00:00:14 ◼ ► ExpressVPN, and Moo. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow.
00:00:20 ◼ ► Hi, Myke Hurley. Did you know that 255 in hexadecimal is FF? No. #snowtalkquestion this week comes from Mark, and Mark wants to know,
00:00:29 ◼ ► "Do you listen to podcasts in a particular order or pick and choose based on your mood?"
00:00:35 ◼ ► Oh, um, I have a primary, like, priority playlist that is my favorite shows and the, you know, the most favoritest go to the top.
00:00:44 ◼ ► And I definitely, uh, I'm usually in there, but there is an aspect of it based on my mood. I will sometimes pick and choose,
00:00:53 ◼ ► 'cause I will, especially when my favoritest ones are not, uh, they're already played, I will then, uh, sometimes scroll around in that list based on mood.
00:01:03 ◼ ► And then I do have another playlist that's got, like, the D&D podcasts in it. And for those, I wanna be, I tend to listen to those on, like, long drives,
00:01:12 ◼ ► not when I'm just walking the dog, and I will go on a binge of those, of, like, Dragon Friends or Adventure Zone, or also, it's not D&D,
00:01:19 ◼ ► but, like, uh, Hello from the Magic Tavern is like that, where I will get into a run where I'll listen to a lot of them,
00:01:24 ◼ ► and it's usually when I'm gonna be spending a lot of time in a car, which I don't normally do. So, that's, that's how I do it.
00:01:30 ◼ ► Yeah, I have a few shows like that now, where I, shows that aren't, that don't have a news component to them, so they won't outdate themselves,
00:01:39 ◼ ► I will stack them up for traveling. Especially if I'm gonna be on my own when I travel.
00:01:46 ◼ ► I will do that. Um, but I manually manage my podcast playlist now, which used to be a thing I didn't do.
00:01:55 ◼ ► Um, I used to do, like, the priority playlist stuff that you did, but now I just have an all unfinished and then a queue,
00:02:01 ◼ ► like, the two different playlists, and, in Overcast, and I will just kind of manually manage them, and I have, you know,
00:02:08 ◼ ► they will, they will automatically start playing the next episode, like, once it's done,
00:02:17 ◼ ► Or what's most relevant for the time. So, thank you so much to Mark for, uh, submitting that Snail Talk question.
00:02:25 ◼ ► #SnailTalk, just send out a tweet with that hashtag, and you may be included for a future episode of the show to help us kick things off.
00:02:33 ◼ ► The first item of follow-up, which Jason's just entered, because he's remembered having listened to me, I'm sick.
00:02:41 ◼ ► I'm sick. I, you can hear my decline over my Wednesday shows, uh, which was The Panadict, then Interconnected.
00:02:49 ◼ ► By the time Connected came around, I'd completely lost my voice. Uh, well, I was limited to one word at a time,
00:02:58 ◼ ► It led to one of those classic Connected moments a little bit, not quite Federico doing Weird Fish, but Close.
00:03:06 ◼ ► Where, where, um, you became, like, the mysterious, mystical seer who could only answer in one word pronouncements.
00:03:19 ◼ ► So it was, you know, I know it was terrible for you, but it actually ended up being kind of a classic moment.
00:03:24 ◼ ► But, yeah, quite a week, like, the adventure of Myke, of, uh, first our Backward Show downgrade, and then The Panadict, as you lost your voice, and then Connected with the one word, Myke.
00:03:39 ◼ ► Yeah, meant, speaking about downgrade, let's just reflect on last week's episode. Our Summer of Fun, uh, was to do...
00:03:50 ◼ ► There you go. It was to present an episode of Upgrade in Reverse. This was Upgrading and Joe Steele's recommendation many months ago.
00:03:58 ◼ ► Uh, me and Jason were very excited about this idea. So we did the episode in reverse. Um, people seemed to really like it, which was a surprise.
00:04:08 ◼ ► I thought I was going to get a lot of people, uh, little armchair, uh, podcast critics saying, "Oh, this is just too, it's too clever for its own good," or whatever.
00:04:17 ◼ ► And those people were probably out there, but they didn't send me any messages, so that was great.
00:04:21 ◼ ► Instead, people said, "This is great! I love it!" And that was good. That was nice to hear.
00:04:24 ◼ ► I was scared to publish the episode because I was concerned that people were going to think something was broken.
00:04:36 ◼ ► Well, it was more that, like, they would press play, hear me say goodbye and think something was wrong.
00:04:46 ◼ ► So I was worried about these things. Nobody, I didn't get anybody tell me. I'm sure there were many upgradians press play and thought something was wrong, but it was quickly rectified, right?
00:04:56 ◼ ► So, like, which is fine, because that's kind of what I wanted. I wanted you to think something was broken but immediately realize, "Oh, we're doing something silly."
00:05:02 ◼ ► Um, I actually texted Marco because when people think something's broken, they include the overcast account.
00:05:13 ◼ ► So I wanted to just tell him, because he knew we were doing this because we told him when he was the guest the previous week that this was what we were doing.
00:05:20 ◼ ► And I just wanted to say, "Okay, not only are we doing that, I'm also flipping all the artwork upside down."
00:05:34 ◼ ► And the answer is we have a little document we go through and we just kind of reversed it.
00:05:37 ◼ ► And it was mostly not that hard, although there were definitely moments where we were like, "Wait a second, how should we do this?"
00:05:42 ◼ ► Because we had this sort of premise of keeping the segments forward, obviously, because that would be really weird if we just spoke everything backward and it was unintelligible.
00:05:50 ◼ ► So the segments ran forward, but they were in the reverse order and there were a few moments where, while we were recording, we were like, "Wait a second."
00:05:57 ◼ ► Yeah, and the logic was broken by playing the music in reverse, but that was just too fun to not do.
00:06:12 ◼ ► It was very upsetting, but it was fun at the same time, so that was why we went with that.
00:06:18 ◼ ► All right, I also have a little bit of follow-up from the real world that I just want to throw out there.
00:06:24 ◼ ► So your friend of mine, Dan Morin, who is my Six Colors compatriot and is the host of the Clockwives podcast here at relay.fm, I want to send out a congratulations to him last weekend.
00:06:48 ◼ ► And the day before Dan got married, his nemesis, Scott McNulty, who has been on this show multiple times to talk about Kindles.
00:07:02 ◼ ► They had twin boys. And the boys are doing well. Marisa had to be in the hospital for a while before she gave birth just because having big giant twins is complicated.
00:07:17 ◼ ► Yeah, but everybody is doing well, and there are two new Kindle users/Star Trek fans/people who make canned food in jars, because that's what Marisa does.
00:07:30 ◼ ► And so congratulations to Scott and Marisa as well. Big life moments for the nemeses, Dan and Scott, last week.
00:07:40 ◼ ► Oh, yeah, yeah, really. I mean, it's nice that they schedule it for the day before and not the day of the wedding, because that would have been -- but he did upstage Dan in that way, I suppose. Babies came first.
00:07:50 ◼ ► Very upstream-focused episode today. I have a bunch of upstream news, and we're going to be doing -- guess what, everybody -- a draft later on in today's episode of Streaming Services.
00:08:00 ◼ ► We'll get to that a little later on. That's our summer of fun topic for today's show. But before, I have some news for you, Jason. Big news.
00:08:21 ◼ ► It's worth noting -- this is important, right, because people see -- this is what I want to talk about -- is people see this headline, and then they tie it back in their brains again to "Apple can't do TV." This is actually not going to be a part of Apple TV+. This is still going to exist in Apple Music, same as before.
00:08:37 ◼ ► My assumption at this point is that Carpool Karaoke is actually not even in the organization of the video programming team. It is 100% in the organization of music, and they are doing this.
00:08:53 ◼ ► So I think, honestly, like, if anybody was still holding on to this notion of "we've seen what Apple can do with TV and they can't do it," I actually think this is proof of how it's going to be different, because they are renewing one of those shows, but it's not even going to be in TV+. Like, it is an old team, which is a part of Apple Music.
00:09:15 ◼ ► Yes, and they're happy with it. They're happy with it. For whatever it does for them, they're happy with it being part of it. Otherwise, they wouldn't renew it.
00:09:22 ◼ ► Yep, because they didn't renew Planet of the Apps, did they? But I would expect that this is a low-budget show, and it's got big names on it, so people watch it. Carpool Karaoke is a good brand, even though Corden isn't on all of the episodes. So it works well for them.
00:09:38 ◼ ► Speaking of Apple, they've also released another trailer. They released a trailer for Snoopy in Space, a TV show which is coming to Apple TV+. It's a part of their deal with Peanuts. This is one of the many Peanuts-related Charlie Brown, Snoopy things that's going to exist.
