Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Wednesday, December 7th, 2021
No, I don't want to hear your pitch on the latest NFT
Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Wednesday, December 8th, 2021. I'm writing this from the Twin Cities, where AllYourScreens HQ is trying to get caught up with the staggering amount of email I ignored yesterday.
ROKU, YOUTUBE COME TO AN AGREEMENT
Roku and Google's YouTube had been wrangling for months over a new carriage agreement that would replace the current one set to expire at the end of December. According to Roku, the big sticking point was that YouTube was asking the company to prioritize YouTube in its search results. It also wanted Roku to add a specific chip to its hardware that Google claimed would make YouTube easier to use. But Roku claimed adding the chip would only aid Google and would result in a cost increase for its hardware. That's a very general description of the issue, but the bottom line was that Roku insisted the requests are unreasonable and would break the way Roku's platform worked for consumers.
Roku and YouTube just announced that they have come to an agreement, although neither side is providing any details:
“We’re happy to share that we’ve reached a deal with Roku to continue distributing the YouTube and YouTube TV apps on Roku devices,” A YouTube spokesperson said. “This means that Roku customers will continue to have access to YouTube and that the YouTube TV app will once again be available in the Roku store for both new and existing members. We are pleased to have a partnership that benefits our mutual users.
I've been reaching out to sources to see if I can get some clarity on whether Roku is implementing any of the changes requested by YouTube. I'll let you know if I get a response.
WHY THE SOUND ON YOUR FAVORITE TV SHOW IS SO HARD TO HEAR
While this SlashFilm piece focuses primarily on the erratic sound levels in movies, it's an issue that also is a growing problem with television shows. Dialogue is muffled and difficult to understand and there are massive differences in sound level from scene to scene. There are a number of reasons for the problem and one of them centers around the "artistic" choices of directors such as Christopher Nolan:
When it comes to dialogue unintelligibility, one name looms above all others: Christopher Nolan. The director of "Tenet," "Interstellar," and "The Dark Knight Rises" is one of the most successful filmmakers of his generation, and he uses his power to make sure his films push the boundaries of sound design, often resulting in scenes in which audiences literally cannot understand what his characters say. And it's not just audiences who have trouble with some Nolan films: the director has even revealed that other filmmakers have reached out to him to complain about this issue in his movies.
Donald Sylvester, who took home an Oscar for his work on "Ford v Ferrari" and is currently serving as the supervising sound editor of "Indiana Jones 5," says Nolan is a singular figure in this regard. "I think Christopher Nolan wears it as a badge of honor," Sylvester declares. "I don't think he cares. I think he wants people to give him bad publicity because then he can explain his methods to everybody and we can all learn. But I don't think other people actually understand it."
On the television side, one frequently mentioned problem stems from the way movies and shows are compressed for streaming:
Mixing sound for theaters can be tough, but mixing sound specifically for streaming has its own set of challenges. "We, in fact, do a separate mix for streaming," Mangini says (although I later learned this isn't true for every single movie across the board). But since nothing is ever easy, another problem arises when streaming enters the picture: compression. In layman's terms, think of compression as audio files basically being shrunk down in order to be efficiently transported across the Internet to your viewing device. That process sounds almost magical, doesn't it? It is — until you realize that those shrunken files are of significantly lower quality than what you'd get if you watched that same movie on a Blu-ray. (If you're keeping score at home, this is yet another point in favor of preserving physical media at all costs.)
Regardless of the causes, I'm just happy to hear that the reason I am relying more on captioning to understand the dialogue has to do with technology and not my rapidly aging hearing.
SPEAKING OF TECHNOLOGY AND SOUND
I had read a lot of pieces dissecting the production process for the Disney+ Beatles documentary Get Back, but I hadn't realized that director Peter Jackson had used AI-driven sound editing software to clear up the audio tracks and make individual bits of dialogue and music easier to hear:
"To me, the sound restoration is the most exciting thing. We made some huge breakthroughs in audio. We developed a machine learning system that we taught what a guitar sounds like, what a bass sounds like, what a voice sounds like. In fact, we taught the computer what John sounds like and what Paul sounds like. So we can take these mono tracks and split up all the instruments we can just hear the vocals, the guitars. You see Ringo thumping the drums in the background but you don't hear the drums at all. That that allows us to remix it really cleanly."
TWEET OF THE DAY
ODDS AND SODS
* The new season of Summer House is coming to Bravo on January 17th.
* TLC is premiering two new shows spun-off from its massive 90 Days franchise. David & Annie: After The 90 Days and Loren & Alexei: After The 90 Days both premiere on Monday, January 10th.
* The adventure thriller La Fortuna, starring Stanley Tucci and acclaimed actor Clarke Peters, will premiere January 20th on AMC+.
* Sony Pictures Television has announced that Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings will share hosting duties through the end of Jeopardy! Season 38, and Michael Davies will remain as executive producer.
WHAT'S NEW FOR WEDNESDAY
Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:
Carolin Kebekus: The Last Christmas Special (Netflix)
Christmas Around The World (The CW)
Christmas With A Crown (Lifetime)
CMT Crossroads Christmas: Brett Young & Friends (CMT)
CMT's A Tennessee Kind Of Christmas (CMT)
Dr. Pimple Popper: A Pimple Carol (TLC)
FC Bayern – Behind the Legend (Amazon)
Nickelodeon's Treasure Truck (Nickelodeon)
Welcome To Earth Series Premiere (Disney+)
Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.
SEE YOU THURSDAY!
If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.