What did you watch over the Holidays/New Year?
I spent the Holidays and New Year taking some time off from work, and almost completely off my phone/social media, and used the time to watch a lot of movies and read even more books. Just before I left the online world behind (save streaming), I wrote my predictions for 2020, but I left off one because I doubted it would come true. That prediction was, without editing:
We may finally get some help in finding what we want to watch – We’ve reached information/content overload when it comes time to find something to watch on SVOD, AVOD or our millions of other options, including in theaters. Not only can I no longer remember what films I need to see, I can’t even remember which services host my favorite shows any longer. Way back in 2012, I started a company called Flicklist, with Ted Hope, that hoped to solve this problem (we failed, long story). We weren’t the first – Letterboxd and GoWatchIt launched in 2011 – and many similar services have launched over the years (iGems.TV and ReelGood, among the better ones). None have really been successful, or even solved all of the problems around discovery and remembrance of films – but just this month (ed: Dec, 2019), JustWatch acquired GoWatchIt, and reports are that the combined company will keep improving its services. I can’t predict whether they will finally build the universal film/show search engine we need, but I do hope that someone will finally build what we need in 2020.
After writing that prediction, and then removing it from my final list, I read this article from Vulture, saying that The Next Streaming Trend is Human Curation. The article reports on the emerging trend of platforms using human curation instead of algorithms, including things like the new HBOMax “Recommended by Humans” interface, seen here and reported on via The Verge back in October, 2019. Or the new Netflix “Collections” beta, and the Comcast Xfinity system of using editors who recommend content, based on thematic areas like kid’s content, LGBTQ+ content, etc.
I’d say kudos, it’s about time, but when I look at all of these options, I can’t help but be reminded of the old Apple Ping curation system for music. That was a big fail – so much so that I could barely find anything about it online, but here you go, just in case you don’t remember it. Every time a platform has tried to use human curation it has pretty much failed, and mainly because all of these systems are trying to get me to watch/listen to things based on celebrities or editors I don’t know, or people I have no reason to trust. Or worse, they try to build an algorithm based on your mood – this is the worst idea ever, and everyone keeps trying it, but it will never work (if you are sad, do you want a sad film, or a happy one?)
With Flicklist, we hoped to solve this problem by letting you follow the recommendations of people you trusted – which could be your friends, or a festival programmer, or a critic. You could even get specific, and say that you trust Joe for recommendations on Italian horror films, but that you trust Jane for American low-budget comedies – because often your friend’s tastes are specific and are only worthwhile for a few things. But like I said – that project failed.
Anyway, throughout the holidays, I definitely could have used some kind of system. Sure, I had old-fashioned word-of-mouth, but I always suspect I’m forgetting the best recommendations, or the most relevant ones for right now. I wanted to know what new shows/films my friends were watching. The ones that hadn’t become trends yet. And I needed a queue that combined all of these items in one place – like I said, I can’t remember which show is where anymore. This system still doesn’t exist. My hope is that someone will build it in 2020, but until then, email me and let me know what you’d recommend. Nothing else seems to work.
Stuff I’m Reading
Film
Correction/Hidden Life Disney Update – Last post, I linked a Twitter debate from Matt Zoller Seitz claiming that Fox was holding back HIDDEN LIFE from some theaters. Since that time, some in-the-know/trusted theater folks tell me the post was mistaken – one tells me “that Disney has taken a “hands-off” attitude towards Fox Searchlight, and no specialized exhibitor seems to be complaining. How is going to 100 theaters week two of the release of HIDDEN LIFE in 50 cities and playing more indies than usual by them constitute limiting its release? It will expand further in early January. And terms are fair.” Let’s hope this remains the case for future titles. Apologies for running that item without looking into it further as well.
Within days of my M&A predictions for 2020, Cohen Media Group acquired the UK’s Curzon Cinemas and Artificial Eye. According to Deadline, and I expect we’ll see more activity from Cohen in 2020. Although… I had expected the near opposite to happen and was watching Curzon to expand here, but we’ll see more mergers soon.
Oscar-Shortlisted Syrian Filmmaker denied US Visa – Feras Fayyad, director of The Cave, which is shortlisted for the Oscar this year, and who was nominated last year for Last Men in Aleppo,can’t get a visa to visit the US to promote his film for The Oscars, and the many other awards for which it is nominated. The film is a pretty searing rebuke of the inaction of not just the US, but the entire world, when it comes to Syria, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, but WTF?! Learn more about the making of the film here, in Variety, and read the International Documentary Association’s letter to Pompeo on behalf of Fayyad here, and add your name to the letter/petition as well.
