The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
DROWNING IN THE STREAM
With Apple, Disney set to jump into the very competitive space, there’s more to watch than ever before, but it’s getting costly and confusing
In the time it’s taken you to read this sentence, Netflix has released five new series, three original movies, two documentaries and a stand-up comedy special. ¶ Remember when you used to say, “There’s nothing on TV”? While that was almost literally true decades ago, when we had only a handful of over-the-air channels, the coming of cable and satellite services largely eliminated the problem. ¶ But they have nothing on streaming TV entities.
Thanks to services such as Amazon’s Prime Video, Hulu and, especially, Netflix, myriad choices are at our flipping-and-clicking fingertips.
To refer back to the joke I made at the beginning of this piece, it feels like there’s more original content being produced than we — as a collective viewing world — possibly can watch. At the end of 2018, Time declared “There’s officially too much Netflix.” It still feels that way as we begin to stream through the final big chunk of 2019.
I know full well that I’m no expert on the subject of supply and demand, but, you’d think, the aforementioned companies and others including HBO can’t keep producing at this clip. I mean, it must be weird to
walk around greater Los Angeles and NOT see a show being filmed.
And yet the so-called “streaming wars” are really about to heat up, with major new players about to enter the highly competitive space.
At a big event on Sept. 10 at its headquarters in Cupertino, California, tech giant Apple not only unveiled new versions of various products including multiple iPhone models, it also provided the most concrete information yet about its fast-approaching Apple TV+ service. The long-talkedabout platform launches Nov. 1 with nine original programs, including the buzz-worthy “The Morning Show” with Jennifer Anniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. At the event, Apple also showed off a trailer for the intriguing if head-scratching series “See” starring Jason Momoa of “Aquaman” fame.
It also — finally — told us how much Apple TV+ would cost. While recent rumors suggested the somewhathefty tag of $10 per month, Apple announced it would be half that, $4.99, with buyers of certain new Apple products getting a year of Apple TV+. (That’s a nice perk, but that 60 bucks in free TV is not the reason you should buy a gadget that costs many times that.)
That price feels smart on Apple’s part considering the similarly reasonable price announced by another huge new player, Disney, which will launch its sure-to-bea-powerhouse Disney+ on Nov. 12 for $7 per month.
And, yeah, this one looks like a must-subscribe.
For me, it will be all the “Star Wars” content, including the movies and highly anticipated live-action series “The Mandalorian,” set to debut with the service. (There will be more series to come set in a galaxy far, far away, including the recently announced show that will see prequelseries star Ewan McGregor reprise the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi. I’m really looking forward to that.)
For others, the draw of Disney+ will be all the animated movies, many of them boasting the Disney Princesses, and for others it may be the fact the entire library of “The Simpsons” will reside there. Recently released screenshots of the Disney+ user interface drive home just how strong the offering will be.
At the risk of making things more confusing, I think you should be aware you’ll be able to bundle Disney+, the ad-supported version of the now-Disney-controlled Hulu and (exhausted breath) ESPN+ — which must offer something not available on the several ESPN cable channels — for $12.99.
And — somehow — more services are coming.
While many of us already are paying $15 per month for HBO’s HBO Now, as the longtime premium cable company also works to be a major streaming player, parent company AT&T in the spring also will offer the beefed up (and more-expensive) HBO Max, which will include more content that includes every episode of “Friends.”
CBS already has CBS All Access, home to the interesting-but-frustrating “Star Trek: Discovery” and “The Good Wife” spinoff “The Good Fight,” and an offering from NBCUniversal is slated to land in April. (It eventually will be home to reruns of “The Office” after that comedy follows “Friends” out the Netflix door.)
Man, isn’t it?
And many of us can’t afford to subscribe to it all, so choices have to be made.
Maybe you, like I, already have cut the cable cord. I didn’t go cold turkey but instead have switched to cable-substitute service YouTube TV. Like other internet-based cable-like offerings, it doesn’t have every network a big cable package does, but it’s pretty robust. it’s all just a lot, For me, the big omission is the NFL Network, which, more importantly, means I can’t subscribe to offshoot offering NFL RedZone. I’m not sure I can live without its seven or so hours of wallto-wall game coverage on fall Sundays.
You know what else I really miss? Flipping to one of the HBO channels on a whim. Sure, I can channel surf on YouTube TV, but, with all the HBO content now existing for me on a separate platform, I can’t just jump into the middle of a movie or show to see if it’s interesting. It sounds better in theory having everything available to you at the push of a button, but jumping into something on a live channel to see if it hooked me and catching the whole thing later was a bigger part of my routine than I realized.
Another problem: I really miss my physical DVR, which put everything I cared about it one place. Now, I’m watching that show here, another one there — it’s a mess. (I’m not sure I’m joking when I say I’ve lost track of more Netflix shows that I started than ones I’ve actually finished. I think I’m between one and three seasons behind on “Orange Is the New Black.”)
With its Apple TV set-top box — my streaming hardware of choice (sorry, Roku lovers) — the company has tried to unify things in its pre-installed app, but it’s soso at best. For starters, Netflix won’t play ball with Apple, and without that company’s offerings in amongst the others, it’s hard to see the point.
The best part of all this brave, new, stream-heavy world, aside from all the content? That it’s pretty easy to jump in and out of services. With a little bit of calendar work, you can spread your money around, canceling, say, Hulu at the end of a monthlong billing cycle and picking up, perhaps, CBS Interactive for 30 days.
Get in. Binge. Get out. I’m really interested to see what the TV landscape looks like in a few years. How much will regular, old network series even matter? (I watch so few of them now.) Will cable giants have survived the losses of so many others like me?
And will Netflix still be producing what feels like a new series every five seconds?
Speaking of that, I’ve taken up too much of your time already. You’ve now missed the debut of 477 new streaming shows. Sorry about that.