00:09:53 ◼ ► Snoopy in Space, this is a quote, follows Snoopy as his dreams of being an astronaut become reality when he and Woodstock tag along with the Peanuts gang on a field trip to NASA and are chosen for an elite mission into space.
00:10:13 ◼ ► It's a fun Peanuts special. It's great. There's a couple things going on. So, what, a few weeks ago they did a For All Mankind trailer, the Ron Moore space show, and trying to capitalize on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, which was over the weekend, they released a video where it's basically, they're using the bits of For All Mankind that are showing the American moon landing.
00:10:42 ◼ ► You know, moon landing and the Apollo mission, which is not quite what the show is about, but they use that stuff in an interview with Ron Moore.
00:10:50 ◼ ► And it is like a salute to Apollo on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, which I thought was an interesting way.
00:10:58 ◼ ► It's like, hey, we've got a show that is set at least partially during that time. We don't know a lot about that show, but we know a little bit about it.
00:11:04 ◼ ► And I thought that was a nice way for them to kind of like craft something that lets them, you know, get awareness up of the fact that there's this Ron Moore show that's coming to Apple TV+ this fall about space stuff.
00:11:15 ◼ ► And I liked it because I thought it was sufficiently appropriately honoring Apollo, even though the story goes a little differently in their show.
00:11:24 ◼ ► I did have another thought, though, which is a little bit less charitable, which is it's got to be killing them, right, that the show isn't out because it's probably done and it's probably sitting there and it's the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
00:11:38 ◼ ► And I keep thinking, you know, like, you want this, the marketing campaign you could do right now, considering what this show is about.
00:11:47 ◼ ► Drop the first episode right now and then say the rest of it's coming this fall. Oh, well.
00:11:54 ◼ ► So again, if you don't remember, the conceit is that the Russians got to the moon first. That's where the show begins.
00:12:00 ◼ ► Yeah, and that's in the trailer. And so they keep, so the U.S. keeps stepping up the space race and the space race continues. And that's the story is what if the space race kept going?
00:12:11 ◼ ► Because like the ad you could do, like you could do an ad, like a TV ad that's like pretending to be some kind of like, oh, like we're at a great, imagine this, remember this great time? And then it shows like a Russian flag and it's like, oh, shock factor, right?
00:12:27 ◼ ► But like, you could do it now. Yeah. Yeah. It must be killing them that they can't do it.
00:12:33 ◼ ► Yeah. I've got to wonder if that was actually part of the original conception of the show was like, oh, this is perfect and we can get it out right around the 50th of the moon landing. And nope, not going to happen. Oh, well.
00:12:43 ◼ ► There is something that I noticed in these trailers that I haven't seen the wording before. Both of these trailers or these videos open with the phrasing an Apple original.
00:12:54 ◼ ► I've just not seen them call it that before. And it's also, I don't know why it's not Apple TV plus original, but like you do you. Right. It's interesting to me, right. That they're not, I know it's all coming from the same company, but Apple TV plus is the only place you can get this content.
00:13:15 ◼ ► So why is it not an Apple TV plus original? I know that's not as nice to say, but it would look fine and you'd get the logo more, but you know, whatever. But yeah, I agree. Like, oh, what a shame they can't have this go up now. They should just publish the first episode on YouTube. Like, I know. Just do it. I know. Just do it.
00:13:32 ◼ ► Whatever. Nevermind. Netflix have seen a drop in subscribers after price increases. So they had an earnings call. That's talking about earnings calls for streaming services is not a thing I want to do a lot.
00:13:45 ◼ ► But there are a few things in this particular quarterly earnings for Netflix, which are interesting considering everything we've been speaking about this month.
00:13:53 ◼ ► So they lost 130,000 subscribers in the US and missed their international targets by 2 million, which is very big. This is their first decline in eight years.
00:14:04 ◼ ► The last time that Netflix had a subscriber decline was Quickster when they tried to split the company in half, which was hilarious. It's like such a blunder from them.
00:14:13 ◼ ► This does mean that they have 151 million paying subscribers right now, which is a lot of people. They are blaming a weaker content slate during the quarter as the reason, but they also put up their prices during this time. So it's a bit of both, I think.
00:14:32 ◼ ► They have forecast huge gains for Q3, 800,000 new subscribers in the US and 6.2 million internationally. I mean, that seems great. It means they would fix what they missed, but that seems incredibly aggressive considering they just missed out on this quarter.
00:14:48 ◼ ► But one of the reasons I wanted to bring this up is they are specifically asked about Friends in the Office, which we know shows that they're losing. Netflix is saying they're trying to kind of brush this off by saying it will give them more budget for original shows, which is fine, but you could find that budget elsewhere, surely.
00:15:10 ◼ ► And they also said, "From what we've seen in the past, when we dropped strong catalog content, our members shift over to enjoying our other great content." They also said that no single show makes up for more than a single percentage of their overall viewing.
00:15:24 ◼ ► Yeah, I get it. I mean, I think there's truth in that. They've probably done some research about what happens when a viewer of a catalog show drops off and how do their viewing habits change. I mean, they've got data scientists. I'm sure that they've done the analysis of what happens.
00:15:52 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, I think there's truth in it, but I think there's also the fact that they probably shift over to other Netflix content and reduce the amount of hours they're using Netflix, which in the long run, as long as they keep paying, is okay.
00:16:07 ◼ ► But it does decrease the perceived value of Netflix. I still think it's sort of Netflix's game here. They've got this huge catalog. Even when they lose parts of it, they're number one in streaming.
00:16:20 ◼ ► But let's keep in mind, they missed. By the way, I love that the weaker content slate. They're basically throwing up the stuff in the last three months under the proverbial bus.
00:16:32 ◼ ► Which is why I thought that was a crazy thing to say. Blame it on putting the prices up. Just blame it on that. You have a good excuse.
00:16:40 ◼ ► Yeah, but they want to justify the prices going up. They don't want to do that, so they just kind of blame the content. But the next content apparently is going to be great.
00:16:50 ◼ ► Yeah, so there's that. Also, let's remember to keep in mind, they missed their target, they lost subscribers, they claim they're going to make it up, but their strategy has been a growth strategy.
00:17:06 ◼ ► Netflix's strategy is to spend huge amounts of money, which they borrow. I mean, they're going into debt, spending billions on content because--
00:17:13 ◼ ► They do, like, $4 billion a year in revenue, a quarter or something in revenue, which does not seem like enough.
00:17:20 ◼ ► Yeah, so they're borrowing money in order to get audience acquisition, because the idea is that the Netflix--and it's worked for the most part.
00:17:29 ◼ ► They have a huge subscriber base, people who are giving them money. And the idea is, over the long run, those people are going to give them a huge amount of money,
00:17:36 ◼ ► and they need to fill the catalog with stuff that they control for that moment that's about to come when all the stuff's going to drop off the catalog from other people,
00:17:45 ◼ ► and the competition's going to be out there. And they've done a pretty good job, but I think what's interesting is this sign of weakness is happening now,
00:17:53 ◼ ► when the big competition hasn't started yet. And it makes me--you know, I'm not saying that Netflix is going to go down.
00:18:01 ◼ ► I'm saying that Netflix is showing weakness before Disney comes in, before HBO Max comes in and--
00:18:13 ◼ ► Yeah, and so this--they are--what this--when I walk away, because I'm not making charts about Netflix earnings or anything like that,
00:18:19 ◼ ► but I look at this and I think, this is vulnerability from number one in a way that we didn't really maybe expect to see it so soon,
00:18:30 ◼ ► and we know that the competition is about to get a lot stiffer, and their catalog is going to get a lot thinner.
00:18:47 ◼ ► I don't think they're going to fall apart or anything like that, but I do think there's a question, also in the long run,
00:18:57 ◼ ► Once they've reached a point where they're not growing as much, are they going to have to scale back their content,
00:19:03 ◼ ► So, fascinating to see the weakness of Netflix now before the Disney service has even come in.
00:19:09 ◼ ► Yeah, they didn't need this right now, because I can't imagine the rest of their year going much better for them.
00:19:22 ◼ ► BritBox, we spoke about this a while ago. BBC and ITV's joint subscription service, which is something that's in the US,
00:19:29 ◼ ► it is going to be coming to the UK. They have announced the joint streaming service will be launching in Q4 of this year for £5.99 a month.
00:19:39 ◼ ► It will show current and classic content. Basically, you get stuff with no ads, that's current,
00:19:55 ◼ ► Yeah, we talked about this when it launched in the US, and I know you had your skepticism there, but you were really wondering about the UK.
00:20:04 ◼ ► Yeah, so here it is, where the current stuff is going to be just, you know, you get it with no ads,
00:20:15 ◼ ► And, you know, what this is, and it's in the name, but especially for people in the UK, what this is, is people don't buy DVDs anymore.
