Dandy Cat

Always chasing that cozy feeling of being snuggled under a heap of warm blankets in a cold room. Trying to watch every movie ever. Also trying to find cats to pet. đŸ˜»

    ∞

    TV Academy Slammed by Writers Guild for Moving Variety Writing Award Off Primetime Telecast ↗

    By Scott Feinberg at The Hollywood Reporter:

    The TV Academy is being slammed by the Writers Guild of America for apparently making the decision to remove the presentation of the outstanding writing for a variety series/special award from the Primetime Emmys telecast that will take place on Jan. 15, 2024.

    In a missive sent on Tuesday to members of the WGA East and West, the guild’s top leadership — including WGA East president Lisa Takeuchi Cullen and WGA West president Meredith Stiehm — calls the TV Academy’s move a “regrettable decision” and one “without any justification or defensible reason” which “devalues our profession.”

    Wow, they really learned nothing from when the Oscars broadcast did this same thing in 2022. That wasn’t a good look either, and the Academy reversed course the following year, about as quickly as a slow-moving behemoth can do something.

    To do this so soon after the resolution of the Writer’s Guild strike, too? Talk about tone-deaf and shameless.

    ∞

    ‘Harley Quinn’ Nabs Season 5 Renewal at Max ↗

    By Rick Porter at The Hollywood Reporter:

    [Max] has ordered a fifth season of Harley Quinn, the adult animated series centered on the mayhem-loving character. The renewal comes two months after season four wrapped.

    This is easily the best news of the entire freaking month. Coupled with the imminent release of Kite Man: Hell Yeah! things are starting to look bright in Gotham!

    ∞

    ‘The Rookie: Feds’ Canceled at ABC ↗

    By Lesley Goldberg at The Hollywood Reporter:

    The Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes wiped out the September start and with production expected to resume in the coming weeks, ABC ultimately had no need for a second season of Feds, starring Niecy Nash-Betts.

    Was The Rookie: Feds a particularly great show? Not really. Did I enjoy watching it every week anyway? You bet I did. I’m not surprised it was canceled, but this is still a bummer to see.

    I hope the cast will continue showing up in The Rookie. Those crossover episodes were delightful.

    ∞

    It sure would be a lot easier to keep up with the tv shows I’m watching if every new, good-looking thing coming out wasn’t also a lengthy tv show.

    Does anybody want to pay me a living wage to watch everything I’m currently in the middle of?

    ∞

    For me, the two greatest periods of television are:

    1. Kids’ WB cartoon shows, e.g., Batman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain.
    2. USA’s Blue Sky era, e.g., Psych, Monk, Royal Pains.

    You can have your Netflix shows and modern prestige tv. Nothing compares to those two.

    ∞

    Warner Bros. Discovery Says Ongoing Strikes Will Mean $300M-$500M Hit to 2023 Earnings ↗

    By Georg Szalai at The Hollywood Reporter:

    Warner Bros. Discovery has lowered its 2023 adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) forecast to $10.5 billion-$11.0 billion, a hit of $300 million-$500 million, “predominantly due to the impact of the strikes,” compared with the previously targeted low end of the $11.0 billion-$11.5 billion range.

    Let me get this straight: it’s unreasonable for writers to justifiably demand a relatively modest pay increase, but it’s the height of business savvy for Warner Bros. Discovery to lose $300–500 million in a year?

    What I’m hearing is, “I’m really upset with my face right now, so let me cut off my nose!”

    To be clear, it would cost WBD far less to pay writers a fair wage than they’ll lose this year. According to IndieWire, of the $429 million a year it would cost the AMPTP to meet the demands of the WGA, WBD would be on the hook for about $47 million. On the low end, that’s a $253 million difference in 2023 and $453 million on the high end.

    But yeah, it’s the writers who are the real problem. 🙄

    It must be nice to lose that much money and not have to worry about also losing your job. I don’t know what WBD CEO David “I’m Super Good at Business” Zaslav has done to make his position so secure, but if anyone else in the world lost their company that much money, they’d never work in their industry again. Instead, these overpaid ghouls keep failing upward while the writers are increasingly unsure if they’ll have homes and food to rely on soon.

    Make no mistake—it’s not “Hollywood” that’s the issue here. The blame for these strikes rests 100% on the shoulders of inept executives like Zaslav.

