Streaming TV’s Many Possible Futures

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 572 Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2022

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Streaming TV was supposed to be a thing you did to relax. But these days you might grab a drink, kick up your feet, and then sit there paralyzed by an absolute cavalcade of options for what to watch. With so many shows and services of varying quality, the streaming ecosystem has become a bloated mess. And now some of the streaming giants are starting to buckle under their own weight.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior editor Angela Watercutter and senior writer Kate Knibbs join us to discuss how streaming has become such an overwhelming morass and where it goes from here.

Show Notes:

Read Kate’s story about how reality TV has become a parody of itself. Read Angela’s story about streaming services’ obsession with the franchise series. And check out all of the stories from WIRED’s series, “Why We Hate Streaming.”

Recommendations:

Angela recommends the show First Kill. Kate recommends Molly Lambert’s podcast HeidiWorld. Mike recommends the website Justwatch.com. Lauren recommends Elon Musk’s Crash Course, a documentary from The New York Times, FX, and Hulu.

Angela Watercutter can be found on Twitter @WaterSlicer. Kate Knibbs is @Knibbs. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Mike.
0:00.7	Lauren.
0:01.2	Mike, if you had to choose just one video subscription service to subscribe to, only one, which one would it be?
0:07.7	Ooh, I want to say Criterion Channel because I want to be hip.
0:12.1	But if I'm being honest, I would have to say HBO Max because it's the one that I spend the most time in.
0:18.5	What is the Criterion Channel?
0:20.3	The Criterion Channel is the Criterion
0:23.1	collection, streaming. It's like art films and international features and historical films and
0:30.6	anything that deserves preservation for arts sake. This is the most snack fight you've ever snack
0:35.6	fighted. It's definitely like Black Beret and Clothes cigarettes, but yeah. Anyway, HBO Max is the most snack fight you've ever snack fighted. It's definitely like black beret and
0:38.1	clove cigarettes. But yeah, anyway, HBO Max is the one that I, that I spend the most time in.
0:43.7	What about you? Well, I feel like we're almost at the point where the answer is just cable,
0:49.0	because then I could access things like HBO and Showtime and Live Sports all in the same package. But at this point,
0:56.2	we're supposed to be going out of cart. And if I had to choose just one, it's probably also HBO Max.
1:01.5	When did it all get so complicated? This is a good question. And it's, I think it's not just a matter
1:06.5	of how much video we stream, but it's how we're streaming it. So let's talk about this.
1:22.7	Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired. And I'm Michael Kalori. I'm senior editor at Wired. And we're joined this week by some members of our fabulous
1:27.3	culture desk at Wired. That includes're joined this week by some members of our fabulous culture desk at Wired.
1:29.4	That includes senior editor Angela Watercutter, who joins us from New York and senior writer Kate Nibbs,
1:34.7	who's joining us from Chicago. Hello to you both. Hello. Thank you. It's great to have you both on.
1:40.5	Okay, so today we're talking about TV. TV streaming?
1:44.8	What should we call it?
	...

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