00:20:29 ◼ ► And this is BBC and ITV, and apparently they're talking to other broadcasters in the UK, talking to Channel 4 about this.
00:20:35 ◼ ► But, you know, I think having competition for Netflix and Amazon in the UK, and having BBC and ITV do this with some of their stuff,
00:20:45 ◼ ► like, we'll see how it goes. I do think that I believe the premise, which is people don't buy DVDs anymore, so what do you do instead?
00:20:53 ◼ ► And the answer is, well, this is the stuff we used to sell on DVD, and now we're going to put it on a streaming service.
00:21:06 ◼ ► But BBC, where they share in the US, or in North America, because it's in Canada too, they're going to, like, ITV is basically running it.
00:21:18 ◼ ► Because they're a public broadcaster, and there's a lot of stuff that just goes on iPlayer.
00:21:21 ◼ ► And my impression is, this is another collection of stuff, and it's the stuff that's not on iPlayer, and it's not licensed,
00:21:28 ◼ ► and the only way it used to go out was basically by selling Blu-rays or DVDs of this stuff, and those sales are mostly down.
00:21:36 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm skeptical about this one. Like, I don't think that this is close to Netflix value.
00:21:44 ◼ ► Yeah, oh, and it makes more sense in North America in a way, because then it's like, look at all this great British content that you don't know about or can't get.
00:21:53 ◼ ► But in the UK, it's sort of just like, ITV and the BBC have decided, well, we don't really want to take money from Netflix if we can take money directly from the consumers, so we're going to build our own thing.
00:22:03 ◼ ► It is the equivalent in some ways of what's happening in the US, where people are saying, why are we giving this to Netflix and Amazon?
00:22:11 ◼ ► We should set up our own thing. But whether it'll work in the UK market remains to be seen.
00:22:17 ◼ ► Yeah, I think one of the bigger problems is that all of the new stuff, which is the stuff people will probably want more, you can watch for free.
00:22:24 ◼ ► Like, especially the BBC stuff. There are no ads, so what… that doesn't make any sense.
00:22:31 ◼ ► I wonder if they will do originals too, which is not something… BritBox has been a catalogue thing, but would they try to do some original programming?
00:22:43 ◼ ► Well, that's it. Like, if ITV is going to pay for a show, they're probably going to want to show it on ITV.
00:22:48 ◼ ► Yeah. This one's a big question mark for me. I can see why they're doing it, because it's probably not going to cost them a lot to try, because they already have an existing business.
00:22:58 ◼ ► And if it's anything like BritBox in the US or in North America, it is a place for the catalogue, and anything that is expensive and high profile is not on BritBox in the US. It's on Netflix or Amazon.
00:23:14 ◼ ► I can imagine people signing up for a week or two to watch a show that they want to watch, right?
00:23:20 ◼ ► Because then you pay like £6 and you get the back catalogue of The Office and you watch it and you're done. And that's it.
00:23:27 ◼ ► But, I don't know. We'll see. I'm going to keep my eye on this one. One of the reasons I want to talk about it is because it's finally something outside of the US.
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00:25:25 ◼ ► Apple may be expanding into exclusive podcasts according to Bloomberg. They published a report saying that they are reaching out to various media and podcasting companies about creating content that will be exclusive to Apple podcasts.
00:25:41 ◼ ► Quote from the Bloomberg report, "Apple has yet to outline a clear strategy, but has said it plans to pursue the kind of deals that it didn't make before." So this is something like we're seeing, we were talking about this just a couple of weeks ago.
00:25:56 ◼ ► What incentive does Apple have to do this? Like Spotify, we believe, and it seems pretty clear, I mean they've said it actually, they're doing this because of music royalties. Their music royalties are too high because they have to keep paying out.
00:26:12 ◼ ► So they want to get some content that is either their own or they're buying in and then they can have it forever and they can even make money on it, right, if it's advertising focused, which it still can be if they want to. And then they have people in their platform giving them money, spending time on the system, and they're not having to pay royalties on that content.
00:26:31 ◼ ► So they create exclusive shows to try and bring more people into the platform, etc, etc. Apple's not doing it this way, in theory. They don't charge for Apple podcasts as it is right now.
00:26:43 ◼ ► I mean, we can get into podcast plus in a second, but like just like on the face of it, the incentive seems very different to other companies that are doing this kind of thing, right?
00:26:54 ◼ ► Apple don't need to claim market share either because they have half of the market to themselves. So what is the incentive?
00:27:01 ◼ ► I'm not sure they're losing a lot. I mean, Apple's percentage share is going down because there are other companies like Spotify pushing up, but I'm not sure that that's actually Apple losing people.
00:27:12 ◼ ► Apple, you know, probably still growing, but also the total pie is growing a little bit faster.
00:27:19 ◼ ► I do think, you know, you could make the argument that even though Apple's got separate apps, every minute listened to podcasts on an Apple device is a minute not listened to Apple music.
00:27:29 ◼ ► And so there might be some savings just in having the percentage of time people listen to Apple music be a little bit less.
00:27:36 ◼ ► The difference there is, of course, that if you're not listening to Apple music as much, you might feel like the perceived value of Apple music goes down.
00:27:43 ◼ ► And you might lose some customers if they're really into podcasts and they don't need music. I don't know if that's plausible or not.
00:27:49 ◼ ► What is indisputable is that Apple has a huge amount of leverage here because they have the most popular podcast app.
00:27:54 ◼ ► And they have up to now not done anything with that leverage, right? Like they are a tiny group inside of Apple, but a huge presence in the podcast world.
00:28:06 ◼ ► And they haven't taken advantage of their directory or their app or their market share.
00:28:12 ◼ ► Right? Like let's remove from our typical thinking, right? If there is advertising, which is happening more and more, right, for podcasts, people say, they print it on billboards, they put it in newspaper ads, find it on Apple podcast.
00:28:36 ◼ ► And I think so if we talk about the incentive, I think the incentive probably starts with somebody saying, look, we have this huge power base in this market and have done nothing in the 14 years that we've basically been ruling podcasting.
00:28:59 ◼ ► And now you're seeing money pour in from all these other players trying to mess it up, trying to take away some of our advantage.
00:29:10 ◼ ► So whether we're playing defense or whether we just think that there's a missed opportunity here, you know, I could see somebody inside Apple saying, you're investing what in television where you have no leverage?
00:29:21 ◼ ► And we are the big fish in podcasting and all these other people are investing. Spotify is spending half a billion dollars on podcast stuff.
00:29:43 ◼ ► It could simply be accumulative to something like Apple Music, where there's a few there's either audio content that's actually in Apple Music or it's in the podcast app too.
00:29:56 ◼ ► They could do that or and I say this because we keep not believing that they're going to add more more services to their menu and they're going to start bundling things together.
00:30:14 ◼ ► But I think in the end it comes down to those two things, which is we have a lot of power in this market that we have not exerted.
00:30:23 ◼ ► And somebody with probably a business degree inside Apple making the case, why are we not investing in this when we have so much potential return because of our position of power?
00:30:34 ◼ ► And also like you have a huge market share in a growing business that you have to you're doing not you on the scale of things compared to other companies have to do nothing to keep.
00:30:51 ◼ ► People keep talking about podcasting and there are always these stories about like, is it a bubble or is it has its moment passed?
00:30:58 ◼ ► But all the stats suggest that this is it's a little bit like saying, oh, the web it's going to go away.
00:31:06 ◼ ► It's like, no, this is a long term move to on demand audio where it's going to continue pulling people away from things like radio for things like podcasts and audiobooks.
00:31:17 ◼ ► And there's a huge it's an under monetized business, as you know, like when you do the analysis of who's listening digital advertising in general has dramatically lagged.
00:31:27 ◼ ► It's popularity and and it takes a long time to catch up and podcasts are on the upswing.
00:31:33 ◼ ► So you look at your Apple and you're like, we rule this market and we're making no money from it beyond the ancillary benefits of having podcasts be something that makes people love using their iPhones or whatever.
00:32:04 ◼ ► And I think that's I think that's an interesting question because I don't think there's a one right answer that obviously pops out.
00:32:19 ◼ ► Like that they have another they have another service that you pay for and you get content.
00:32:33 ◼ ► And like that was one where everyone was like, oh, yeah, they're going to do the Apple news thing, but you'll get it as part of a bundle.
00:32:46 ◼ ► I still think there will be. But it will that that service will be available would have been available for like six months on its own for not really much.
00:33:03 ◼ ► And I don't remember where I saw it or heard it about like they could really do a good job in creating the watch along podcasts of the TV shows that they're making.
