Category: TV
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Sports Numberwang
I’m really only posting this, because I spent a bit too much time putting together a Thread of a response to a clickbait-y post about the major sporting events’ viewerships. I really shouldn’t rise to the bait, but… The Threads algorithm threw up this post. (A reminder that “Verified” just means someone who is willing…
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Peak TV vs Peak TV
If you Google “Peak TV”, the first search result is a Wikipedia article called “Golden Age of Television (2000s-present)” It reflects an era that started a little earlier with series like HBO’s The Wire and NBC’s The West Wing, but obviously carried on through the early 2000s, and broadly speaking, continues to this day. The…
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Arctic Ascent with Alex Honnold
I am a complete sucker for climbing films, documentaries and series. I’ve never actually done any climbing. Most of my walks in the mountains have been exactly that – walks. I’ve watched docs like Touching the Void and The Alpinist, and seen dramas such as The Eiger Sanction and of course, Cliffhanger. I’ve also seen…
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Rebundling Sports in the US
Interesting news in the US, where Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and Fox have announced a new as-yet-unnamed streaming service that will combine all their sports offerings into a single subscription. Combining the resources of ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNews, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV and ESPN+ into a single…
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Three TV Classics Still Not Available To Stream
There is, of course, an endless list of shows and films that are not available to stream on any platform. But I wanted to examine three series, all dating from the mid-eighties to mid-nineties that are still not available in the UK, but some of which have been appearing in the US. Last autumn Moonlighting…
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Premier League Rights 2025/26 – 2028/29 UK TV Deal
This evening, the first games in Amazon’s deal for TV rights to two rounds of the Premier League get underway. But Amazon’s coverage ends after next season’s Festive period games, because from the 2025/26 season, they will no longer have live rights. Amazon, you will recall, have the rights to a midweek round of games…
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GCN+ Closing Down
There was some sad news on Wednesday, when Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced that GCN+ will be closing down in December this year. Unfortunately, it perhaps wasn’t surprising news set against a plurality of WBD sports brands and a massive need for WBD to cut costs throughout its business to service an enormous debt load.…
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The Rising Cost of Streaming
There seems to be barely a week that goes by right now when a streaming service doesn’t announce a price hike of some description. And I’ve just had an email from Netflix about their price increase. Here, as far as I can tell, are some of the UK price rises coming soon. Netflix says that…
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Premier League UK TV Rights – More Games, Fewer Packages
Regular readers will know that I’m a little obsessed with the TV rights to Premier League football, and I only last wrote about the upcoming rights round a month ago. According to the very well connected FT (£), the Premier League is likely to offer fewer rights packages this time around, but with more games…
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Channel 4 and DOGs
Taskmaster returned to Channel 4 this week, with an all-new line-up of contestants. Having got drenched in rain on my way home, I was ready for some stupid challenges performed by comedians. But when I turned on, I was treated to the above image. In the TV world a “Digital On-Screen Graphic”, or DOG, is…
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Popularity Contest – Streaming vs Linear in 2023
The most recent episode of the new(ish) podcast Search Engine with PJ Vogt asked the simple question, “Why is it so hard to figure out how many people watched Stranger Things?” The question was posed by actor Maya Hawke who appears on the Netflix show. And it opened up an in-depth discussion about audience measure…
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ESPN, Charter, The Cable Bundle and the Future
I have been fascinated by the recently resolved standoff in the US TV industry between the second biggest cable provider in the country, Charter Communications, and one of the biggest TV providers, Disney. Over the US Open tennis final at the weekend, and the start of the opening weekend of the new NFL season, millions…