disney – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Streaming Video Drowns Itself By Flooding The Zone

Netflix is making big changes

I’m old enough to remember when it seemed like all of sudden, seemingly overnight, everyone owned a VHS machine. Sure, some owned a BetaMax, but VHS was the thing. Video rental shops popped up everywhere and we’d see our neighbors there more frequently than at the grocery store, browsing the titles.

a screenshot of the Netflix home screen on an iPad. It displays rows of movie and TV show titles, including "Below," "East of Eden," and "The Diplomat," under categories like "My List" and "Top 10 TV Shows in the U.S. Today."

There was an old barn at the far end of the town that had sat empty for ages on a narrow, overgrown with honeysuckle corner curve in my small country hometown for ages. In the age before pop-up stores became popular someone popped it open as a video store, creating one of the first congested traffic nightmares that town had ever seen as folks parked along both sides of the shoulderless curve to rent a video.

Whether it was the local mom and pop video rental shop or later the BlockBusters, the display racks were bulging with titles. You’d walk in and be overwhelmed with the choices. To a degree that was the point. Flood the zone with more possibilities than anyone could keep track of to keep customers coming back. There may have been a pony or two in there, but eventually you realized that most of what was on the shelves wasn’t worth your time or money and the off the road parking on the curve eased.

When the next big hit finally made it into stores, the curve got crowded again as the aisles would fill up again while folks browsed, waiting for someone to return what they were really after, endlessly reading and rereading plot descriptions on the backs of boxes, hoping they were next on the waiting list.

VHS tapes became disks. Then along came Netflix.

Once Netflix moved into the video rental by mail business everything changed and the pop-ups pooped out, the video rentals that had become prevalent in grocery stores, pharmacies, and just about any other store that had a smidgen of floor space to offer them faded, and eventually so too did the big chains. The honeysuckle eventually reclaimed it’s territory.

And then along came streaming and the zones really flooded.

If you browse any of the streaming websites or apps today it’s like walking into one of those extinct video stores. Title card after title card scroll by in a waterfall of numbing repetition, often with the same title repeated line after line, category after category, too often in a weird trend that some marketing maven landed on of changing the cover art, hoping to get your eyeballs to land on a new image. It’s the same flood the zone approach.

When you flood the zone, eventually those you hope to lure in tire of treading water and turn their attention elsewhere. It happens in every sphere of human commerce, politics, art, music, you name it. Too much of a good thing becomes a problem when everything is just, well too much.

Now that just about every streaming service offers the same titles with the same upsell it’s overwhelming to the point of overdone.

I took the above trip around a winding corner curve in my memory lane after seeing news that Netflix, the company that changed it all by first flooding mailboxes and then streaming is wading into trouble waters. According to that article “user engagement has stalled due to a lack of popular content.”

There are many factors, but in my view that translates into an overabundance of quantity, not enough quality. There are big changes afoot as Netflix has fired Dan Lin, the head of its film division, along with six percent of its employees.

Netflix isn’t alone. It’s always been a leader, and leaders falter and flounder just like the rest of the pack. I certainly can’t say any of its competitors are that much better, but to my mind Apple TV has put out the best quality this year. After the Paramount/Warner Brothers merger that resulted in Skydance, with its promise of more movies each year who knows what the future will yield. I doubt quality will be the result.

That said, we started watching the 4th season of The Diplomat last night on Netflix, and it’s excellent. So there are gems that occasionally surface.

As all of the streaming services try to offer more, whether that be sports, or gaming, or just more of what the algorithm says enough want, they actually end up providing less, because the quality can too easily get swallowed in the flood zone.

It’s a tough job to program. As someone who has programmed seasons for live theatres I know you miss as much or even more often as you hit. It’s easy to get trapped into a formula when you find success. I’ve been there. It’s much harder to understand when a successful formula begins to fade. But when you focus on producing more rather than producing better, it’s easy to become mediocre, or worse, boring.

Rising prices and ridiculously programmed ad insertions certainly don’t help Netflix or any of its competitors either. Eventually it all becomes as numbing as the waterfall of titles that scroll down screens, like all of those titles on all of those old video store shelves. What quality there is too easily gets lost, even with the hype of a new release, when viewers have to wade through a flood of content that all looks the same.

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Disney Brings Back Jimmy Kimmel On Tuesday

We need a documentary about what happens in the writer’s room

In what seems like a reversal Disney is announcing that Jimmy Kimmel will be returning to the air on Tuesday night. That said, don’t count your resurrected comedians before the reruns are syndicated.

177530 0523. All we know is that there will be a spectacle on Tuesday night and in the run up to it. And certainly after the show is over. I’m sure whatever reactions happen in the next 48 hours or so will equal the polarized reactions we’ve already seen. Celebrities have been signing petitions and urging folks to cancel subscriptions, stay away from the theme parks and off of the cruise ships. Conservative politicians have been saying this is a bridge too far.