00:33:33 ◼ ► You could, although I keep thinking, you know, that would also be a video program you could put on Apple TV plus that.
00:33:43 ◼ ► And yeah, that that could be that's not something people are going to pay for, but that would be promotional material that they could use.
00:33:52 ◼ ► You're right, though, like news news plus gives me pause that maybe Apple's strategy is they want everything to be its own service.
00:34:17 ◼ ► One of the differences between podcasts and news is that news didn't require Apple to give anybody any money.
00:34:28 ◼ ► But a podcast because of it, they're more like TV in that sense of like you need people to make them if they're going to be exclusive to you.
00:34:45 ◼ ► Yeah. And as we talked about when we were talking about Luminary, especially, but also Spotify, there is a challenge of bringing anything behind a paywall.
00:35:00 ◼ ► Like if you drag a popular show behind a paywall, they may write you a big check, but you're going to lose a huge chunk of your audience.
00:35:14 ◼ ► But like your audience growth over time is going to be severely restricted because people aren't going to be able to discover your show anymore unless they're a paid member of a very specific service.
00:35:25 ◼ ► And your merch sales are going to go down because you've got fewer fans, even though you're getting paid a lot from the service and your live tour is not going to sell out because you've lost a lot of people who don't listen now that you're charging for your content.
00:35:44 ◼ ► Most well-known people already have that are already cashing in and being being paid or having big advertising things.
00:35:59 ◼ ► It's like we're going to make new podcasts that are going to be buzz worthy and people are going to talk about.
00:36:08 ◼ ► And you know, I think it's not out of the realm of possibility that that's just what Apple wants is that they want to create some buzzy podcasts that live in in Apple podcasts and aren't available elsewhere.
00:36:18 ◼ ► I also wouldn't put it past them entirely, even though this goes against the whole idea of the services narrative, wouldn't put them past entirely entirely to just make some podcasts that are branded as Apple podcasts and put them in a podcast app and promote the podcast app.
00:36:33 ◼ ► And they could still be regular podcasts, but they'll use them to imply that they're best listened to in the podcast app.
00:36:56 ◼ ► But what I will say you so here's the thing when you were saying put it behind a paywall and we're talking about it right put it behind a paywall you lose your audience.
00:37:06 ◼ ► You don't pay and that's different because it's just it's a it's a Apple podcast exclusive.
00:37:11 ◼ ► Yeah and you could you could call Mark Maron and you could say Mark we're going to give you a bunch of money and you're exclusive to us now and why would Apple do it just because.
00:37:22 ◼ ► And they could do it with they could make different deals right they could take there's original content that could say make it for us.
00:37:30 ◼ ► There's existing podcast that you throw behind the wall that's not a paywall you say this is now an exclusive.
00:37:36 ◼ ► And you can also do another thing that a lot of these companies are doing which is the ancillary stuff which is you know.
00:37:42 ◼ ► Hey John August and Craig Mason what if we wrote you a big check to put script notes all the stuff that you're currently selling like to third to premium.
00:37:51 ◼ ► Patreons or whatever like we just want it on Apple podcast and they'll just all be there or your the Magic Tavern spinoff.
00:37:57 ◼ ► I know they've already got a deal with with spotter with the Earwolf and stitcher but like they could do there are lots of different deals that could be made here.
00:38:05 ◼ ► The question is like which ones are they going to do but I think you make a good point which is the business school person is not going to say let's give it away and it's just a podcast that anyone can get but you could say it's free.
00:38:16 ◼ ► But only in Apple podcast and what does that do it does not give you services revenue but it does make Apple podcast it provides a little bit of defense against people switching away from the podcast app if they're concerned about that.
00:38:31 ◼ ► Which is nice but yours now you're spending millions of dollars on something just to keep your app that already exists and I mean it is a platform thing because it's not available on Windows but it's not available on Android it's not available anywhere but on Apple stuff but still.
00:38:48 ◼ ► You're not directly generating any revenue from that and I I it could happen but I have a hard time seeing it because it is really hard to put down that lens of Apple wants to grow services revenue when you hear about them spending money on content.
00:39:13 ◼ ► Right they just put the money behind it they could that I wouldn't put it past them they've got them they've got all the money they've got huge dominance and and it what it does is it says I know Spotify wants you to listen to all your podcast and Spotify but you don't want to do that you want to listen to all your podcast where you are.
00:39:30 ◼ ► Let's not forget who that company is for a minute Apple and Spotify do not like each other and I wouldn't put it past them to just be like there is a side benefit of causing pain to Spotify.
00:39:43 ◼ ► Yeah yeah no that that would be part of the defense would really be you know you want to stay with you don't move all your podcast out of Apple podcast Spotify you want to stay here and here's another reason to stay here is that there's extras that you get that you don't get anywhere but in this app.
00:40:02 ◼ ► It is just going to be a shame to see non podcast podcast content more of it coming from Apple, especially because they have.
00:40:11 ◼ ► They you know they kind of helped kick the medium off and I've been very true to it over time they've never done anything really weird they still really like they accept like everything is based on RSS is nothing strange going on in Apple's app right like it's all RSS based.
00:40:37 ◼ ► Yeah because fundamentally if you can't paste a URL into a podcast app of your choice and listen to it it's not a podcast right it's premium audio content.
00:40:49 ◼ ► And it's not a podcast anymore and I know people roll their eyes at that when podcasters say it's not a podcast but like.
00:40:56 ◼ ► If you can't load a thing in a web browser that you choose it's not on the web and that's the point here is if you can only load it in an app.
00:41:12 ◼ ► And there is a difference in the open web the beauty of the open web is everybody puts their stuff on the web and you get a web browser and you pointed at that site and you can read it and it doesn't really matter with some exceptions that are going away generally doesn't really matter whether you use Safari or Chrome or Firefox or edge or anything else.
00:41:41 ◼ ► That's the only way it can be done you do lose something you lose choice as a consumer you lose like I've got everything else bookmarked.
00:41:50 ◼ ► But I can't bookmark you I've got to open this weird app in order to see your stuff and it's a.
00:41:57 ◼ ► That's not great and that that's why it's not a podcast if you if you do this it's something else it's audio content that's walled off in one app it's not open anymore it's you don't get to choose anymore and that you do lose something there and I think it's a shame.
00:42:10 ◼ ► And I think the truth is I mentioned this in my mackerel piece this week is the thing that I brought up I think two weeks ago which is like I'm subscribed to the sports like the athletic and they have podcast and their podcast I want to listen to and I never literally never listen to them.
00:42:24 ◼ ► Because they're not an overcast and I'm not interested in opening their app because I'm in the context of listen to a podcast so if you use Apple podcast this is great but as an overcast user I look at this and I'm like oh man I'm really gonna.
00:42:36 ◼ ► Open Apple podcast app every so often just to listen to their premium whatever probably not knowing my track record with other stuff that I get and I pay for that I don't bother listening to because it's in the wrong context.
00:42:49 ◼ ► That would be the case here so but then again the flip side of that is the stickiness of it which is that again if you are an Apple podcast and you have these podcast you're not gonna leave.
00:42:59 ◼ ► I'm very intrigued to see what comes of this if anything if anything I think that the key point that you made earlier from Bloomberg article where they said Apple has yet to outline a clear strategy I chuckled at that because it's like.
00:43:12 ◼ ► That may mean Apple has no idea and it's just invest in like a call some guys up and see what it costs like see what it costs what would it cost to do it come back and that business school guy that we've invented who works somewhere at Apple he's got a tie.
00:43:27 ◼ ► And they tell him Jimmy go call Jimmy with the tie go call some people and find out what a podcast cost because you know we don't know so find out and then report back and then we'll see if we have a budget for this or not it may be something I mean that's a little bit ridiculous but like a scenario like that where they're just feeling it out.
00:43:44 ◼ ► And they don't really know and internally what they really want to do because the way the Bloomberg article is that it's very much investigatory now maybe they're playing it close to the best and I don't tell anybody what we're doing because that's Apple but I don't know just this little inkling from the way that's worried that like maybe Apple doesn't even know what.
00:44:01 ◼ ► I would expect it is incredibly early because I follow enough and pay attention to enough podcast industry trade press to know the podcast industry cannot keep their mouth shut any little thing that happens someone's telling someone it's like TV in that regard.
00:44:33 ◼ ► People will talk people talk quick they talk fast right like we all found out about the thing way before Spotify wanted to talk about it right like that there's a lot of that sort of stuff that it is an industry like a lot of the media industries where people have people people need their press contacts.
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00:45:36 ◼ ► Linode version four of Linode REST API is out of beta, and includes an officially supported Python command line interface as well. Linode hiring at the moment if you want to find out more about this go to linode.com/careers and you can check out exactly what they're looking for.