    ∞

    Streaming TV costs now higher than cable, as ‘crash’ finally hits ↗

    From Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac:

    As little as a year ago, a popular set of streaming services added up to a total cost of $73 per month – compared to $83 for an equivalent cable package. But the latest round of streaming price increases has pushed that cost to $87, says a Financial Times analysis, making it more expensive than cable.

    Good job, dummies. You became the very thing you swore to destroy!

    Also, from Karl Bode at Techdirt in a related article:

    If you hadn’t noticed, it’s not just good enough for a publicly traded company to provide an excellent, affordable product that people like. Wall Street demands improved quarterly returns at any cost, which, sooner or later, causes any successful company to begin cannibalizing itself to feed the “growth for growth’s sake” gods. Mergers, price hikes, offshored labor, whatever it takes.

    While high level executives and some shareholders benefit from this enshittification, there’s just an endless list of casualties from this process, whether it’s product value, quality, customer satisfaction, customer support, employee pay, jobs, or even the long-term health of the company itself.

    Capitalism was a mistake.

    ∞

    Max just debuted and, yep, it’s just as I believed it would be.

    With everything that’s been happening at Warner Bros. Discovery, including that horrid CNN town hall event, I’m looking at investing far more time and hard drive space into Plex than ever.

    UPDATE: After several hours of considering this app, I’ve committed to leaving it behind. Gone are the halcyon HBO days; Max is the final nail in that sad coffin.

    Max, in its current form, appears to be just a reskinned HBO Max app—new colors, the same big header images, and a sidebar navigation (but with the addition of an inexplicable top menu too). It seems like they could have kept the old app and just changed the name. Why this needed a completely separate app is beyond me. Let’s just call it corporate stupidity.

    That’s where the similarities stop. The most egregious issue is the return of the custom video player that no one was asking for. Doing this means Max has dropped all support for the standard tvOS interface and features. “Regression” is the only word for this. This means Max doesn’t currently offer:

    • Jog wheel seeking
    • Picture-in-picture
    • HDR and frame rate matching
    • Using Siri to toggle audio and subtitles

    This is breaking long-held and valued conventions, all for the benefit of tracking every single second of watching time and every single choice made within the app. Make no mistake, these changes have been done so that WBD can architect profiles of its users and, likely, sell that information to advertisers. In a less nefarious way, it’ll also likely be used to inform future content spending and acquisitions.

    This is a 1.0 release (even though it didn’t need to be), so I’m interested to see how it’ll evolve; HBO Max wasn’t particularly great when it was first released either. However, if they’re not going to learn from past mistakes, then I don’t have to give them any more attention and money.

    We’re all pawns in the war between streaming giants. The best way to stay clean is to stay out of the skirmish.

    ∞

    Forget superhero movie fatigue. I’m getting tv show fatigue. It feels like every new interesting thing that comes out is a ten hour long season of tv. And who knows how many seasons it’ll be. Who’s got the time to watch all of that?

    ∞

    Hulu and Disney+ Content to Be Combined In One App, Services to Stay Separate ↗

    By Caitlin Huston at The Hollywood Reporter:

    Disney will be combining Hulu content with Disney+ content into one app, CEO Bob Iger announced Wednesday.

    The company will begin to roll out the new app by the end of the calendar year.

    This news has been written on the wall since Disney+ debuted in 2019. Disney owns two-thirds of Hulu, so why wouldn’t they consolidate into a single app? Less overhead, no split focus, and potential subscriber boosting for their namesake app sound like good reasons to do something.

    Whether this means I’ll be able to drop my Hulu subscription in the future remains to be seen. There’s also still the question of Hulu’s live tv offering up in the air. I wouldn’t expect to see that on Disney+. What I would expect is for Hulu to disappear entirely sometime in the future.

    In related news from Jill Goldsmith at Deadline: Disney Pulling Some Content Off Streaming In Strategic Rethink.

    Disney will be yanking content from streaming as it rethinks its costs and strategy [
]

    Seems they’re following in the footsteps of Warner Bros. Discovery’s decision to remove loads of content from HBO Max in the name of cost-cutting. At one point, I believed that the originals produced by the various streaming companies were destined to live on their respective services forever. Why would they remove their own content? Surely, it couldn’t cost them much to keep it up; licensing fees would be nonexistent. I thought it would be nothing but upside.