Of course the MAGAts have been celebrating in the wake of Kimmel’s suspension and gloating in the thuggish way it was done. I’m sure there will be teeth gnashing and hair pulling in the run up to the show. I’m also sure the writer’s room will be quite a show into and of itself.

No one comes out of this looking like anything other than bad. With the possible exception of Kimmel.

Here’s Disney’s statement:

“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country.

“It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive.

“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”

Of course all eyes and ears will be on what Kimmel has to say on the show Tuesday. Perhaps he’ll reveal some of the names on the Epstein list.

Whatever happens it is just another page in this dark moment we’re living through. And while the entire episode is certainly serious on many fronts, I’m guessing there are more than a few laughs to be had. The only question in the end is at whose expense.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

The Cowards and Greedy Captains of Industry

If you can’t take a joke…

Once upon a time things like free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press were considered hallmarks of what America stood for. That feels more and more like a fairy tale. The folks in control of the government keep ripping their claws into social and political fabric and turning America into some weird fascist and cultish state that worships a convicted felon and child rapist.

2021 11 08 smothers brothers alamy.

The latest outrageous move of the Trump administration is threatening ABC to take late night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel off of the air “indefinitely.” It’s a political move and a business move. It’s also a mob move.

Disney, the pseudo-family corporate parent of ABC, Disney made the move after one of the ABC affiliates, Nexstar Media said it was so offended by Kimmel’s comments about the recent shooting of Charlie Kirk that it would pre-empt the show on its stations.

Here’s the fun part. Nexstar is trying to expand its stable of channels and that requires FCC approval. You don’t need a crayon to draw your own conclusions because the thugs in charge are so transparent with their thuggery.

Day by day we’re watching what used to be called the Captains of Industry, academia, and the media drive their boats into what they presume is the safe harbor under Trump’s protection. That harbor is getting so crowded that no one is going to be able to sail out again. Forget the ship of state, the ships of commerce are running themselves aground. This will continue because once ground is given, the bully keeps taking. It’s a tale told too well.

This feels like a yet another power move and of course it requires power to pull off. But it’s actually the move of cowards who realize they are despised and have skin so thin that they can’t take a punch line from a so-so comic. It also requires what we once thought of strong business leaders to show their true colors as cowards. Captains of Cowardice fits more today than the former sobriquet of Captains of Industry.

Another president in another time, Lyndon Johnson, once said about the comedic and satiric criticism tossed at him by the Smothers Brothers.

“It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.”

Don’t get me wrong. LBJ was pissed. But he was man enough to rise above it, at least publicly. Those were tumultuous times then as well. These times are becoming not only tumultuous, but tortuous because of the daily drip of news like this.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Andor, Or We Are The Heroes We Need

Echoing Tina Turner

The ever expanding universe of the Star Wars franchise is one that often leaves me colder than I imagine I’d feel if I were floating alone in space. That’s the same with most of these run the IP into the ground franchises. When something comes out of those factories that’s actually decent, it’s a surprise. One of the surprising beacons of warmth has been the Andor series, which is currently streaming in its second season. I’m also a fan of the movie Rogue One for which Andor is a prequel.

Yes, the story is about the rebel rebellion against the Empire, but there’s something different about Andor. Recently I read a piece from Derek Pharr on Nerdist, Hope Without The Force: How Andor Rewrites Rebellion. It helped me put my finger on why the show feels different and surprisingly current beyond the scope of small screen entertainment.

Here’s a quote:

Andor makes the quiet argument that the Jedi weren’t just irrelevant to the uprising against the Empire. They were liabilities and detached from everyday suffering. The Jedi were fixated with balance and prophecy, and wildly ineffective at stopping fascism when it counted. The Jedi Order had their shot. They blew it. Meanwhile, on Ferrix and Narkina 5, regular people are building the rebellion through sweat, sacrifice, and solidarity. Not the Force.

Whether you are a fan of the series or not, I encourage you to read the entire piece. Pharr’s thesis is indeed a good one about the series. But for me it spins off into many of the challenging moments we face today in the wake of our own evolving evil empire. One that’s certainly not intelligently designed, much less preordained.

Bottom line, it’s going to come down to those of us on the ground.

I think we need to eternalize and begin acting on that instead of waiting around and looking for heroes among congress critters, political parties, media mouthpieces, TV lawyers and those at the bar, or even judges to come to the rescue. We know what’s ahead is going to continue to get uglier. We’re probably going to have to meet ugly with a little ugly ourselves. Cue Tina Turner’s We Don’t Need Another Hero.

As Pharr puts it,

The Jedi were legends. The rebellion was real.

No elegant solutions from a more civilized age. Just people. Flawed, desperate, courageous people, who decide enough is enough.

He also argues that noble as they were, the Jedi were spectacularly bad at saving things in their attempts to reclaim balance. I don’t know about you, but that sounds frighteningly familiar.

Read Pharr’s piece if and when you watch Andor. If you don’t watch the show, read the piece anyway.

Pie in the sky? Perhaps. But I’ll take a serving and ask for seconds.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.