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00:46:44 ◼ ► Well, it's a dumb idea for the Summer of Fun. That's what it is. Summer of Fun. Don't do that. You're going to kill your voice.
00:46:51 ◼ ► Yeah, I was very upset today when I realized I couldn't give the Summer of Fun its full gusto.
00:46:57 ◼ ► It's true. It's true. I thought it would be fun on the Summer of Fun to do another draft or two.
00:47:05 ◼ ► There may yet be another one this summer. Who knows? Depending on who and when and where, but I thought since we do a bunch of upstream stuff, maybe we could do a streaming services draft with the idea there that you and I would try to imagine ourselves in the future, maybe a year from now, year and a half from now, end of 2020, let's say.
00:47:28 ◼ ► And try to imagine what streaming services we think are the most compelling just to give ourselves a little bit of a reference point of like what we personally as consumers will find the most interesting in terms of what's available out there for streaming services.
00:47:46 ◼ ► Things are going to change in the next few months, so we're going to kind of put this in the future, and it serves those two purposes of sort of like ranking sort of where we think these services will fall in a year, year and a half, as well as, you know, our personal preferences about what we find compelling in terms of streaming. Does that make sense?
00:48:14 ◼ ► Now, you've been very kind in giving me first pick, which I appreciate greatly, which is helpful to me because there is a selection. We have a list that we're picking from that Jason's put together.
00:48:25 ◼ ► There are streaming services in this list I've literally never heard of before, so maybe we can talk about some of those.
00:48:33 ◼ ► So we're imagining it's 2021, right? What streaming service do I think will be the most compelling?
00:48:40 ◼ ► It probably feels like an easy answer, but I was actually struggling to pick between two, but I am going to go with Disney+ as my top pick.
00:48:51 ◼ ► Right, so this is what I was thinking of. Now, the reason that I decided to put Disney+ over Netflix is honestly the price.
00:49:01 ◼ ► So Disney+ will be cheaper and their content offering is going to be very strong. We're presuming at this point that they will have some of their Marvel shows and some of their Star Wars shows, the original content that they're producing, will be available.
00:49:17 ◼ ► And I think people are going to want those, let alone just the movies or all of the incredible amount of content that Disney have been buying up over the last few years.
00:49:28 ◼ ► But I think the marketing push that they're going to have behind it with the content and the price, it's going to everyone's, I genuinely think the amount of people, like, you know how we feel like everyone you know subscribes to Netflix?
00:49:40 ◼ ► They're going to think everyone you know subscribes to Disney+ as well. It will just become one of the one or two services that most people want to have in their homes because it's Disney.
00:49:51 ◼ ► Disney own all the good stuff. So why would you not want it? They have all of the properties you love. They have all the properties your kids love, right? Like I think that's going to be a huge thing in families.
00:50:04 ◼ ► Disney+ has the content that kids want to see. And I think that that is going to be a massive boon for them, as well as all the other stuff that you're going to want.
00:50:12 ◼ ► And all the programming that's tailored to everybody. So I think Disney is going to, Disney knows what they have available to them and they decided to price it cheaply because they, I think they know if they do, they can capture everybody.
00:50:28 ◼ ► It's super compelling and let's not forget that at least for a little while it's going to be very, very cheap compared to other services. It's going to be like the cost of one of these add-on services that is just like, oh.
00:50:43 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean that's all of those services that are like, oh, we're not Netflix, just toss this one in. We're a bonus and you just add it in there.
00:50:51 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah. And the properties are amazing, right? Star Wars, Marvel, Disney, you even throw in like National Geographic in there, which has a lot of great nature content and science content.
00:51:03 ◼ ► It's awfully compelling. And the difference between this and some of the other services from the big players is that Disney has been working up to this for a few years now.
00:51:14 ◼ ► They've known that this was going to be their strategy, whereas your NBC universals and your Warner Media's HBO Max's, boy, you know, they seem to have gotten the message that this was the strategy much more recently.
00:51:30 ◼ ► And it will take them much longer to unravel all of their deals that they made, like Harry Potter is going to be at NBC Universal, even though Warner owns it, until 2025.
00:51:44 ◼ ► Okay, that's bad and there's nothing they can do about it, so they're going to have to wait that out.
00:51:48 ◼ ► And also they've got to crank up, as we've seen watching Apple do this, their development of original material.
00:51:56 ◼ ► Like you can't just flip a switch and have a whole catalog of originals rolling out onto your network or your service.
00:52:04 ◼ ► It takes years, you know, it takes more than a year really to make deals or put shows in development and then get them ready to go and ready to roll out.
00:52:20 ◼ ► And that's why I think we all expect that that service is going to be way more fully formed, not 100%, they've still got some deals that have to lapse, but way more fully formed than maybe HBO Max and whatever NBC Universal does.
00:52:34 ◼ ► And it is also worth noting, we're talking about 2021 here, Disney+ will be worldwide by the end of 2021.
00:52:40 ◼ ► A lot of these other services probably won't be. And when we're looking at what is the strongest, what is the most popular streaming service by the end of that time period, that puts Disney at an advantage.
00:52:52 ◼ ► Because we'll talk about HBO Max I'm sure shortly, they have no word on international rollout.
00:52:59 ◼ ► And I mean, it's going to take Disney some time, but they're going to do it. And I think that's going to make a big difference.
00:53:06 ◼ ► Yeah, Joe and our friend Joe Steele, who is responsible for the downgrade episode, by the way, just going to mention that again, asked if the goal is to make a popular list or a profitable list.
00:53:16 ◼ ► And yeah, profits, I mean, as Netflix has shown us, profits is not what we're looking at here.
00:53:26 ◼ ► And if somebody else takes one, then we don't get to subscribe to that one, which has the effect of it being popularity or whatever, like appeal, however you want to put it.
00:53:35 ◼ ► In the end, we're going to get a rank list of appeal here. And Disney+ is going to be at the top, which is very interesting.
00:53:45 ◼ ► And so I'm going to take it. And it is, as I said earlier, right? Like, they're showing signs of being a little bit shaky.
00:53:54 ◼ ► This is why I didn't pick it, because I like the, I love Netflix's original stuff, but I love a lot of their catalog stuff.
00:54:07 ◼ ► Like, I'm going to keep it because I love their originals, right? And I'm sure they're just going to keep building on those.
00:54:27 ◼ ► Also, I am less a catalog viewer of Netflix than I am of originals, so it doesn't bother me as much.
00:54:33 ◼ ► But I will say this. I think it is going to be overstated about how much catalog content Netflix is going to lose.
00:55:12 ◼ ► Like, there are people who make money, people who made the show or starred in the show, make money based on the sales price.
00:55:19 ◼ ► Of the licensing. And so they can't write themselves a check for $5 and be like, "Haha, we bought it for $5."
00:55:31 ◼ ► And while they'll bite the bullet on something like Friends or The Office in the case of Warner and NBC,
00:55:39 ◼ ► because it's super high-profile and very popular and they want it as a major part of their assets of their new thing,
00:55:47 ◼ ► there's going to be a lot of stuff that they own, that Warner owns or NBC owns, that they're going to put out,
00:55:54 ◼ ► and Netflix is going to be like, "We have such scale that this is worth $50 million to us."
00:56:16 ◼ ► But I do think that they have been playing this game the longest, and they've got great originals.
00:56:22 ◼ ► And while they are hurting from losing a lot of catalog stuff as well as deals with places like Marvel,
00:56:34 ◼ ► And I think that they—I think, as much as we talked about them having a little wobble here,
00:56:39 ◼ ► I think they're going to go into this fall and next year being more motivated than ever by the competition.
00:57:12 ◼ ► You live in a magical American location, enclave inside of London, where the Upgrade podcast lives.
00:57:28 ◼ ► I mean, even if you don't even think about the fact that it's WarnerMedia and what that will mean eventually,
00:57:33 ◼ ► I'm talking like just HBO, you know, like some of the best TV shows ever made, HBO shows.
00:57:53 ◼ ► So I think that it's going to continue to be good for them, especially like Game of Thrones and all that kind of stuff.
00:58:01 ◼ ► They continue to build good properties that they have available to them and having those catalog shows available is great.
00:58:06 ◼ ► But having access to the overall WarnerMedia catalog over time, because we spoke about this, they won't get all of it.
00:58:37 ◼ ► HBO is a very strong brand, which is why Warner is putting all of their weight behind the HBO brand.
00:58:52 ◼ ► I think they are doing the right things, but they're going to be hamstrung for a while by bad decisions made by the previous management and the previous owners.
00:59:03 ◼ ► But I do think that they are so strong and they have the wherewithal to really make something compelling.
00:59:12 ◼ ► And their catalog is going to be really solid as somebody who's an HBO subscriber already.