    That evergreen world doesn’t exist anymore. These billion-dollar media giants are just so strapped for cash that the mere suggestion of continuing to pay for their less-than-successful content is laughable. No better than a slap in the face! A company like Disney has to regularly cull this content from their service or they could face extinction in
 [checks notes] Oh, that’s right, Disney will never die. They’ll never face any meaningful hardship whatsoever no matter what their subscriber numbers are or how many infantile governors cross their paths. They could lose every one of their streaming subscribers tomorrow and still have billions in the bank.

    I wouldn’t explicitly condone finding copies of those excised movies and tv shows that have conveniently “fallen off the back of a truck,” but I wouldn’t discourage it either. These days, obtaining those copies and storing them on drives you own may be the only way to ensure you always have access to the stuff you want to watch.

    Nothing wrong with wresting some control back from the mercurial whims of wickedly wealthy companies who always complain about not having enough money.

    ∞

    Hollywood writers to strike as streaming shift upends TV business ↗

    By Lisa Richwine and Dawn Chmielewski at Reuters:

    Thousands of film and television writers will go on strike starting Tuesday, throwing Hollywood into turmoil as the entertainment business grapples with seismic changes triggered by the global streaming TV boom.

    The Writers Guild of America (WGA) called its first work stoppage in 15 years after failing to reach an agreement for higher pay from studios such as Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) and Netflix Inc (NFLX.O). The last strike lasted 100 days and cost the California economy more than $2 billion.

    “The companies' behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” the WGA said in a statement on its website.

    It always saddens me to see just how unwilling those with money and power are to ever give an inch if it involves the betterment of those who they view to be below them. What would the entertainment industry be without the talented writers who craft its stories?

    I wish all of the writers the very best of luck and a speedy and favorable resolution to this strike.

    ∞

    HBO Max Renamed as Max ↗

    From J. Clara Chan:

    Warner Bros. Discovery on Wednesday unveiled Max, its refreshed streaming service combining programming from both the original HBO Max streaming service and Discovery+.

    Good job, Zaslav, et al. You took the prestige of and brand affection for HBO and turned it into a muck of “Max.” A small part of me hoped that the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO would course-correct away from this graceless endeavor. At the very least, they could have come up with a better name. Even better, they could have kept the HBO Max and Discovery+ apps separate instead of the weird tack of creating this new combination service and keeping Discovery+ around and unchanged.

    But grace doesn’t appear to be in their wheelhouse. Like Zapp Brannigan piloting an orbiting restaurant, Zaslav is full steam ahead on seeing what the heck is going to stick to the wall this time.

    By removing HBO from Max’s branding, WBD is also hoping to appeal to a wider audience that may have previously turned away from the streaming service due to HBO’s high-brow reputation and higher price point. [WBD’s president, JB] Perrette said removing HBO from the branding was a part of “preserving and protecting the most iconic trailblazing brand in entertainment.”

    And yet, they’re still using the style of the old HBO logo in the new Max logo!1 That filled-in “a” in “Max” bears a striking resemblance to the familiar filled-in “o” in “HBO.” Despite what WBD may say, HBO is still a brand with a large and important audience. This amalgamation doesn’t seem like protection. It feels like a lack of confidence in their new product.

    And anyway, I thought the point of Discovery+ sticking around was to appeal to that “wider audience.” What, then, is the point of continuing to offer two separate apps—Discovery+ and (now) Max? I understand why they’re keeping the former around. The HBO catalog probably won’t appeal to those who want an endless supply of reality shows. But surely the inverse is true, as well.

    We’ll have one focused streaming service that meets the desires of those who use it and one unfocused mess crammed full of stuff that’s likely to confuse and/or frustrate many. As I wrote last August, it’s going to be unpleasant scrolling past, for instance, a giant banner image of 90 Day FiancĂ© to get to Succession. That kind of silly experience is nowhere to be found on successful rival services like Disney+.

    Way to dilute a strong brand in the name of sticking it to AT&T, guys. I’m sure this new service and pricing 4K resolution content into a more expensive tier won’t lose you loads of previously invested fans.

    1. Something I just learned while trying to find an image of the new Max logo. Searching for “max logo” or “new max logo” returns predictably unhelpful results. Max is such a common word. Good luck to anyone trying to find more information about Max in the future through an internet search. You’re going to get a lot of nonsense. ↩︎

    ∞

    We’ve got standing desks. Ergonomic desks. Treadmill desks.

