Cordkillers 292 - Don't Be Ridisculous (w/ Fraser Cain)
Are discs dead? How to pick a streaming service and ET's back!(?)(.) All this and more on Cordkillers! With special guest Fraser Cain. See Fraser's streaming services doc here.
This week on It's Spoilerin' Time: The Mandalorian (104), Watchmen (107), Jojo Rabbit, Knives Out, Mr. Robot (409), The Larry Sanders Show (113-201)
Next week: The Mandalorian (105), Watchmen (108), Rick & Morty (404), Mr. Robot (410), The Larry Sanders Show (202-203)
CordKillers: 292 - Don't Be Ridisculous
Recorded: December 2 2019
Guest: Fraser Cain.
Intro Video
Hulu's Reprisal
Primary Target
How are discs doing?
Made for TV market
- Variety has a story on the home entertainment business, AKA, selling you a disc.
- U.S. spending on 4K UHD discs rose 11% during the first nine months
- Overall disc sales fell 18.5% (digital sales grew 6.7% in first three quarter)
- Netflix has just 2.28 million subscribers to its disc service, compared to 60.62 million streaming
Some of the reasons people still buy discs
- No buffering, streaming issues
- Higher resolution (example: “ultimate makeover” of “Wizard of Oz” on Ultra HD Blu-ray with 4K resolution)
- expanded extras
- Collector culture
Indie and Made for TV movie business also affected
- Lifetime and Hallmark are the only big buyers
- Streaming offering bigger budgets but producers give up ownership and control
- Netflix doesn't worry about advertiser blowback.
Picking up the slack
- Pluto, Xumo, Tubi, Pongalo - free with ads, pay for ad-free
- Trying not to bombard with ads and repeat ads. Revenue does not scale with views in flat subscription, does, with ads.
How to Watch
Fraser's detailed methodology on the best streaming choices for him
Martin Scorsese Does Not Recommend Watching ‘The Irishman’ on a Phone: ‘A Big iPad, Maybe’
- Martin Scorsese told Popcorn With Peter Travers: “I would suggest — if you ever want to see one of my pictures, or most films — please, please don’t look at it on a phone, please. An iPad, a big iPad, maybe.”
"I think I made it to cover all the bases in terms of how you could watch this picture. Ideally, I’d like you to go to a theater, look at it on a big screen from beginning to end. And I know, it’s long — you gotta get up, you gotta go to the bathroom, that sort of thing, I get it — but also at home, I think if you can make a night of it, or an afternoon thereof, and know that you’re not gonna answer the phone or you’re not gonna get up too much, it might work.”
What to Watch
‘E.T.’ Phones Home Again In Reunion Short Film Premiering On NBC And Syfy
-Comcast released a 4 minute short film showing ET returning to Earth and visiting Elliot's family, with Henry Thomas playing an adult Elliott. SyFy played it along side showing the movie ET, NBC showed a two-minute edit during football on Thursday and a 30-second cutdown will air as a commercial for Comcast's Xfinity products. You can see it on the Xfinity youtube channel as well.
Doctor Who will return on January 1 at 8 PM with the first of a two-part special called Spyfall. A trailer for the special is out and Fathom Events will simulcast the second episode in US theaters on January 5.
HBO Max to Show British True-Crime Drama Series ‘White House Farm’
- UK crime drama White House Farm will show on HBO Max. The show tells the story of the real-life murder of three generations of one family at an isolated English farmhouse in 1985.Canal Plus will air the series in France, DirecTV in Latin America and Sky in New Zealand.
Eyes On
Brian: Knives Out, Clue, Parks and Rec (mid season 2 now), Larry Sanders x2, Mr Robot, Watchmen
Tom: Signal
Fraser: Letterkenny
On the Lookout: Vagabond on Netflix
Front Lines
‘CBS Evening News’ Makes Move to Washington
- CBS Evening News has begun broadcasting from Washington DC, instead of New York. Norah O'Donnell took over as anchor in June. She was previously White House correspondent and covered the US Congress. CBS Evening news is available on CBS affiliates, as a podcast and on CBSN.
