Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Tuesday, October 4th 2022

Those darn Hollywood writers....

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, October 4th, 2022.

WHY HASN'T HULU LIVE TV FIXED ITS DVR PROBLEMS?
I have been a Hulu Live TV subscriber for a few years, and after trying a few alternatives, it remains my favorite. Other than not carrying PBS (only YouTube TV does that) and oddly enough, the various Hallmark Networks, the channel lineup is solid, I save a bit of money by adding the Disney bundle and after getting used to its slightly weird UX, I am an overall happy camper.

Except...

A few months ago, Hulu Live TV added a free unlimited DVR option for all subscribers. And aside from saving $10 a month, it's really helpful to have the ability to record as much as you want and to be able to save it for up to nine months. The downside is that the DVR is quirky in ways that can be extremely annoying. And for whatever reason, Hulu's tech people have not been able to solve the problems.

There are two very common complaints from subscribers. The first seems to have been occurring for at least 18 months, based on the complaints I've seen on Hulu's customer support pages. What happens is that the DVR will begin recording random episodes of a show you recorded at some point in the past. As an example, at some point during the final season of CBS's comedy Mom, I had the DVR record some episodes. Even when I wanted it to record the show, I limited it to only new episodes. And despite having asked the DVR to stop recording the show, it will randomly record a bunch of reruns of the series that are now airing on CMT. This was especially annoying back when I only had a limited amount of DVR space. But even with an unlimited DVR, it is frustrating to have random reruns of maybe 6-9 different shows popping up on my DVR. I've went back and forth with Hulu support and their stock answer seems to be "our engineers are working on the problem."

The second problem is one I am seeing more complaints about in recent months. The DVR will just stop recording episodes of a show. The DVR is supposed to be recording them and if you look at the upcoming listings on Hulu's live guide, it shows the episode should record. But when it comes time, the episodes don't show up in the DVR. Once again, customer support doesn't have much in the way of suggestions. And for what it's worth, the problem seems to only happen to me for a week or two at a time with a limited subset of the shows I am recording. In my case, it's MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes. It will stop recording for awhile and then magically begin again.

I won't pretend that I have the engineering expertise to understand what might be happening. But as a longtime customer, it is frustrating enough that I have considered moving to another vMVPD.

THE ANKLER AND THE LIKELIHOOD OF A WRITER'S STRIKE

If you saw the above tweet today from the official WGA-W Twitter account and wondered what they were referencing, it's this piece from The Ankler's Richard Rushfield, where he breaks down his thoughts on the likelihood there'll be a writer's strike next year and why it might take place. I think it's fair to say that like much of The Ankler's staff, he's a bit more open to the traditional studio point of view on the movie and television business. Most of the reporters working for the Hollywood Trades tend to have a bit of a Stockholm Syndrome approach to covering the studios and that subtly plays out in the way some of the industry's issues are covered. And given that the majority of the staff at The Ankler came from one of the trades...well. You can see where this is headed. It's not fair to describe his framing of the union's point of view as inaccurate. It's more firm and unforgiving:

Thinking through the problems, there's a really simple solution to most of our problems: Invent a time machine to take us back to 2010 and put a barricade in the road to stop and think this through for a few minutes before we rush headlong to dismantle our entire industrial architecture in search of the brilliant streaming future.

But we have to consider that these problems didn't happen by accident: it was the design of the streaming revolution to have a more agile (less union-rules driven) business divided into two classes: A tiny number of fantastically rewarded, fought-over top-level creators presiding over a broad class of tightly-squeezed interchangeable workers, hopefully contract workers. This is the model of the tech world and the amazing revolution they bring about in every space they enter. There was never any reason to believe it would be different here.

I see this framing a lot in the various trades and from old school Hollywood types. They talk as if the industry shifting to a model that included streaming was a choice. That there was some scenario in which traditional Hollywood could have stayed with the business model it was comfortable with and then everyone would have been happy.

Yes, streaming has had a near-extinction level impact on the business. But there was no way to deny the changes that were coming. The music labels tried in the post-Napster years and it took nearly two decades and a lot of consolidation before they figured out some way to make it work. Consumers want to be able to stream entertainment and if the industry hasn't yet figured out how to make it work, that's not the fault of the audience or the technology.

The other thing Hollywood and the music industry have in common is that a sizeable percentage of their revenue stream was built around the concept of a contractually imposed scarcity. Albums were wildly lucrative because that was the only way most consumers could acquire music. Especially after the growth of cassettes killed the singles market. You bought the album or you were out of luck. And industry guidelines prevented retailers from marking down the retail price below a certain point. So albums were a massive cash cow and consumers didn't have any viable options. Once they did, the end of the album's reign was inevitable.

