1. Netflix's New Interface
We’re still a week away from Netflix’s upfront event, and they’ve managed to steal the spotlight.
The reason isn’t a buzzed about new series (been a while since they had one of those) but rather a redesigned interface that includes hot keywords like “vertical video” and “AI-powered recommendations.”
The fact that it’s been over a decade since their last interface overhaul only adds to the buzz.
Why It Matters
TV app interfaces suck.
Like really suck.
It’s the number one pain point I hear on the regular as The Guy Everyone Thinks Is Responsible For Everything That Happens In The Television Industry.”
Number one with a bullet is “why isn’t the show I was in the middle of watching at the top? Why do I have to go searching for it?”
As an industry professional I know that the answer is that they don’t want you to find it easily, that, in their infinite wisdom, they think that if you need to click around the app trying to find it you’ll stumble on other shows you might want to watch and thus stick around longer and that this will more than make up for how pissed off you are about having to play Where’s Waldo to find Bridgerton.
I also know that Netflix’s redesigned app does not even begin to solve this issue, because really, why would they?
They want to keep serving you up other shows and movies in what they believe is a good-faith effort to get you to stick around, when all they’re really doing is leaving you feeling frustrated and disrespected.
To quote the late adman David Ogilvy, the consumer is not a moron. They may not fully understand what Netflix and its kin are doing, but they do know that it’s not to benefit them.
While I have not seen the updated interface on my TV yet, from what I’ve read and seen in their promo videos, it seems more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic than anything that really moves the needle.
TV shows are not a series of short somewhat interchangeable clips like TikTok. People often go in knowing what they want to watch (the series they started the night before, for example) and when they can’t find it, they’re frustrated.
There’s a “My Netflix” tab, which is lovely, but the old interface had a similar tab too. Only whatever you saved to it remained there long after you’d watched it with the result being the tab became more an archive of your Netflix viewing than a useful tool.
Then there are the “AI recommendations” which, of course, are “in beta” and allow you to enter natural language prompts.
Which is all well and good if it seems like it’s actually listening to you.
But if it soon seems like it’s got a fixed set of suggestions no matter what unique requests you put in there, that’s not going to be a good look.
The Holy Grail of AI-based recommendations is interactivity. Being able to ask the AI if the show has a new episode. If it’s the sort of thing that might keep you up at night. Whether Michael Imperioli was the guy who played Tony Soprano’s son and what other shows was he in and have you ever seen them. That sort of back and forth, like you were talking to a friend who’d already seen the show.
Remember this, because it has ramifications way beyond recommendations.
Meaning ads you can talk to: “Do these run big? Is it safe to use around dogs? How often do you need to charge the battery?”
And everything else.
What Netflix is proposing is a start, but the future is a whole lot better.
A whole lot.
What You Need To Do About It
If you’re Netflix, or any other app, for that matter, you need to at least pretend to be listening. To make it easy for someone to find the series they’ve been bingeing nightly for the past week. To stop throwing autoplays into the interface. To let me read what the movie is about before you start playing it. To ask me if you can remove a show from my “My Netflix” once I’ve watched it.
That sort of thing.
Linear channels for library shows would be nice too. It’s something you’ve talked about for quite a while and I get that there are many, many rights issues that can get in the way, but it’s something you really ought to prioritize as a way to keep viewers from defecting.
2. The NewFronts Become The OEM Fronts
As Jason Damata noted in our Hot List newsletter, the NewFronts, which started out as a place for digital publishers to complete their “pivot to video” have wound up being something else completely.
Which is not all that unusual in our digital era, but still bears examination.
In this case, the belles of the NewFronts ball are VIZIO, LG and Samsung, all of whom have turned the TV from a dumb box into a smart one with its own sizable slate of free ad-supported content.
Why It Matters
In case you hadn’t noticed, the TV, which was long one of the most expensive screens in the house, is now far and away the cheapest. Shop the right sales and you can score one for under $100.
What keeps those prices low is the development of an alternate revenue stream in the form of the TV OS.
It allows the OEMs to make money off of ads they place on their home screen and from ads they sell on their booming FAST services.
Both of which were on display during the NewFronts.
There are more similarities than differences among OEMs, which is not a bad thing—the more consumers come to expect something from a device, regardless of manufacturer, the more they’re prone to accept and use it.
This year, we’re seeing more original content and live events: Samsung is hosting a Jonas Brothers concert, VIZIO is giving us the Billboard Women In Music Awards and LG is launching a channel with Fifty Cent, who made a live appearance at their show.
The OEM FASTs are both growing up and growing big too, with more and better content.
That second part is the part that matters: most ad-supported TV is still on linear because there are way more ad slots on linear.
That’s not a typo—Netflix, Max and Disney may be running ads, but most of their US viewers are still watching ad free. Not that they tell us those numbers, but it’s pretty safe to say that we’d have heard of them if they were worth bragging about.
That means most of the streaming inventory is on FAST and Pluto, Xumo and Tubi only have so much inventory. That leaves the OEM FASTs, which come with the added benefit of their own ACR data for measurement as well as sizable install bases and a more demographically diverse audience.
They very much serve the role that cable used to play, and that’s not a bad thing.
Ditto Roku, which decided to skip any of this year’s Fronts, relying instead on what they claim are a series of hosted dinners, but which sounds more like they want to differentiate themselves from the triumvirate of Samsung, VIZIO and LG.
Roku was the first player in the game, they have a massive audience between their own TVs, TVs running their OS and the legacy dongle business, but they’ve been struggling to break out in many overseas markets, Europe in particular.
Whereas LG and Samsung are already global behemoths and VIZIO is now owned by Walmart, a global behemoth in its own right.
So there’s that and it’s not an either/or thing—the market is big enough for everyone.
What You Need To Do About It
If you are buying ads and you want to reach viewers on streaming, the OEM FASTs are a logical place to go. You have measurement, you have the ability to track viewers across streaming and linear so you don’t inundate them with the same ad, you have lots of potential for shoppable content and, most of all, you have an audience that’s expecting ads and thrilled that the load is much lighter than it is on cable.
That’s not nothing, and it’s why they’re hosting NewFronts. It’s a good way of reminding people how far they’ve come, where they’re going and why they’re a good alternative to the SVOD services and a good companion for linear.
Something to think about before you write off television.
Alan Wolk is co-founder and lead analyst at the consulting firm TV[R]EV. He is the author of the best-selling industry primer, Over The Top: How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry. Wolk frequently speaks about changes in the television industry, both at conferences and to anyone who’ll listen.
Week in Review is an opinion column. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of StreamTV Insider.