Former head of international for Netflix, Erik Barmack has set up a content business called Wild Sheep content. The outfit is developing an adaptation of Australian teen novel On the Jellicoe Road, first published in 2006.
‘Chernobyl’ Wins At Rose D’Or Awards; Flight MH370 Mini-Series Set; Alfred Haber Shops SAG Awards; Tallinn Winners – Global Briefs
-At the Rose D'or awards in London, Chernobyl won the Golden Rose award as well as best drama, beating out Killing Eve, Succession and others. The award for Social Media Video Series went to Dutch series Swipe, a seven-part drama about the influence of smartphones, told from the perspectives of the phones.
Disney Plus has fixed and restored the Continue Watching feature. It appears as a new row on the main screen and on show and movie pages a "resume" button will now let you restart a show from where you last left off.
Now even the FBI is warning about your smart TV’s security
- The FBI Portland field office has posted a warning about the risks of buying a smart TV. The posting warns about surveillance by TV software makers through tracking your viewing habits, but also about attackers gaining access to home networks through unpatched smart TV operating systems. The FBI recommends placing black tape over an unused smart TV camera, keeping your smart TV up-to-date with the latest patches and fixes, and to read the privacy policy to better understand what your smart TV is capable of.
Netflix Is Available In More Than 300M Global Pay-TV Households, Report Estimates
- UK research firm Ampere Analysis estimates Netflix is available in about 300 million pay TV households worldwide. Netflix has about 158 million subscribers globally as of the end of September, meaning there is still room to grow worldwide.
Dispatches from the Front
To Cordkillers (Brian, Tom, & Bryce)
Good on Doghouse Systems being so generous with their support of the Brushwood Studio!
I have no problem with publicizing their support and throwing them a bone with Coupons from modern Rogue!
You guys are always promoting your other projects, so hyping an Angel Investor like Doghouse is only fair!
Love all the BB Shows!
- Michael
Hi Tom, Brian and Bryce,
I was interested in your discussion about the iTunes moment, but I'm wondering about coming at it from a different angle. You all were talking about changes happening in the way people consume and view media, but I'm also thinking about how and when this change finally disrupts the long-time kings in this kingdom, the TV Networks.
You all were talking about a glut in great shows, and it's true that many of the most notable shows everyone is watching lately are not on regular TV. But I'm enjoying several right now. Here's my list in order of my preference: Emergence, Batwoman, Prodigal Son, Stumptown, Young Sheldon and Bluff City Law. But there's only one show on that list that I watch live, for various scheduling reasons. I'm wondering when will the time slot war end? When will it no longer matter to networks whether viewers watch live or on demand? I'm sick of the networks challenging each other by putting all the good shows on at the same time and then canceling 2/3s of them because they didn't get enough viewers? I'm annoyed when a network finds it necessary to move shows around and then they wonder why they lost viewers. I'd love it if shows just dropped one episode a week, all at the same time, and we could watch when we want to. Then they'd know which show was the most popular, not which one survived the time slot war.
I'm interested to know what you think.
Your boss,
- Beelissa
Hey Brian, Tom, Bryce and guest,
Brian mentioned that an object lesson was that once popular content is eventually to be valuable again... but the lesson should be that copyright is so exorbitantly lengthy that it should be reformed and allow Steam Boat Willie and maybe everything else that's more than 30 years old be allowed to enter public domain. The point of copyright is to incentivize content creation so that creator can make money to create more content, but if you can't make money in the first 30 years then it wasn't meant to be. Expectations that content remains exclusive perpetually, and several fold over the original 14 years set at the founding of America, as every couple of decades the copyright keeps getting pushed back.
Really enjoy the show,
Your boss
- Sean
Links