Roku now makes more from streaming advertisements than TV or hardware – according to Scott Rosenberg, a senior vice president and general manager of Roku’s platform business in Cord-Cutters News. “In the long run, the total addressable market for streaming video is all TV money, period,” (OTT) streaming “lets advertisers do things that they’ve gotten used to in digital but which hasn’t been possible on TV,” such as individually targeting consumers based on user-specific data.”
Women are doing better – or the same, or worse – behind the camera, according to two conflicting studies that came out this week. The NYT has the news, with ten percent of the top grossing film’s having women directors, but the rival study “found that women in key behind-the-scenes jobs were outnumbered four to one by men. That figure remained unchanged from 2018.” Either way, the numbers aren’t strong enough, and I bet they’re worse for branded content and advertising.
How do Media Buyers View AVOD players? AVOD players are rising as SVOD bundles get expensive, and most distributors are reporting decent results from the AVOD world (or at least growing). But what about ad buyers? The Drum took a look, and it’s a decidedly mixed bag. Not enough transparency, especially on actual viewer numbers, and that seems to be stunting their growth.
Netflix is counting two minutes view-time in its popularity numbers – According to the LAT, the latest run-down of popular shows/movies from Netflix uses a strange metric – how many people watched at least two minutes of the program. This seems like a pretty suspect metric to me, since I stop watching shows soon after two minutes all the time – because they suck.
And if you watch more than 2 minutes, I hope it’s not behind the wheel- as the streaming wars come to a car near you – ZDNet reports on Tesla adding Netflix and others to its in-car theater. You can only watch when parked, and with Wi-Fi for now, but I bet there’s a hack for that soon.
Check out this history of Star Wars and its relationship with Internet forums – or rather how Star Wars has always been at the forefront of internet forums and what it tells us about how we may be consuming culture and media in the future, Buzzfeed covers.
Need a reminder of the worst brand failures of the decade? Fast Company has a fun little video for you, but I think it’s too focused on the recent past.
Note: Slow branded content news-week, as I have been writing an op-ed for next week’s BrandStorytelling newsletter.
Wattpad’s Year in Review shows importance of diversity and other key trends: Wattpad, the multiplatform storytelling company released its year in review stats. I think these are worthy of attention for anyone in storytelling – including film and new media – as they show significant trends and likely gaps in what audiences want out of other mediums. In particular:
– immigation – stories tagged #Immigrant growing by an astounding 1175% this year.
– diversity – In fantasy, reading time for stories tagged #Diversity grew by 125%, while fantasy stories tagged #africanamerican grew by 95%. In sci-fi, reading time for stories tagged #POC grew by 152%, while tags for #Diverse in the same genre grew by 269%! In horror, reading time for #Diversity tags grew by 73%, while #africanamerican grew by 113%.
– an 85% increase in stories tagged #Asexual, #Poly, #Polyamorous, #Bisexual, #Demisexual, and #Pansexual
– and women in Action – 64% of the top stories tagged #Streetfighter, #Action, and associated genres featured women in lead roles
Syd Mead, legendary futurist died, and you should check out his thoughts on creativity in remembrance: Syd Mead died on December 30th. Mead was a visual futurist and designer who worked magic on Blade Runner, Tron and Blade Runner 2049. A buddy of mine, Jim Hunter, made this great video tribute to his creativity back in 2010 – 2019: A Future Imagined, and I highly recommend watching it in memory of Syd Mead.
How Adversarial Interoperability can break-up big-monopolies and save technology – Ok, that sounds like a mouthful, but adversarial interoperability is pretty simple – it means allowing me to make technology that works with (interoperates) with your technology, even if you don’t want me to. It means that a start-up should be able to make a technology that builds off the backbone of Facebook – even to create a new social network – even if Facebook, or Amazon, or whoever else, doesn’t want them to be able to do this. And it used to be the norm in technology and online. Restoring this ability would go a long way towards fixing many of the problems we have in technology and the future of the internet, mobile and social media. While this may seem wonky, I think it’s worth reading Cory Doctorow’s series for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on this concept, and telling everyone you know to do the same. I first read about this in Fred Wilson’s great AVC blog, and he even recommended that it be required reading for anyone regulating tech, and he’s correct. Spread the word. Oh, and his 10 predictions for the 20’s aren’t bad either.
5G is…underwhelming, according to users in South Korea, and the WSJ – Apparently, first adopters – 59% of South Koreans – aren’t finding much to do with 5G yet. Respondents say it does make for faster downloads and live streaming, but there just aren’t enough uses to keep it on all the time. Experts say the killer apps will come with self-driving cars and smart cities – years away. Keep that in mind as all of the 5G hype articles hit post-CES this year.