Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Thursday, January 27th, 2022
You can't spell "dumpster fire" without Peacock
Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Thursday, January 27th, 2022.
IN THE STREAMING WORLD, YOU'RE EITHER THE WINDSHIELD OR THE BUG
The streaming video business is still young enough that it's difficult to say with authority what will drive revenue and subscribers in the medium and long term. But one lesson we can already see coming into place is that if you are really serious about building a first-tier subscription-based streaming platform, you have to go all-in as much as possible. Unless you are Apple or Amazon - companies whose video services exist primarily to prevent churn on their core business - there aren't any shortcuts along the way. If you want to build a subscriber base of tens or hundreds of millions of paying customers, then you need a lot of content and a user interface that highlights that content and makes discovery as easy as possible. And you have to devote the resources to the service that it needs to both clawback or license content as well as create new content that is hopefully buzzy enough to build the subscriber base.
Obviously, the business is much more complicated than I just laid out. But those are the building blocks of any big, mass-market streaming service in 2022. If you try and take shortcuts, if you try and protect your legacy business while building a streaming service on the side, you end up with a product that pleases no one.
This brings me to Peacock, Comcast's hapless streaming service that continues to trail competitors in both growth and revenue. During a fourth-quarter earnings call Thursday, Comcast executives provided some details about Peacock's metrics 18 months after the service launched. The streaming service has about 16 million paid subscribers, although that number is a bit mushy. About nine million subscribers pay directly for Peacock, while another seven million or so get it free through Comcast or another carrier. If you add the people who subscribe to Peacock's free ad-supported service, 24.5 million households get some version of Peacock each month.
While it's great that they've added subscribers at a steady clip, few people inside or outside the company consider Peacock to be a serious competitor right now. Comcast has invested money in sports programming and a deal to take over streaming for the WWE has driven new subscribers. But there isn't a lot on Peacock that screams "subscribe to watch me," which is an odd issue for a company that owns so much notable IP and has a massive catalog of older movies and television shows.
The big problem seems to be the reluctance of Comcast to take the short-term hits to the bottom-line that building a first-rate streaming service requires. Say what you will about Jason Kilar and the folks at Warner Media. But they went all-in on HBO Max, removing HBO from Amazon Channels and moving their 2022 theatrical releases to same-day releases on HBO Max. It cost Warner Media maybe a couple of billion dollars to do it, but the result was it built an identity for HBO Max and it ensured that if anyone had a direct relationship with its customers, it was going to be WarnerMedia.
Contrast that with Comcast, which made a few big plays (picking up the exclusive U.S. rights to The Office), but generally taking the approach that it wouldn't make any move that would have a notable impact on the company's revenue stream. It continued to license out massive amounts of Universal content to competitors, it made the safest possible choices when it came to original content. And based on reporting I've been doing and comments made in today's earnings call, it seems likely Comcast will decide not to claw back rights to its programs from Hulu when it has the opportunity next year. Executives have made several recent public statements recently in which they talk about how happy they are with the company's relationship with Hulu. They also are near giddy about the amount of money the company brings in from the deal, which gives Hulu stacking rights to a number of hit Comcast TV shows.
These are not the moves of a company that is out to carve out a viable niche in the streaming video sector. I was a tech reporter back in the late 1990s and I saw this attitude frequently from legacy tech companies that found themselves competing in unfamiliar markets. They almost always resisted innovation and were convinced that they could ship a product that was "good enough" until it provided enough revenue to replace what they would lose from their legacy business. I'm not arguing that never works, but there's a reason why no one uses Altavista in 2022 or seriously considers an IBM laptop.
One of the takeaways from today's earnings call was that Comcast plans to double its spending on content in 2022, to $3 billion. That's a move I suggested would happen in my list of 2022 media predictions earlier this month.
However, there are a couple of problems with this plan. That $3 billion includes original content as well as library content. It also includes the amount of money Comcast will pay to put new Universal films on Peacock before they hit other services. Especially when you compare that spending to its rivals, it's an extremely modest spend and while it will have an impact, I suspect it won't increase the rate of subscriber growth.