A similar audience deconstruction has taken place in the television industry. The linear TV business is built around a series of interlocking contracts and agreements that ensured everyone could make a nice profit off of the backs of consumers who had a lack of viable viewing options. Cable packages were highly bundled and aggressively priced as high as possible. Every retransmission or carriage rate hike was eventually agreed to and the price was just passed along to consumers. Consolidation of the industry into ever-larger semi-monopolies has meant that it's even more likely that Disney or NBCU or Warner Bros. Discovery can use their large portfolio of channels to force both MVPDs and vMVPDs to agree to ever higher prices. But streaming provides at least imperfect alternatives and as the audience shifts away from that forced scarcity, it's playing havoc with with the bottom line of the big media companies. Think things are grim now? Give it 3 or 5 years.

Rushfield argues that with the industry in turmoil, this is not the time for what will likely be a prolonged and painful strike. I think the industry's writers recognize that. But they also recognize that in the past they have delayed their demands in order to preserve jobs, or believed the studios when they promise to "make things right in the future."

For writers who are already struggling to survive, a strike will be painful and costly. But will it be any worse than the future that awaits them if things don't change?

One last thing. I find these portrayal of some WGA members as teetering between scornful and patronizing. I would love to know who is pushing this particular narrative about some WGA members:

Considering the WGA’s internal politics, when push comes to shove, they — like most of the Guilds — have the issue that the huge bulk of its membership is unemployed or underemployed members who are delighted to go on strike at any time.

But add to that, some members advise, the fact that WGA membership in recent years has swelled with the arrival of Zoomers, who got into the Guild after a single job on one of the zillion streaming shows flying across the airwaves. The Zoomers with these first jobs got a little, tiny, Guild-minimum taste of real showbiz life, only to find that very difficult to turn into a sustained career in this world, confronting the reality that all writers face these days: you might not work again for three or four years. Embittered, and given to Zoomer leftie activism to begin with, friends advise this cohort will form a strong pro-strike faction in any conversations to come.

(To be a less charitable about it, one friend spells out, “This is unsaid, but there are tons of millennial/Zoomer WGA members who would be excited to picket for the Instagram/TikTok opportunities. I shudder to think about what 2007-08 strike would have looked like in the selfie era.’)

PHILO'S WEEKLY STREAMING ROUND-UP
Here is a rundown of the most popular titles on the entertainment-centric vMVPD Philo for the week ending Sunday, October 2nd:

Top Ten TV Shows
Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta (VH1)
Love & Hip Hop: Miami (VH1)
Love After Lockup (WEtv)
The First 48 (A&E)
Martin (BET)
Married at First Sight (Lifetime)
90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? (TLC)
Love & Marriage: Huntsville (OWN)
Black Ink Crew: Chicago (VH1)
Tracking Ian (Accuweather)

Top Five Movies
Girlfriendship (Hallmark Channel)
The Gabby Petito Story (Lifetime)
Halloween (1978) (AMC)
Fly Away with Me (Hallmark Channel)
Training Day (BET)

TWEET OF THE DAY

REMEMBERING ABC'S VERSION OF 'THE MOLE'
Netflix has a new version of The Mole premiering this Friday, hosted by MSNBC primetime anchor Alex Wagner. But longtime fans of the show fondly remember the show from its time on ABC, which featured newsman/anchor Anderson Cooper as the host.

If you're a fan of reality and unscripted television, you should be reading Andy Dehnart's web site "Reality Blurred." And a perfect example of why that's the case is his oral history of the ABC version of The Mole, which features interviews with a score of producers and other people who worked on the show. It's a really fun read and a great reminder of why the first couple of seasons of the show might be one of the best reality series ever on broadcast television:

Clay Newbill: “We’ve always had a really great cast.”

Scott Stone: “My favorite one was Al from season two. His whole [audition] tape was him running around outside in front of his house, holding a pair of scissors, yelling, I’m running with scissors. That’s how dangerous I am!“

Clay Newbill: “There was like a foot of snow on the ground, and he was in his underwear.”

THE WHIP WATCH STREAMING ORIGINALS REPORT
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. 

WHAT'S NEW FOR TUESDAY:

Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:

BET Hip Hop Awards 2022 (BET)
Beyond Oak Island Season Premiere (History)
Cherish The Day (OWN)
DJ Cassidy's Pass The Mic (BET)
Harriet Tubman: Visions Of Freedom (PBS)
Hasan Minhaj: The King's Jester (Netflix)
Invisible Demons (Mubi)
Making Black America: Through The Grapevine Series Premiere (PBS)
Pension Metsa Series Premiere (MHz Choice)
Rap City '22 (BET)
Sherwood (Britbox)
Tales From The Territories Series Premiere (Vide)
Truth Be Told (ESPN)
The Very Very Best Of The 80s (AXSTV)

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.