Cordkillers 469 - We're All Fictional Here (w/ Naaim Siddiqi)

Linear TV is constricting more and more, but what will fill in the gap? Sunday Ticket gets a bunch of new features on YouTube TV. Warrior Nun finds a revival in film. All that and more on Cordkillers! With special guest Naaim Siddiqi ( https://iamkuhan.com ).

This week on It's Spoilerin' Time: Good Omens (204), Justified: City Primeval (106), Miami Vice (419, "Blood & Roses")

Next week: Good Omens (205), Justified: City Primeval (107), Miami Vice (420 "A Bullet for Crockett")

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CordKillers: 469 - We're All Fictional Here
Recorded: August 21 2023
Guest: Naaim Siddiqi

Intro Video
How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Primary Target
Linear TV Viewing Drops Below 50% of U.S. Television Usage for First Time, Streaming Hits Record High: Nielsen
- Nielsen reported that in July the share of TV viewing from broadcast and cable dropped below 50%. They still outnumber streaming though, so you're getting a lot of hair on fire headlines about this, but as a Cordkillers listener, you're probably not surprised because we've been keeping you up to date on this trend. Here's where we stand. Streaming now leads the way definitively with 38.7% of viewing. Cable is second with 29.6% and Broadcast is at 20%. So "traditional" TV still leads when you combine those two at 49.6%. Other is 11.6%. So here's where we keep you ahead of the pack in understanding all this. Nielsen says other is unmeasured VOD-- which is probably mostly video you purchased and watched on your own, not through a streaming service. Audio streaming, which is listening to music or podcasts but on a TV. Blu-ray and DVD, of course and video gaming. Video gaming? Yeah. Video gaming. So mostly consoles since it's on a TV. But worth wondering exactly how that's defined and whether this other category balloons in the future with Netflix and other cloud services. The streaming services dominating viewing aren't significantly changed. YouTube at 9.1%, Netflix at 8.5%, then all below 5% are Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+, 1-2% are Max, Tubi, Peacock, Roku Channel, Paramount+ and PlutoTV in that order. The most streamed titles were Suits on Netflix and Peacock, and Bluey on Disney+. Suits had 18 billion minutes, equaling Stranger Things 18 billion from July last year. 

Streaming Providers Dead Set On Becoming The Shitty Traditional Cable TV Companies They Once Disrupted
The TV streaming apps broke their promises, and now they’re jacking up prices
‘Suits’ Reigns Over Nielsen Streaming Charts For Fourth Consecutive Week; ‘Sweet Magnolias’ Season 3 Boosts Netflix Series To 1B Viewing Minutes
- So. As we mark this latest milestone in the march toward streaming, the focus on how much it costs to stream increases. And the Financial Times spotted a story about how streaming now costs more than cable.
- FT says “A basket of the top US streaming services will cost $87 this autumn, compared with $73 a year ago, as Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros Discovery and others have raised their prices in response to pressure from Wall Street to end the profligacy of the streaming boom. The average cable TV package costs $83 a month.”
- A lot of questions
- Which streaming services make up the "basket?"
- Would most people consider them must-haves to replace cable?
- Does it make a difference that with streaming you can easily cancel services without losing all your TV, while with cable you're stuck with essentially all or nothing?
- Where did they get the $83 cost, because I've generally been that number around $100 a more from other sources.

What to Watch
YouTube's NFL Sunday Ticket includes live chat and highlights in Shorts
- YouTube announced a few more new features to go along with your expensive NFL Sunday Ticket subscription. You'll be able to view a live chat and vote in polls. And real-time highlights will show up on YouTube as Shorts for everyone, but Sunday Ticket subscribers will be able to click on highlight to take them to the live game. And key plays will come to Sunday Ticket. This is a "catch up" service YouTube TV provides for many broadcasts, that gives you selected highlights from a game before launching you into the live broadcast. And finally, most US fans will get the option to pay monthly unless your state prohibits it, which includes Georgia, New York, Minnesota, Nevada, Missouri, Tennessee or New Jersey.

The gang is back together in the first trailer for Netflix’s Scott Pilgrim anime 
- Netflix released a trailer for the Scott Pilgrim animated series, with voices from the actors who played the characters in the live action movie. It comes to Netflix November 17th.

‘Warrior Nun’: Canceled Netflix Series To Return As Trilogy Of Feature Films, EP Says
- Netflix says it will bring back Warrior Nun, not for a third season, but as a trilogy of movies. Netflix announced in December it wouldn't make a third season of the show, but fan interest apparently was enough to get them to agree to make the movies.

Apple TV+ Reveals ‘The Buccaneers’ Premiere Date & First-Look Photos
- Apple TV+ announced its series, the Buccaneers, based on the unfinished Edith Wharton novel will arrive November 8th with three episodes then come out weekly until December 13th. It's set in the 1870s about some young American women coming to England and not respecting traditions. Probably showing ankles and such. You know the type. Vulgar!

FX Sets Fall Premiere Dates Including ‘Fargo’ Season 5 and Delayed ‘A Murder at the End of the World’
- Fargo comes back to FX November 21st. Season 5 will be set in Minnesota and North Dakota in 2019. It will follow Dot played by Juno Temple (Ted Lasso).