Aside from the amount of money Comcast is spending, a number of people I have spoken with inside Peacock have a real lack of faith in the streamer's original content efforts. Many of the original programs so far have leaned into rebooting familiar TV programs. And while some shows have worked, it's fair to say that nothing has been enough of a success to visibly move the subscriber efforts. Then there are the big misses, such as the recently canceled Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. Originally developed for NBC, the show premiered last September to middling reviews and almost no notice from subscribers. It takes effort to screw up a top-line franchise, but the show was plagued by differing views from executives and a lackluster final product.
It's not as if Peacock is going away anytime soon. But like its competitor for the streaming basement service Paramount+, Peacock is a service that has more issues than answers. I don't think things will change without some executive changes and a bigger commitment from its Comcast overlords.
THE DEFINITION OF JIMMY FALLON
I was a stand-up comedian for all of my 20s and into my early 30s. One consequence of that is I am a very tough audience when it comes to comedy and who I may or may not find funny.
There aren't a lot of people writing about stand-up comedy in a serious way, especially doing it with a critical eye. One of my favorite newsletters is "Humanism" from Seth Simons. He knows the industry and while he is a fan of comedy, he has no problem taking on the industry's big hitters.
The recent bizarre Tonight Show segment where Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton hawked NFTs has received lots of snarky comments. But this take on the segment and Jimmy Fallon's career is both brutal and very much on-point:
Here is what we all need to understand about Fallon: he exists to make people money. Piles and piles of the stuff. That’s what he does. That’s what he’s for. That’s why his writers get paid very well to write sketches they’re embarrassed to talk to their friends about. That’s why celebrities go on his show. That’s why Vulture and the New York Times aggregate his clips even though everyone who works there knows he sucks. That’s why we all constantly have to hear and talk and think about him, a comedian who hasn’t produced any noteworthy comedy in years. He doesn’t exist for you, he doesn’t exist for me. He’s an ATM machine for C-suite execs and robber barons, the people destroying the world around us. Press a few buttons, beep boop beep boop, get a nice wad of cash. How nice for them.
Do you think they let their ATM do anything they don't know about? Of course not. NBC knew Fallon was gonna whip out his Ape. This wasn’t improv. The guest was booked, the talking points prepared, the pictures printed and placed behind his desk. This was a planned promotion, full stop. That means NBC stands to profit from it as much as Fallon, if not more. If you think massive media conglomerates aren't trying to milk the NFT bubble too, well, I've got an NFT to sell you.
I wish writing like this received a higher profile. So much of what passes for "reporting" and commentary in the major trades is basically dressed up fan service or flaccid efforts to game a bit of SEO-related traffic. Big sites don't want to rock the PR boat or burn relationship with major stars and their management.
As an example, there is clearly a lot more to Adele's recent decision to suddenly cancel her Las Vegas residency. There is plenty of talk inside the industry that only one person associated with the show tested positive for COVID. And that Adele seemed remarkably unconcerned with the details of the stint. One frequently repeated story is that the singer hadn't even been to the set to check out what it looked like, which is a strange move considering that she was days away from performing. I've heard some theories about what was going on behind-the-scenes. But that fact that no one seems to have bothered to report this story out doesn't reflect well on the serious entertainment press.
WHAT'S NEW FOR THURSDAY
Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:
Bubble Bop (Peacock)
Bunker (HBO Max)
Chosen (Netflix)
Fast Foodies Season Two Premiere (Tru TV)
Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery (Netflix)
Gomorrah Season Premiere (HBO Max)
Grown-ish (Freeform)
I Am Georgiana (Netflix)
Legacies Midseason Premiere (The CW)
Swamp People Season Premiere (History)
Take Out (HBO Max)
The Cut (O Grande Look) Series Premiere (HBO Max)
The Fallout (HBO Max)
Walker Midseason Premiere (The CW)
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.