00:59:16 ◼ ► That's a great place to build from, and then you pour in content from all the other ancillary stuff that's owned by Warner now.
00:59:28 ◼ ► I like how you are putting your bets down for the new stuff, which is leaving me to pick the guys who have been doing this for a while and have been playing this game.
00:59:53 ◼ ► But I think Amazon is aware that this is a period where everything's in flux and it's all to play for, and that they're better positioned than anyone but Netflix right now.
01:00:07 ◼ ► So I think, and we've seen it in, what was it, a year, year and a half ago, where Jeff Bezos basically said, "I want the next Game of Thrones."
01:00:15 ◼ ► I spend a lot of money to, and they did with the Lord of the Rings thing, but they're spending a lot of money to try to find blockbusters.
01:00:28 ◼ ► And they've got new leadership there. They fired their old management. They've got new leadership in place.
01:00:37 ◼ ► We'll see what they come up with, but I think the next year or two, we're going to see the fruits of what they've been doing at Prime Video.
01:00:50 ◼ ► Also a threat, right? Which is, the threat here is that these other companies are going to come in and kind of elbow them and they're going to end up sort of like fourth or fifth place.
01:00:58 ◼ ► And so for both reasons, I think Amazon is going to be, they're going to try to shine in the next year or two.
01:01:12 ◼ ► It has the possibility to be like, "Hey, you like Game of Thrones, right? We have a show that's kind of like that."
01:01:21 ◼ ► Yeah, Warner Media is going to have a show that actually is that when they do the spinoff, but until then.
01:01:28 ◼ ► I know, but until then. Yeah, but you can have more dragons. Everyone likes more dragons in their life, right? Isn't that a thing?
01:01:49 ◼ ► I think the good thing about Hulu, they're going to go international, right? Which they've not done before.
01:01:54 ◼ ► They still have content that people want to see and Disney's going to fill it full of stuff that's for adults.
01:02:15 ◼ ► It gets all of the, so John Landgraf is the guy who runs the FX networks, which is, you know, obviously formally owned by Fox, now owned by Disney.
01:02:29 ◼ ► And they, he's basically in charge of that part of the business, which I think is going to be feeding Hulu as well.
01:02:38 ◼ ► And I think Hulu is going to be a really, you know, it's going to slough off, it's sort of like we're reruns of shows that are on broadcast.
01:02:45 ◼ ► And Disney is going to make a big investment to turn it into the streaming service for stuff that is not fitting with the Disney+ brand.
01:03:02 ◼ ► I think that the kind of content that John Landgraf has done at FX could translate to a really compelling, fun streaming service with Hulu.
01:03:11 ◼ ► But I think, you know, Disney and they do have international aims for that service, but they've got to get it up and running, you know, and change it over in America first too.
01:03:20 ◼ ► But yeah, it's funny, I think there are shows that like, so like Adina has been trying to watch the show Rami.
01:03:31 ◼ ► Yeah, because it's a Hulu original, right? And they haven't sold it in the UK to anybody.
01:03:35 ◼ ► It may be, and that may be a sign, right, that they've decided to hold back on some of this stuff because they want to do, they're going to launch Hulu in the UK.
01:03:54 ◼ ► We'll just hold on to it and then, and then it's it for people in the US who have Hulu. It's a, it's a good, it's a good little comedy in the, this whole line of sort of comedies from people who didn't used to get to make TV shows with their perspective on life.
01:04:08 ◼ ► It's, it's a, it's a guy in New Jersey who's a Muslim and he is kind of like trying to figure out ways of living his life between being devout and also being a modern dude who's dating and it's a good, it's good. It's a good show. It's very good.
01:04:23 ◼ ► I saw, I got a story, Myke, I got a story a little, little, and this is actually news related. I'll throw it out here, which is something funny happened this week.
01:04:31 ◼ ► There's a TV show. There's a sitcom called AP bio on NBC broadcast network and they did two seasons. It was a very low rated show. They did two seasons of it.
01:04:42 ◼ ► Uh, Patton Oswalt is in it and they canceled it and Patton Oswalt started this whole like save AP bio thing as you do whenever anybody has a show canceled, they try to get it saved somewhere because it worked for Brooklyn nine nine.
01:04:56 ◼ ► That's like, yeah, and it worked for the expanse and it worked for star Trek, right? Literally people have been saving shows for 50 years now.
01:05:03 ◼ ► Uh, it all, but with social media and stuff, it always happens. Somebody loses the show. There is a campaign. It usually goes nowhere. Sometimes it goes somewhere and with all these streaming services around, there's like more places.
01:05:14 ◼ ► It's not just like maybe another network will want it. Now it's like, maybe Amazon can save it. Maybe Netflix can save it, whatever.
01:05:20 ◼ ► So they, they did this save AP bio thing, but something really funny happened, which is this week, the forthcoming untitled NBC universal streaming service. Oh, let's call it NBC plus.
01:05:35 ◼ ► NBC max, NBC big, NBC good, NBC plus, uh, they picked up season three of AP bio now and they said that they had to, they're going to have to renegotiate the contracts because the contracts all lapsed.
01:05:52 ◼ ► There's a, the way TV contracts work is beyond a certain date. Uh, all the actors and stuff are like let out of their deals and they can go find other work. Um, but before a certain pickup date, you know, they have to make themselves available to work the next year on the next season.
01:06:06 ◼ ► That's sort of how those contracts work and those all lapsed, but they, uh, the, the cast seems to be inclined to sign new deals and come back and they're going to bring it back. And, um, okay.
01:06:19 ◼ ► So I have, I have two, I have two things I want to mention about this story that I find bizarre. Um, one of which is, uh, NBC makes the show with Lorne Michaels, uh, Broadway video.
01:06:36 ◼ ► It aired on the NBC broadcast network. NBC canceled it and then a month or two later, NBC's own streaming service saved it from cancellation. Okay.
01:07:02 ◼ ► So what you're saying is you let all the contracts lapse and then somebody in some other building somewhere at NBC was like, Oh, I like that show.
01:07:16 ◼ ► Like you canceled it and now you're bringing it back and you waited so long that you have to make new deals with all of the actors.
01:07:24 ◼ ► It's weird. And I'll throw another piece on, on, on, on this story, which is, um, according to the news story I read, it was their best performing digital show in season one and season two.
01:07:36 ◼ ► It was their second best performing digital show behind Brooklyn nine nine, which had come over from Fox.
01:07:41 ◼ ► In other words, it got like an 0.5 rating on the network, but after a hundred days of streaming, its rating was like 5.6 or something, which is spectacularly good.
01:07:51 ◼ ► Actually, it is a, it shows that demographically and the key advertising demographic 18 to 35 year olds, it was actually pretty popular, but they weren't, but the 18 to 35 year olds weren't watching it on NBC.
01:08:05 ◼ ► Okay. Well that explains why NBC universal's untitled streaming service might want the show.
01:08:10 ◼ ► What it doesn't explain is why they canceled it and then sat there for two months and then brought it back.
01:08:16 ◼ ► So what I'm saying is maybe NBC universal is not being run really well right now. And that all said, I like that show and uh, I'm going to pick the NBC universal unnamed streaming service because who knows the office will be there, I guess.
01:08:34 ◼ ► Like NBC actually have some of the better comedy content for the age group of people that enjoy streaming services. Right. And then they also have a bunch of other good stuff to put. I mean, I don't know what's going to be in their catalog, right? Like will they get 30 rock?
01:08:56 ◼ ► And the office, right? Like I just figured like they haven't, they have pretty good comedy content and I think we'll do pretty good.
01:09:02 ◼ ► And they'll get the good place eventually at some point and they'll get parks and rec eventually. Probably like again, they're going to have to wait for the deals with Netflix to time out and grab them back and pay for them and all of that. Pay themselves for them.
01:09:15 ◼ ► Um, but yeah, yeah, I don't know. I think there's, I think there's a lot of good content at NBC. I'm not really sure they know what they're doing yet, but they don't. Uh, when I look at everything else that's on here, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to give, I'm going to give NBC universal a flyer.
01:09:32 ◼ ► They got a lot of content, not just on their broadcast network, but they also own a bunch of cable. So they got a lot of content there that they'll, that they'll roll in here.
01:09:40 ◼ ► Um, sci-fi channel, USA network. Those are all part of NBC universal. So they got a lot of other stuff too.
01:09:47 ◼ ► The remaining list includes some services I've heard of by name and services I've literally never heard of and sports option.
01:10:00 ◼ ► Um, if I'm picking for my own list, I don't know what to choose. If I'm picking for what I think will be popular, I'll pick ESPN plus because it's probably going to do pretty well.