The Mandalorian, Loki, and WandaVision are headed to Blu-ray
Tiffany Haddish on her new movie’s bleak vision of our streaming future|
‘The Peripheral’ Canceled; Prime Video Not Proceeding With Season 2 Amid Lengthy Strikes
‘A League of Their Own’ Season 2 Scrapped at Amazon
‘The Flash’ Movie Gets Streaming Premiere Date On Max
- Disney is releasing The Mandalorian, Loki, and WandaVision on Blu-ray later this year. These are the first of its streaming shows to come to disc.
- Tiffany Haddish's new movie Landscape with invisible hand is about aliens who invade earth and entertain themselves by live-streaming the lives of individual humans. Only in theaters for now.
-Amazon canceled its order for season 2 of The Peripheral based on the William Gibson Story and season 2 of A League of Their Own.
- The Flash will stream on Max starting August 25th

Eyes On:
Naaim: Jet Lag the Game
Brian: Lower Decks with Callie
Tom: Only Murders in the Building
On the Lookout: The Chosen One

Front Lines
Apple Should End Deal Drought by Buying ESPN, Analyst Says
- Analyst Dan Ives from Wedbush securities wrote an opinion piece, arguing that Apple should buy ESPN from Disney. It assumes a lot of things. That Disney wants to sell ESPN. Iger has said he's looking for strategic partners, but it sounded more like he meant for the broadcast and cable parts of ESPN rather than the streaming part. Also that Apple would ever want that. But for now, just putting it on your radar that the establishment has moved from "Apple should buy Netflix" to "Apple should buy ESPN."

‘Barbie’ Surpasses ‘The Dark Knight’ as Warner Bros.’ Highest-Grossing Domestic Release in History
- Barbie has now made $537.5 million domestically, more money than the Dark Knight, making it Warner Brothers' highest-grossing domestic film ever. It's close to Super Mario Brothers Movie;'s $574 million, which was the highest-grossing domestic movie this year.

Netflix Will Mark End of DVD Biz by Sending Up to 10 Randomly Selected Discs to Customers
- In April, Netflix announced the end of its DVD-by-mail service. Now Netflix is letting subscribers opt-in to a "finale surprise." If you agree to it, Netflix will send you 10 random discs on September 29th, it's last day of shipping. DVD returns will be accepted until October 27th.

Apple shows off a first look at its Godzilla series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
- And Apple released some stills from its monster series it's producing with Legendary entertainment around the characters of King Kong and Godzilla. It will be a 10-episode series called Monarch: Legacy of the Monsters and take place after the events of the 2014 Godzilla film as well as a storyline set in the 1950s. Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell will play the character of Lee Shaw in the different timelines. The show is being co-developed by Severance producer Chris Black and Matt Fraction of Hawkeye

NBCUniversal And Roku Strengthen FAST Ties, Adding Channels For ‘Murder She Wrote,’ ‘Little House On The Prairie’ And Other Classic And Nostalgia Titles
- NBC added multiple channels to Roku's FAST service including dedicated channels for Murder, She Wrote, Little House on the Prairie, Saved By The Bell and Bad Girls Club. A Universal Crime channel offers rotating reruns of Columbo, Kojak and The Rockford Files, while Teen NBC packages the likes of Punky Brewster, Major Dad and Hang Time.

Amazon’s Fire TV Channels adds a sidebar and more free streaming content
- Amazon updated its FireTV Channels FAST app with a sidebar that breaks out available shows into categories. And added more shows from its more than 400 providers.

Dispatches from the front
You brought up an interesting point on this last episode about how cinema might be for the big budget marvel movies, and the comedies would be in that TV line because it's not a big budget thing. This reminds me of I think the first season of Cordkillers, where it was Steven Spielberg who said that people would only be going to the movies for big budget tent polls, and everything else would not be in theaters. Coming true, and at the time I think a lot of people didn't take the sage advice... Just my two cents... 

- James

When the NFL season started last year, I subscribed to Sling TV Blue cuz it had NFL Network and the RedZone add-on, and figured I'd give the live channels a try. But Blue didn't have ESPN, which is where the Tennis was that I wanted to watch...that was only on Orange. So I couldn't watch both the NFL and Tennis, which are often on at the same days and times. Sling does at least let you switch between Blue and Orange at any time, but that meant I had to go into my Sling account and switch from Orange to Blue to watch NFL, then switch back to Orange to watch tennis...then back again, sometimes in the same day. Also, Orange limits you to streaming on 1 device, while Blue allows up to 3 screens, so when I switched to Orange for tennis, nobody else could watch anything on Sling. Paying for both Orange and Blue wasn't worth it, and constantly switching, plus the weird device rules, was a pain, so I canceled. 

- Adam

In response to your over the air television discussion, I actually still use it because it's simply quicker and less hassle than using the apps. Turning to the OTA station takes less than 2 seconds. Firing up the appropriate app and navigating to the live broadcast takes closer to 30, and that's not counting the time it takes to re-confirm my cable login (which happens once or twice a week).

- Maurice

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