MLB TV requires your credit card city to match your IP address city, thus ruling out VPN. It’s ridiculous.
I watch esports, so all my sports are streamed on twitch / youtube anyway.
Tadpoles. Tadpoles is a winner.
I should probably cancel cable. I only watch Comedy Central and Cartoon Network. But I watch them A LOT!!
I have Netflix too, but other than Stranger Things (of which I haven’t finished S1 yet), there’s nothing else on it I care about watching or re-watching.
I helped skin Bob.
Somewhat conflicting signals in this area over the last couple of days.
On the one hand, Netflix shares plummeted on weaker than forecast subscriber growth (though revenues were actually in line with the forecasts, which suggests dodgy accounting to me but never mind).
On the other hand, in the UK there are now more streaming service subscribers than pay-TV subscribers (pay-TV revenues are still higher though).
Not surprising since pay TV is ridiculously expensive and streaming is still probably undercharging.
I’ve been watching a lot of BBC shows lately, and a lot of them have 10 episodes.
A lot of them have six. Some have three.
Given Dick Wolf’s logic, these show makers in the UK would be better off moving to Netflix. It’s just arithmetic.
Same. And I have begun to appreciate that more is not better, when it usually means too many ‘filler’ episodes and moments.
Yeah. And Game of Thrones probably geared me up for these short-runs too, so if the argument is there are less episodes and therefore streaming is worse, I am not buying it. I am enjoying these shows more than I thought I would even though some of the culture and the fact they say the word tea 100 times doesn’t always work for me.
The other thing I’ve noticed is the British actors, or at least I assume they are British since they’re in these shows, seem to show up in more shows. I recognize them from other shows. Maybe it’s just time for the USA to be more like that, shorter seasons, more variety, more shows.
I don’t like how often characters just kind of vanish from some of these shows, sometimes with no explanation like at all, so I am hoping we keep our long-term kind of casting in comparison. I can stay hopeful there.
I think his entire argument is that more episodes means more royalties.
Yeah but you can have more shows which leads to more episodes which leads to more royalties and maybe even better content.
Yeah, his argument seems to be predicated on what’s best for show creators, which is, I’m sure, fascinating to guys like him.
Me, I’m much more interested in shows with 3, 6, 8 episodes…10 tops. I just can’t get down with 20+ episode seasons anymore. Too decompressed, way too much filler, and it leads to shows going down story paths not because they’re vital to the characters but because they need to fill minutes.
It doesn’t really work that way in the UK. Well, I’d say it does lead to better content, writing wise, but individual creators aren’t doing more episodes - probably a lot less. It’s still basically one season a year, or even less, and a showrunner/writer is generally only on one show at a time, maybe two. Dr Who, which may be the closest non-soap show we have to long-running US procedurals, has a new season every year and a half or so.
Well I am not paying as much attention to the behind the scenes individuals as I am the ones on screen. I can see them in more than one show in comparison to people who are on, say the Big Bang Theory where you don’t really see them in anything else for… years.
Do we need more content? I don’t. We are in a golden age of TV, and the levee is intact. There are more truly great shows out there than I will ever have time to watch. So, I pick and choose among them, and shows with concentrated awesome are more attractive than 75-episode meanders.
Which is why I stopped watching the Walking Dead shows :)
More content is probably not the right word…
If we are taking a series and/or seasons and dropping it from 110 episodes to 40, then what we wind up with is less content. In order to replace that content, or maintain the same amount we get today, it seems to me, as a layperson, that you would need more shows. Now I realize there’s more expense and work and effort behind doing two shows instead of dragging out the one, but it seems like if you had 110 before, and you still want episodes, then you replace one long frequent show with 2-3 of the shorter seasons.
Again this is just from the perspective of someone who watches shows, both the long running and the short ones coming out of not just the streamers but also other countries. They’re making it sound like streaming is the reason for the short shows and is harmful, but other countries and the premium channels do this too. Heck History Channel dropped some of their larger shows to shorter seasons too and maybe AMC did (not 100% sure with them). And when I first encountered this it did feel… short. But now that I have several more doing the same thing I feel like I am not lacking simply because one had a shorter season than I was used to.