01:10:11 ◼ ► Um, so let me just, I'm just going to say ESPN plus cause like why not merely to just bring up the fact that like, don't forget Disney has another one.
01:10:22 ◼ ► It's got cricket. It's got cricket in the US. It's got volleyball. It's got lots of, uh, my two favorite sports, cricket and volleyball.
01:10:29 ◼ ► As did you know, no, so you're, you're just loading up on Disney, which is, I think it does highlight Disney strategy here, which is they're doing three different streaming services.
01:10:36 ◼ ► Maybe they'll do a bundle at some point, but three different streaming services targeted at different audiences, different services, which none of these other companies can do.
01:10:45 ◼ ► No one else can manage that. And the idea is that they've got right now, they've got like, you know, four ESPN channels, three, four ESPN branded linear TV channels, and they still don't have enough.
01:10:57 ◼ ► Uh, space for all the content that they can get. So I think this ESPN plus is ultimately the future of ESPN. Like as linear becomes less important.
01:11:07 ◼ ► It would not surprise me if they start dropping linear channels, they ESPN, you and ESPN news go away.
01:11:13 ◼ ► Um, at some point when the, the dynamics of the, of the, the way that they get paid change, uh, or maybe they keep them forever, but like the future of the ESPN brand is probably in this service, which will increasingly accumulate sports content.
01:11:27 ◼ ► Right now. It's a lot of kind of edge cases. Like I said, I think cricket is on there. There are like smaller college basketball games and smaller college football games on there, but they've also done some interesting things like Wimbledon.
01:11:39 ◼ ► Hey Myke, I'm talking about something from London now, uh, Wimbledon. They had matches on ESPN and ESPN two, but there are a lot more matches that go on at Wimbledon.
01:11:50 ◼ ► There's, there's matches in the doubles. There's matches that are happening in other courts in the singles tournaments. And so what they did was they put matches on ESPN and ESPN two, all the other matches that were going on were on ESPN plus.
01:12:05 ◼ ► And I thought that's a good example of like, if you want to see that match that's on court two at Wimbledon, you can, but you have to watch ESPN plus.
01:12:13 ◼ ► And I know that ESPN doesn't get it, but it is like an example of something else that could work like this would be like the Olympics. Right. I know the NBC has the Olympics in the U S but, um, which interestingly, that could be good for NBC universal too.
01:12:26 ◼ ► If they keep the Olympics, I would not be surprised if that's exactly what they do is take a bunch of Olympic feeds and put them in their service.
01:12:35 ◼ ► Um, and, and, and, you know, they will put main stuff on NBC and on their NBC networks, but they will probably be like, do we really want to put the basketball on MSNBC or just put it on the streaming service and say, sign up for our streaming service to get it.
01:12:51 ◼ ► And, and if they launch it, I'll point out their plan is to launch it into this year, beginning of next year and the summer Olympics are next summer.
01:12:58 ◼ ► So, yeah. Yeah. I think, I think you make a good point. I'm going to, we're only picking eight, I guess. And you're already picking things that you don't even know.
01:13:08 ◼ ► Um, I am going there, there are a bunch of niche cable services, some of which have premium linear channels that they also are now trying to reposition into, uh, streaming services like Showtime and, uh, epics is a good example of that.
01:13:24 ◼ ► And stars is a good example of that. Um, I, well, okay, I'm a star Trek fan, so I'm going to pick CBS all access.
01:13:33 ◼ ► This is why I didn't pick it because I felt like it would be mean if I chose, cause this is one I've heard of, but like I never seen it and don't really care about star Trek. So it felt mean to pick it.
01:13:43 ◼ ► I'm tempted by acorn and Brit box, which are two competing British and European themed, um, or Commonwealth British Commonwealth and European channels where they get, they get, uh, it's not just UK stuff, but it's stuff from Ireland and Australia.
01:13:56 ◼ ► And, uh, sometimes from other parts of Europe, uh, with, uh, dubbing or mostly with subtitles, which is kind of fun because there's a lot of, you know, I was in visiting my friend, Anthony in the UK and he, he and his partner were watching a French detective series that they really like.
01:14:15 ◼ ► And I had a moment where I thought this is not available in America in any form, but it probably will be on one of these niche streaming services if it's not already.
01:14:27 ◼ ► And so I like those services. I'm not going to pick them here, but I think, I think there is a place for these, uh, smaller streaming services that are not fighting it out with the, the big ones and that they have lots of really good value.
01:14:40 ◼ ► Something like brick box, which has the whole doctor who catalog or acorn, which has some originals as well as a really good selection of, of, uh, of stuff from UK and Commonwealth and other parts of Europe.
01:14:52 ◼ ► But I pick CBS all access for two reasons. One is Star Trek in North America or in, no, in the U S it is where you get all the Star Trek.
01:15:00 ◼ ► All the original Star Trek that they're doing goes on CBS all access. So it's basically the Star Trek service for me. Great. And, um, I've actually come to find it valuable for some other stuff that's on CBS, the TV network, which I never want to watch as a network.
01:15:14 ◼ ► But because they own this, they put all their episodes of all their shows commercial free because I'm paying for the commercial free option.
01:15:22 ◼ ► And so basically if there's a show I watched on CBS, like survivor or the amazing race, or my daughter's watching a couple of things, their catalog is just their commercial free.
01:15:33 ◼ ► And so we watched survivor last year for the first time in many years. And we just watched the episodes when they dropped, when it was basically when they were broadcast, but we watched the commercial free versions that were on CBS all access.
01:15:43 ◼ ► It was a great bonus. So I think there's some value there. I think they're going to obviously need to step up their originals. And, um, what's ultimately going to happen if I'm forecasting out a year or two is the people who own CBS also own Viacom, which is like comedy central and a bunch of channels.
01:15:59 ◼ ► MTV, it feels that if they don't get bought by a larger company, at the very least, those two companies are going to get merged back together and CBS all access is going to either get that content or it's going to get transformed into a different name.
01:16:15 ◼ ► That's going to have all the CBS content and all the Paramount stuff and, uh, and MTV and comedy central. And it's all going to bulk up into something that's more compelling than maybe CBS is today.
01:16:27 ◼ ► And that leaves off Acorn, BritBox, Crackle, Criterion, Crunchyroll, Epics, Canopy, Showtime, Shudder, and Stars. By the way, if you like horror stuff, Shudder, there's a whole niche streaming service for people who are fans of horror. So that's pretty cool. I like that idea.
01:16:45 ◼ ► I'm surprised that there's not a, like a sci-fi niche streaming service, but there probably will be someday.
01:16:51 ◼ ► All right, let's do some hashtag, ask upgrade questions to round out today's episode. But before we do, let's thank our final sponsor and that is ExpressVPN.
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01:18:41 ◼ ► First one comes from Michael. Michael wants to know how many passes do you have in your wallet on iOS and have any passes fully replaced carrying the physical counterparts to them?
01:18:52 ◼ ► So I have four cards like debit credit cards in my wallet, but I don't think that's what they're asking.
01:18:59 ◼ ► But I do have those and no, I still carry my cards with me. And then I also have four passes.
01:19:05 ◼ ► I have something called Priority Pass, which is this like airport lounge thing that I got as a bonus of a credit card.
01:19:14 ◼ ► I have the Apple Business card. So you know, like if you have a business account with Apple, they give you a little QR code now that you can scan so you don't need to give them all of your details every time.
01:19:26 ◼ ► I have one flight like airline company thing, you know, like a rewards thing from an air miles thing.
01:19:40 ◼ ► It is a, it's an event, you will probably see me sharing pictures of these ones where they recreate a movie and you go and experience it.
01:19:48 ◼ ► So I've done like Back to the Future and Star Wars. They're doing Casino Royale and we're going later this year.
01:19:58 ◼ ► And the two of them, I don't have physical cards for, so I guess in the Priority Pass one, I never actually use it.
01:20:06 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't do public transit anymore. Although the buses that I used to take, I think still have not been upgraded.
01:20:20 ◼ ► I think it's like the Tube in London. I think they're just doing Apple Pay from a credit card.
01:20:26 ◼ ► I do have one non-credit card pass in my iOS and watchOS and it's ChargePoint, which is a electric car charger network.
01:20:42 ◼ ► So if I go to Target and want to park my car in the electric car space and charge it while I'm there, they give you a free hour or two of charging while you're at Target.
01:20:53 ◼ ► But you still have to tap with your account. And I can do that with my phone or my watch.
01:20:58 ◼ ► And instead of like running a card or something, most of those services have like a little card with a swipe or with an NFC in it, but ChargePoint already has it as a pass.
01:21:08 ◼ ► But most of my wallet is still like scanning stuff. I would love for there to be more NFC stuff.