    How come nobody is popularizing the George Costanza desk?

    ∞

    ‘Monk’ Reunion Movie Set at Peacock ↗

    Second only to better-be-soon news about the better-be-happening fourth Psych movie, a Monk movie is the best thing I’ve heard about all day.

    Tony Shalhoub will once again star as Adrian Monk, the consulting detective who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and a wide range of phobias. Other returning cast members are Ted Levine as Leland Stottlemeyer, Traylor Howard as Natalie Teeger, Jason Gray-Stanford as Randy Disher, Melora Hardin as Trudy Monk, and Hector Elizondo as Dr. Neven Bell.

    I can’t wait!

    ∞

    My Favorite TV Shows That I Watched for the First Time in 2022 (and the Ones I Disliked)

    I spent most of 2022 thinking I hadn’t watched much television, and I felt down about that. There was so much good stuff happening on tv, and I was missing out on it! I spent too much time watching admittedly great movies that I let tv fall by the wayside. How could it ever forgive me?

    Turns out my concern was overblown—I watched more tv last year than I have since I started tracking what I watch. In 2022, I watched 1,453 episodes of tv shows. It was a good thing I was sitting down when I figured out that staggering number.

    I’ve listed my favorite shows below, and also included a few that I regret giving any time. Last year, I started using the pretty excellent Trakt service to track what I’m watching. Check out my profile there.

    My favorite shows

    My disliked shows

    ∞

    In addition to my previous post, the brilliant theme song for Succession may be one of the most invigorating and eminently listenable pieces of music I’ve ever heard.

    Composer Nicholas Britell should be better known than they already are.

    ∞

    Every time I see it I’m reminded that the opening credits for Star Trek: Lower Decks may be the best opening credits for not just a Star Trek show, but any show I’ve ever seen.

    It’s a perfect fit and clever as hell.

    ∞

    Like the offspring of lustful bunnies, my Netflix watch list has quickly filled up with a startling number of admittedly cheesy, but fun as hell Korean romantic comedy dramas.

    Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha and Business Proposal have been particular standouts.

    ∞

    ‘Harley Quinn’ Renewed for Season 4 at HBO Max ↗

    If you heard an enormous sigh of relief coming from somewhere in the general vicinity of Southern California today, that would be me when I saw the headline of this article.

    I wrote in a footnote in this post that I was concerned that HBO Max, which is currently suffering from some kind of burn-it-all-to-the-ground madness, would kill the hilarious and subversive animated show Harley Quinn. For my money, it’s one of the best Batman-related things ever made. The shake-up happening in the DC area of HBO has been concerning from the start. The thinking there seems to be “screw righting the ship; just sink the damn thing and build a new one!” Had Harley Quinn been canceled it would have been a huge stain on the burgeoning reputation of Warner Bros. Discovery.

    And this is all in the name of juicing up their stock prices. Since the chaos started, new CEO David Zaslav has been puffing out his chest and shouting, “Look how good at business I am!” This behavior has been appalling to see play out in real-time.

    Well, fear no more for Harley Quinn (at least until it comes time to decide on renewing for a fifth season):

    Harlivy shippers rejoice — everybody’s favorite supervillain couple is coming back to fight another day. “Harley Quinn” has been renewed for Season 4 at HBO Max.

    In addition to the renewal, the streamer also announced that Sarah Peters, who has written for the show since Season 1 and serves as a consulting producer, has been promoted to executive producer and will take over duties as showrunner from creators Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker.

    Good news all around for a show that deserves every accolade it receives. It’ll be a while before anybody knows whether the new ten year plan for DC will pay off, creatively and financially, but at least they’re not ruining every worthwhile property they currently have. Keep your fingers crossed that I haven’t spoken too soon.

    I was surprised in the best way to read that there’s also a spinoff show in the works, and it looks delightful:

    In addition to the main show, the “Harley Quinn” team is currently in development on a spinoff series titled “Noonan’s,” which follows Poison Ivy’s ex Kite Man (Matt Oberg) as he acquires the titular dive bar frequented by various Gotham City villains. Halpern and Schumacker told Variety that the series will also feature the voice of Cathy Ang, who guested in Season 3 of “Harley Quinn,” as Kite Man’s new girlfriend Golden Glider. The series also plans to feature the voice of James Adomian as recurring villain Bane.

