’m assuming means stuff like Netflix’s “Love Is Blind” reality shows/contests.
Hastings also discussed bingeing, the TV show release approach which is much-hated inside Hollywood. I've been arguing that despite all of the moaning, Netflix wasn't going to move to an all weekly episode drop approach. And in the talk, Hastings confirmed that was the case:
One of the many things Hollywood thinks Netflix should do to be more like Hollywood is dispense with its tradition of dropping all of its shows at once. Netflix has started to play with that idea a bit (this summer it split its newest Stranger Things season into two chunks). But Hastings says Netflix won’t get rid of it because he doesn’t need to — other streamers need to spread their shows out, he said, because they don’t have as many shows people like — and because customers like it.
Asking whether customers would prefer a world where they have to wait a week to see a new episode makes no sense, he said — it would be akin to asking “would you rather read yesterday’s news or today’s?”
DISNEY'S MISSED MARKETING OPPORTUNITY
Whether or not rolling Hulu into Disney+ is in the cards, Disney continues to inexplicably miss low-hanging opportunities to cross-promote the two platforms.
For instance, take the Disney+ original Andor. The Star Wars original series has received a lot of great reviews and even if you aren't a Disney+ subscriber, you have likely at least heard of the show.
Hulu currently has two episodes of the show available on the service, because ABC aired episodes one and two last week in an effort to drive some more interest in Disney+. And not surprisingly, Hulu is recommending the show to its Live TV subscribers (it could be Hulu Basic as well, I don't have the standalone version of the service):
And yet, there's nothing on the show page that points subscribers to Disney+. Presumably, some subset of viewers are going to watch the two episodes and like it enough that they'll want to watch the entire season. And yet, there's nothing on the page letting people know where to watch more episodes. No "Want to watch more? Subscribe to Disney+ or the Disney bundle."
ODDS AND SODS
* Paramount+ has renewed its series Tulsa King for a second season. According to Nielsen numbers provided by Paramount, the numbers bested HBO’s House of the Dragon as cable’s highest-rated series debut this year
* Season three of Celebrity Name That Tune premieres Wednesday, January 11th, 2023 on Fox.
* Random Acts Of Flying returns to HBO for a second season on Friday, December 9th.
WHAT'S NEW FOR WEDNESDAY:
A Man Of Action (Netflix)
Christmas Full Of Grace (Netflix)
Christmas In Rockefeller Center (NBC)
Irreverent Series Premiere (Peacock)
Love Without Borders Series Premiere (Bravo)
Money Court Season Premiere (Netflix)
My Name Is Vendetta (Netflix)
Snack Vs. Chef Series Premiere (Netflix)
Take Your Pills: Xanax (Netflix)
The Lost Patient (Netflix)
The Low Tone Club (Disney+)
The Masked Singer Season Finale (Fox)
Willow Series Premiere (Disney+)
Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.
SEE YOU THURSDAY!
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