Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Friday, October 1st, 2021
"TGIF" doesn't sound so reassuring when it's 1 a.m. on Friday.
Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Friday, October 1st, 2021. I'm writing this from the Twin Cities, where AllYourScreens HQ finds sheep kicking me in the head, asking me to count them and go to sleep.
PROGRAMMING NOTES
* Thanks to a steady stream of new subscribers this week, I've just crossed the 18,000 subscriber mark. It also looks like I'll set a number traffic high on AllYourScreens for September and those aren't Oxy Media numbers. I really appreciate the support and the feedback.
* I spoke earlier this week with Crackle programming head Jeff Maier and we discussed Crackle's overall programming approach. But we also spoke of a lot about Crackle's extensive collection of obscure TV shows and how he curates the choices. The entire interview will post on AllYourScreens Friday evening and I'll include a link to it (along with the other stories from the weekend) in Monday morning's newsletter.
* I also have an interview posting on Saturday with Graham McKenna and Lyndon Campbell of Marketcast. That company is rolling out a new way for advertisers and sports franchises to quantify the business impact of sports sponsorships. It sounds a bit wonky at first glance, but it turned out to be a super informative discussion and it provides a pretty good answer to the question "Does paying to put your logo on a team jersey really have any impact?"
* And as I mentioned earlier in the week, there is medical stuff going on with a family member on Monday. My plan right now is to still do newsletters early Monday and Tuesday. But that might change at the last minute.
HOW MUCH DOES IT MATTER HOW MANY SUBSCRIBERS ARE WATCHING A SPECIFIC STREAMING PROGRAM?
After 70 years of broadcast television history, we are conditioned to expect to see specific ratings numbers for the various TV shows. It's a metric that is easy to understand and a quick way to assign relative success or failure. But the streaming world has never been big on transparency and even with the growth of some outside data mining of viewer's numbers, it's never clear how many viewers are watching a show and when.
An entire cottage industry has sprung up to try and parse viewer numbers from the outside by combining multiple tracking services along with some generally vague self-reported numbers from the streamers. And as much as I would like to have broadcast-level "ratings" numbers, there are so many other pieces of data that matter more.
Take Netflix, for instance. The argument that they should release more specific viewing numbers would make more sense if viewing numbers had a direct correlation to a show's worth to Netflix. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. Yes, Netflix wants people to watch and viewer numbers are one indication of a show's popularity. But I've had several background discussions with Netflix executives in recent months about this very point and they argue that other metrics have a stronger impact on determining a piece of content's value to Netflix.
At the end of the day, success for Netflix is a balancing act between growing (and retaining) subscriber numbers and content costs. Netflix doesn't sell ads, so that subscriber number is the most important metric in the company. And with more than 15 years worth of internal data to parse, Netflix has become very good at weighing the factors that give any specific piece of content value. Yes, they want subscribers to watch, but the act of watching a show doesn't have any inherent value to Netflix. What matters are the harder-to-define metrics. Does having the show on Netflix make the service more attractive to viewers? Does it provide buzz, whether or not people end up watching? Does the show help retain subscribers and does the behavior of viewers of that specific show lead to an increase in subscriber satisfaction? How many subscribers actually watch a complete series after sampling the first episode? Are there some viewing choices that people who drop their subscription have in common?
These additional factors have some impact on the survival of a linear TV show. But ultimately that success is primarily about ratings. And those viewing numbers are probably #5 or #6 on a list of factors that Netflix uses to determine a show's worth.
And while Netflix (and its other streaming competitors) aren't likely to provide answers to any of those questions, focusing on trying to determine what titles get the most raw viewers is a distraction from the numbers that matter. For instance, one of the things that I learned talking to Netflix executives is that the company has realized that the fans of certain shows will try and game the Top Ten lists by encouraging their fellow fans to leave the show streaming non-stop when they're not watching other programming. While I can't reveal any specifics (or the show that came up in this discussion), Netflix engineers can strip out the numbers from accounts that seem to be streaming a show an unnatural number of times in order to provide a more accurate number that can be used for internal planning.
If you are interested in specific viewing numbers, that's fine and on one level I don't blame you. But from my perspective, focusing too intently on the most-watched content can allow you to miss some of the big picture. For instance, I have been arguing since the beginning of this newsletter that Netflix's push into global programming was a big deal - perhaps the most important thing the streaming company will do over the next few years. And I inevitably would get pushback from skeptics noting "Well, maybe. But very few people in the U.S. are watching those international shows." Until they were. And if you focused too much on the moment and the immediate ratings, you missed the trend.