    Sold. I’m there on day one.

    ∞

    If I were to ascend to the Iron Throne, my first act as king and great ruler of Westeros would be to file down the sharp points and edges of that damned uncomfortable looking thing.

    Who wants to cut their butt open anytime they take a seat?

    ∞

    Neil Gaiman Says He Sabotaged Jon Peters’ ‘Sandman’ Movie by Leaking ‘Really Stupid’ Script ↗

    I’ve been enjoying The Sandman (save for one specific moment in the show). It’s been a delight to see this grand story finally take shape.

    I’m also delighted to see how forceful and occasionally sneaky Neil Gaiman has been in trying to protect the work for which he’s perhaps best known. I’m sure producers have been sniffing around those graphic novels for a long time. At any moment in the past, we could have had a Sandman movie or show that was despicable.

    Gaiman declined several movie offers for “The Sandman” throughout the last three decades, but the author recently revealed that he went as far as to sabotage an idea from “Wild Wild West” and “A Star Is Born” producer Jon Peters by leaking the script to the press.

    “It was the worst script that I’ve ever read by anybody,” Gaiman said in an interview with Rolling Stone.

    What a delightfully duplicitous thing to do. I would expect no less from him.

    ∞

    It made me sad to see what happened to Gregory the gargoyle in the second episode of The Sandman. A very sweet, loving, and playful as a puppy creature sacrifices its own life, much to the great sorrow of its caretakers, Cain and Abel, to provide Dream with some power to find his stolen tools, i.e., his punch of sand, his helmet, and his ruby.

    I have yet to finish the graphic novels, but as far as I can tell, Gregory doesn’t ever die in the original books. He’s allowed to continue living with Cain and Abel, along with a new gargoyle named Goldie (but actually secretly Irving). Perhaps he might in a later issue, but there’s nothing to suggest this.1

    Seeing this tragic scene play out in the show was distressing. Not enough for me to stop watching it, mind you; give me as much Neil Gaiman as you can, please. But in the short time Gregory is on-screen, he became a quick favorite. He’s just so dang lovable! It’s clear he brought much joy to those around him.

    His sacrifice is graceful and noble, but it didn’t need to happen. That moment would still have worked had Dream taken back any other thing he gave to Cain and Abel, as happens in the book. Instead, the show knowingly hurt both its characters and, I’m betting, large swaths of its audience. It was an effective manipulation. Moments before the terrible death, Gregory was seen joyfully bouncing about and playing with a ball in front of a large, handmade gargoyle house. The show’s creators wanted the audience to see dog-like qualities. What are dogs if not playful, loyal, and easily loved? Who wouldn’t despair seeing something dog-like disappear forever?

    Since watching that episode, this sad moment has stuck with me. The cruelty felt immense and unnecessary, made real only to hurt.

    I’ll admit that this whole thing is silly at its core: Gregory, or any living gargoyle, is not real. I’m being deeply affected by a made-up creature in a made-up television show. Gregory can never die if he never actually existed. But I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I can’t forget or ignore this sort of pain so easily, no matter how fabricated it might be. This sort of cruelty is not something I want to witness because I know how I respond to it.

    I should have checked in on the valuable site Does the Dog Die before watching this show. I was foolish not to; this heartache could have been prevented. I also encourage anybody who may feel like I do about this subject matter to also regularly visit the site. They’re doing good and helpful work.

    In the meantime, I’m going to continue enjoying The Sandman (it has truly been excellent), but I’m sure I’ll be on edge from now on.

    1. If you know more than I do currently, then perhaps he is gone and I’m looking like quite the fool. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough. ↩︎

    ∞

    HBO Max, Discovery+ to Merge Into Single Streaming Platform Starting in Summer 2023 ↗

    Looks like my fears about HBO Max becoming more like Discovery+ were completely warranted. Since the merger was approved earlier this year, it was always going to end up this way. But it’s one thing to talk about it and another thing to see it happening.