01:21:15 ◼ ► I'm excited, by the way, about shortcuts letting you read NFC stickers in iOS 13. That's going to be fun.
01:21:23 ◼ ► But right now my wallet is mostly populated with things like plane tickets and baseball tickets because all the baseball stuff has really moved.
01:21:32 ◼ ► A lot of the sporting event stuff has moved to away from paper tickets to digital tickets.
01:21:41 ◼ ► I delete all my tickets because I hate how busy it gets. I wished that there was an archive.
01:21:46 ◼ ► I agree with you. I wish it was a little bit easier to delete them in mass. And also I wish that there was an archive.
01:21:53 ◼ ► I did take a screenshot of my World Series ticket just in case I lose it, but I have not lost it yet.
01:21:58 ◼ ► It's still in there even though it's almost five years ago. Well, you know, that would be just terrible.
01:22:04 ◼ ► But instead I look at it and I smile every now and then. It's like World Series, game five. It's like, yay, that's fun.
01:22:16 ◼ ► Tim wants to know, Myke, what are your thoughts on American breakfast? And Jason, what are your thoughts on English breakfasts?
01:22:28 ◼ ► And specifically that seem to only really well popularized by American breakfast, pancakes and waffles and French toast and stuff like that.
01:22:36 ◼ ► I mean, brunch food really is what I like the most. And I think the Americans do that better than anybody else.
01:22:42 ◼ ► Nice. I love English breakfast. You get some English breakfast tea. You got some eggs. You got some sausage or some streaky bacon.
01:22:51 ◼ ► Or another kind of bacon that tastes good that they call bacon that isn't quite our bacon, but it's still good.
01:22:56 ◼ ► It might have a potato. It might have a potato of some sort, a little potato triangle or potato blob of some kind.
01:23:05 ◼ ► I like all that cooked potato stuff. And then there's like tomatoes and I'm not interested in those at all.
01:23:10 ◼ ► Big thumbs down. Beans is weird because that is not a breakfast food here, although it's the same food.
01:23:15 ◼ ► But you know what? Beans are good. I like beans. I'll eat them in the morning. I don't care. I just don't want your tomatoes.
01:23:20 ◼ ► Tomatoes are breakfast. I mean, I reject tomatoes anyway. Why do you have to ruin a perfectly good breakfast with tomatoes?
01:23:26 ◼ ► Thumbs down on that. Oh yeah, the fried bread is good. See, this is the sad thing about breakfast that I've realized in the last few months.
01:23:31 ◼ ► Because for those who didn't listen to that John Syracuse episode back a while ago, I can't eat stuff with gluten in it anymore.
01:23:38 ◼ ► I am officially off of gluten forever of my life. And that means that breakfast is way harder than it used to be because so much of breakfast is breads.
01:23:55 ◼ ► Right. So when we were in Boston for Dan's wedding, we went to a diner and I found out that the one thing that makes me happy that's a traditional breakfast food that I can still get very easily is eggs.
01:24:07 ◼ ► So give me like two eggs scrambled with some bacon. I can't have the toast sadly, but I could have like bacon or sausage or something like that and some tea and I'm happy.
01:24:17 ◼ ► So yeah, breakfast is good. And oatmeal. I like oatmeal too, but that's not that's just a breakfast that you can have. Scottish.
01:24:24 ◼ ► Steven says, "I got an Apple TV 4K last November and I like it. What do you think the upgrade cycle is for this product? It seems like Apple has been updating the hardware every few years."
01:24:33 ◼ ► Ah, I feel like Apple only updates that hardware when it absolutely needs to. So they gave it that 4K HDR upgrade and it supports all the 4K HDR Dolby Atmos, all of that.
01:24:43 ◼ ► So I'm not sure why they need to upgrade it again. Right. Like it seems it's actually seems over engineered. Right.
01:24:57 ◼ ► That's true too. That's true. I feel like it's more likely that they would make a new product that was that was just a cheaper version of the old product that they specked down that that they would spec it up again.
01:25:09 ◼ ► I think it's an over engineered overpriced product and they'll probably just let it sit there for a long time. And the truth is it doesn't matter.
01:25:22 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah, it's I think so. I think it's going to take some huge standards thing unless they have a serious problem with performance where people are trying to run games on it or something and it's not working.
01:25:31 ◼ ► But it seems really over engineered for that kind of stuff for the kind of stuff you do on that device on device. So I just can't see it.
01:25:39 ◼ ► I think it's just going to be with us for a long time. Jose wants to know what is the one feature or use case that will help me decide between whether I buy an iPad Air or an 11 inch iPad Pro.
01:25:48 ◼ ► I was struggling with this one other than to say that I like the new pencil a lot better than the old pencil. But there's got to be more than that. Do you have any thoughts about this one?
01:26:05 ◼ ► I know that it's not necessarily compelling for everybody. But the 11 inch iPad Air I think is one of the most beautiful products Apple has ever made.
01:26:15 ◼ ► So if that is important to you, it is thin and light, which is really good. It is powerful. It is going to run a lot of the iOS 13 stuff better.
01:26:25 ◼ ► Those are kind of your typical things. It really does depend on what you're using your iPad for, honestly.
01:26:33 ◼ ► But if you are thinking it's a device that you want to do some like you want to maybe try and just work stuff on, then maybe look at the Pro. If not, maybe look at the Air.
01:26:42 ◼ ► But if you want to do art stuff, the Apple Pencil, the improvements to the Apple Pencil are so huge for the iPad Pro for the new one than it was for the iPad Air.
01:26:52 ◼ ► I feel like it's just not, with the new Air and the Pro, the differences are not as stark as they used to be. Because there's a pencil, but it's not as good. There's a keyboard, but it's not quite as good.
01:27:07 ◼ ► You have to be a heavy user of one of the new features. Or like one of the differences, right? The differences as you say.
01:27:17 ◼ ► Yes. If you think you're going to be a heavy user in one of those areas, then go for the Pro. Otherwise go for the Air.
01:27:25 ◼ ► Like, you go for the Pro if you think you're going to be a heavy user of one of the things that it does better than a MacBook Air would.
01:27:35 ◼ ► "Now that you prefer mechanical watches to the Apple Watch, which mechanical watches are you shopping for now and/or which mechanical watches would you recommend?"
01:27:44 ◼ ► I would like to recommend a brand that I enjoy. I have one of their watches and I'm going to add another one to my collection at some point in this year called Farrer.
01:27:51 ◼ ► F-A-R-E-R. They are a British brand. And I think that from design and price, they're one of the more interesting brands that I've found.
01:28:03 ◼ ► And Marco agrees with me. So, like, I felt good about that when I found them. I was like, "What do you think about this company?"
01:28:13 ◼ ► Marco is obviously my watch guru, right? So, I would recommend them. They have, like, one of their watches that I wear.
01:28:22 ◼ ► The watch that I have of theirs that I wear a lot, which I really, really love. It is called the Pendine and it's a chronograph quartz watch and it costs £500.
01:28:34 ◼ ► So, it's not cheap, right? But it's not big watch expensive and I think that for the price, it is beautiful and I love it very much.
01:28:43 ◼ ► So, I recommend them as a really interesting company to look at if you are interested in this type of stuff.
01:28:50 ◼ ► In regards to other watches, like, I always have my sights set high on something but there's nothing in my near future right now.
01:28:59 ◼ ► There's a lot of mechanical watch talk right now because they've been talking about the Moon Watch for the Moon landing anniversary.
01:29:06 ◼ ► That the only officially approved watch for outer space use is the Omega Speedmaster, where they wore on, like, Gemini and Ed White wore it on his spacewalk and then they took it to the Moon.
01:29:21 ◼ ► The problem with it is that it is just a giant, many-faced, clunky thing that even as somebody who does own a few, like, I own a couple of mechanical watches as well as my Apple Watch.
01:29:32 ◼ ► Like, this kind of watch, the, you know, lots of features, big, heavy, aviator, astronaut watch has never really appealed to me.
01:29:41 ◼ ► But people have been talking about it, which I think is kind of fun, and pointing out that this is a product from 50 years ago that is still available, which is not going to be the case with computer watches.
01:29:54 ◼ ► Max Dood asks, "With iPadOS, can I now get playback speed control in YouTube via Safari? This is a key factor in me not buying an iPad."
01:30:12 ◼ ► If you, when you're watching a video, there's like some buttons at the top, I think, like you press like a three-dot button and you get speed controls. Like, it's in there. You can do it.
01:30:19 ◼ ► It's not as easy to find, but it's something you can do. But if you're watching Safari, yes, you now can get access to all of the standard controls because of Safari's desktop browsing stuff.
01:30:29 ◼ ► All right, that about does it for this week's episode, which is just in time, because I'm losing my voice again.