A CONVERSATION WITH CURIA
I am spending a fair amount of time recently speaking with executives at some of the new streamers coming into the market. (Check out these interviews with executives from Topic and Struum). I recently spoke with Curia Chief Content Office Garrett Weaver and Jarod Neece, Film Acquisitions & Marketing at Curia, about the service, their programming philosophy and what distinguishes Curia from the other smaller streaming services already in the marketplace:
So how much of this is driven by what you would like to curate and how much of is driven by "well, this is what we can get." Not just specific films, but does the availability impact the categories and types of things you're aggregating?
Garrett Weaver: There is a lot of content out there. There are a lot of films out there that are available that are just either on other platforms or that are new to any platforms. It's really an embarrassment of riches that we have at our disposal - all based on the partners that we have. Sure, there will be a case where you think "Oh, I wish we that one in this collection or that one." But I don't think that lacking one or two movies that would be amazing to add to a collection matters all that much.
We're just putting everything in boxes for people so that it is just a little bit more accessible. You know, anyone can go through Netflix or Amazon and find the good films. But we've been to all of the festivals and seen the films and know how they performed. And we know, "oh, this a great film that just slipped through the cracks." So that's where we come in. Finding all of those gems. putting them into collections. And with a point of view that isn't something assembled by an algorithm. We're just film lovers and we are just doing what we have been doing all of our lives. Garrett and I have been recommending films to friends and family all of our lives. And now we just have a little bigger platform.
We love these films and we just love having people find films. Find things that they've never seen. We have a collection coming up next month called "Beginner's Luck," and it's the first film from great directors. But these were before they were great. So you get to see Paul Thomas Anderson before Boogie Nights. Hard Eight is an amazing movie, but not many people have seen it. It's cool to be able to put these films in front of people in a way that they can understand. To give them some context. Where someone can say "Oh, I know about Paul Thomas Anderson, I wonder what this film looks like?" And after people experience that a few times, they begin to trust your suggestions and the collections.
You can check out the entire interview here after noon CT on Friday.
SPEAKING OF NEW STREAMING SERVICES
Kino Lorber has launched a new free, ad-supported streaming service call "Kino Cult." It offers "hundreds of hours of curated genre favorites," including cult and horror films. In a statement announcing the launch, Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber said:
Kino Cult will stream the darkest thrills of visionary midnight cinema to fans at home. With our vast library built over 40 years and key partner labels in many genre specialties, we have enormous potential to hyper serve genre audiences, the most passionate of all film lovers, with a selection of both new and rare films that they can't find anywhere else, in incandescent HD. You no longer need to live in a big city with a great repertory theater to have access to the kind of curated cult gems we're able to offer now for free!
And here is a rundown of some of the titles, courtesy of Kino Cult:
Among the recent cult treasures, Kino Cult is excited to offer theatrical hits like director Ana Lily Amirpour's visionary black-and-white vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night; Academy Award®-nominated Dogtooth, a bizarre and absurdist comedy directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite); Lynchian occult nightmare Welcome To The Circle; South Korean neo-noir crime thriller Beasts Clawing at Straws; Guy Maddin's phantasmagoric ode to lost cinema The Forbidden Room; the heartfelt and oddball comedy Chained for Life starring Jess Weixler (Teeth) and Adam Pearson (Under the Skin); and weird and stunning Western Let The Corpses Tan, all available to stream free without a subscription for the first time.Those looking to add some European flavor to their horror this Halloween season can dive into the films of macabre master Mario Bava, like A Bay of Blood, Black Sabbath and Black Sunday; the vampire films of Jean Rollin; as well as the strange obsessions of filmmaker Jess Franco in films like Daughter of Dracula, The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (previously unavailable!), Female Vampire, and more. Examples of curated categories include Golden Age of Exploitation, '60s espionage films in Crime & Suspense, '70s and '80s Flashback, witchcraft and devil worship in Occult. Nearly all of these titles are streaming for the first time free without a subscription, with some making their streaming debuts on Kino Cult.
Kino Cult is is available across web, mobile devices, and connected TVs, with VOD apps on all major devices such as Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Google TV, iOS, Android, and more.
AN UPDATE ON HULU'S HOTSTAR CONTENT HUB
I mentioned in yesterday's newsletter that at some point Hulu Live TV added a "Hotstar" section to its "Hub" vertical. It looks to be primarily Hotstar Originals from the streaming service of the same name. Hotstar is an Indian subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Disney that reported having nearly 44 million subscribers in July.
While I wasn't able to get a response from Hulu about the content, a helpful publicist at Hotstar told me that the section was "a test" of the content's popularity with U.S. audiences.
ODDS AND SODS
* I wrote a review of the Demo Lovato UFO series.
* I can almost guarantee that this is the craziest Hollywood story you'll read this year.
* Netflix orders second season of Ridley Jones and Ada Twist, Scientist as well as four new preschool shows.
SEE YOU MONDAY
If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.