    Further evidence from Variety that things are going to get weird: ‘Fixer Upper’ and Other Magnolia Network Shows Coming to HBO Max in September. There’s a fair chance that we’ll soon have to scroll on past enormous banner images of such illustrious shows as 90 Day FiancĂ©, Alaskan Killer Bigfoot, I Love a Mama’s Boy, World’s Most Evil Killers, and My Five Wives to get to The Sopranos and Game of Thrones.

    I enjoy stuff like Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives as much as the next person, but I don’t think it should share space with The Wire. Conversely, I’d bet that people who love what’s currently on offer at Discovery+ don’t want to see the sort of stuff that’s on HBO Max mixed together.

    More concerning is the recent spate of original programming that’s recently been canceled or removed from HBO Max. These include:

    And they’ve also announced that kids’ content will be cut, which is a damn shame. For anyone of a certain age, i.e., my age, the WB cartoon shows from the ‘90s were revolutionary.

    I’m sure I’m missing some, but that’s already a hefty list. With the way things have been going lately, I’m sure it’ll grow longer.1

    A little over a year ago, I said that AT&T (the former owner of Warner Bros.) CEO, John Stankey, was one of the worst things to happen to the studio and HBO. It turns out that I was too early in that assessment: Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is hard at work destroying what made HBO the powerhouse source of original storytelling it used to be. If former HBO CEO Richard Plepler was dead, he’d be rolling in his grave. Right now, he’s probably just shaking his head in frustration.

    I’m hoping that my concerns will end up being unfounded. Perhaps some good can come out of this messiness. Deadline did also report that Zaslav said about HBO and HBO Max:

    We’re going to spend dramatically more this year and next year than we spent last year [and] the year before.

    Who knows what that’ll actually mean in the long term. I hope it won’t include abandoning all scripted television, as Screen Rant reports. However, given the figurative bloodbath that’s been occurring, I’m not going to hold my breath.

    If you’re looking for a new place to enjoy excellent storytelling, I continue to heartily recommend just about everything on Apple TV+. Give Ted Lasso, For All Mankind, Severance, and See a try. They’re clearly building a brand focused on longevity and, most importantly, quality. It reminds me of what the old HBO used to be.

    1. My greatest concern now is that the wonderful Harley Quinn will be among the next to go. ↩︎

    ∞

    ‘For All Mankind’ Renewed for Season 4 at Apple ↗

    “For All Mankind” has been renewed for Season 4 at Apple.

    The announcement was made Friday as part of the show’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con. Production on the new season is scheduled to begin in August.

    Apple has spent a lot of time and money pushing shows like The Morning Show, Severance, and Ted Lasso on their streaming service. For good reason, no doubt—they’re spectacular (especially the last two). However, For All Mankind, for my money, is their sleeper hit.1

    It may not ever develop the same sort of fervent fanbase or be an “of the moment” experience that Ted Lasso has enjoyed. For All Mankind is not a feel-good, inspirational comedy. It’s dramatic sci-fi, which may turn people away. But what it lacks in laughs, it equals in quality and storytelling.

    I’m looking forward to traveling the cosmos with this show for another season.

    1. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention See in the same breath. Stuff like Game of Thrones and The Witcher wish they could be as consistently unique and good. ↩︎

    ∞

    Netflix Admits Some Shows Won’t Make It To Ad Tier, In Talks With Studios Over Licensing Deals ↗

    By Peter White for Deadline:

    Netflix plans to launch its advertising tier in early 2023, but not all of the shows that are currently streaming on the service will make the cut.

    Obviously, they’ll still be offering all of their original content, as confirmed by the article, but this is a peculiar licensing issue. Either these studios don’t want their shows played with ads or there needs to be a new deal struck anytime the status quo changes. I’m betting on the second one. Rarely are things simple when media companies are involved.

    Or there’s some mystery third reason. Your guess is as good as mine there; I’m no industry insider.

    I’m certain this ad-supported tier will actually be a boon for Netflix—their pricing is exceptionally high and this new tier should be far more affordable. It’ll be great for people who can stand ads playing during their shows and movies.

    I’m not one of those people.

    Limiting the number of available shows probably isn’t going to make someone interested in this new tier think twice about signing up. It’s not going to convince me to downgrade, though. Fewer content options and unskippable ads? That sounds like a nightmare. No thank you, sir!

    On top of all this, Netflix has been losing subscribers (albeit at a slower rate than predicted), so I’ll be curious to see how this new shake-up shakes out.

Older Posts →