Streaming winners & losers of 2022: Netflix, HBO Max, Disney Plus, and more

The Verge's Alex Cranz, Nilay Patel, and Charles Pulliam-Moore focus on the big streaming services — Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime, Peacock, Paramount Plus — and discuss which are the winners and losers are for this year. Email us at [email protected] or call the hotline at 866-VERGE11, we'd love to hear from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Alex Cranz?

  You're listening to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Go90 scale of Doom streaming services. I'm your friend Alex Cranz, and you notice that David's not here because this is the first episode of the Wednesday show that I'm taking over while David is out caring for that absolutely adorable baby he and his wife just had. We're gonna have a really fun time over the next few weeks, and we're gonna have a bunch of Verge staff on the show to talk about all kinds of stuff. And I will try not to have an e-ink segment every week, but I will not promise to not have an e-ink segment every week. Anyway, this episode is a really fun one because we're gonna be talking about all the big streaming services. I mean Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney Plus, Peacock, Paramount

• 0:47Alex Cranz?

  Plus, Amazon Prime, all of them. And we're gonna think about who are the winners and who are the losers. And to do this, I of course have brought in our Verge editor in chief, Neelai Patel, and our film and TV reporter, Charles Pulliam Moore, to go through each and every one of these streaming companies and discuss how they were handled in 2022. Buckle in for this one. I made people talk to me about this for over an hour. It's a lot of fun, but I'm gonna go walk my dog now, so I'll see you guys in a minute.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:49Alex Cranz?

  All right, and we're back. I got Neelai here, who is the streaming expert at The Verge.

• 2:55Nilay Patel?

  Is that true?

• 2:56Alex Cranz?

  I mean, we can say it is. No one's here to stop us. And I have Charles Pullman Moore here, who is our other streaming expert at The Verge.

• 3:02Nilay Patel?

  I think he should stop us from saying that I'm the expert. I think Charles is the expert.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  I think we all have a little bit of expertise when it comes to the different platforms.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  Fair enough.

• 3:11Alex Cranz?

  And we're going to talk about the winners and losers of streaming this year. I know I have my opinions. I know Charles has his opinions. Some of them are very wrong.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 3:20Alex Cranz?

  Charles, I saw your notes here about Paramount Plus, and I had to like, had to take a moment. It's fine.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  I'm very glad that you are watching Paramount Plus and keeping them afloat with your Star Trek love. Well done, well done.

• 3:32Alex Cranz?

  It's all me.

• 3:33Nilay Patel?

  Well, there's also the cowboy people. We got it. Well, we'll get there.

• 3:35Alex Cranz?

  We'll get there. We'll get there. We'll get there. Let's not get too far ahead. But so we're going to be going through the winners and losers. And first up, we're going to talk about the biggest winner, the biggest loser, just the biggest, right? Which is Netflix.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, that like, you know, the OG player in this space who taught everybody that streaming was a real business that everyone needed to get very serious about. And, you know, Netflix has just always been the bellwether that everyone has looked to. And in this year of everyone sort of realizing that burning cash, you can't just do it indefinitely. Like Netflix sort of being the one who taught everyone that that's how you run this business, had to pump the brakes and be like, you guys, since these subscriber rates have sort of flattened and slowed down, perhaps we need to cap our spending.

• 4:18Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, cuz they spent a lot of money this year.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  They spent, you know, seventeen billion dollars, which is both like an ungodly amount of money, but it's also sort of like that is how Netflix is able to be Netflix, right? It's like, let's throw cash at this problem as much as we possibly can, so much so that you can't possibly believe it. And that leads to, you know, the content gets made, subscribers come on. But eventually, you do sort of have to look at the bottom line. Netflix in particular has realized like, look, there's a certain degree to it, shooting yourself in the foot this way can be beneficial if you're looking sort of down the road. But at some point, you do have to talk to yourself in rather realistic terms. Like, my foot isn't gonna keep regrowing back, you guys. We gotta sort of staunch the bleeding. And everyone else who has sort of followed in Netflix's footsteps,

• 5:05Speaker 03

  looking at Netflix's example, has recognized like, oh, if we do everything that Netflix does, we will also sort of be in the same position, but not necessarily have that same market share. So, you know, since Netflix has sort of put out that call, rather, put out that message to its investors, we are capping our spending. All of the other streamers have been like, we are also going to start capping our spending. We're also gonna start trying to get more value out of, out of our wares by just, you know, squeezing them a little bit tighter.

• 5:34Alex Cranz?

  Let's talk about that, like, the capping, the spending thing there, because Netflix capped its spending, and I feel like everybody in the industry was kind of like, this is the death of Netflix. Like, like, it just went from like zero to everything's ruined really, really quickly.

• 5:49Nilay Patel?

  There's like a thing here that we should just, for one second, highlight, which is this is the first time Netflix has faced real competition. Right? So that crazy curve where they were burning cash or burning money, they were doing anything to get on people's TVs. They were chasing what you might call a monopoly position, for sure. And they achieved that position, right? If, if you walked up to a random person and had to guess what they subscribed to. Netflix would be the best bet.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:20Nilay Patel?

  In every single case. Everyone has a Netflix subscription.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:23Nilay Patel?

  That is a very difficult thing to achieve and Netflix more or less achieved it. They're like out of people to get to subscribe to Netflix.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  Right. And it's like, we, we can joke about it, but like Netflix, it's, it's funny during To Do, To Do, whenever, when Netflix starts talking about its presence like globally and sort of like all the inroads that it's made in other countries, it's often easy to sort of gloss over like Netflix is that girl. Like Netflix is the one who is sort of in this space launching international hits. Like Disney Plus, Amazon Prime, they don't have like a Squid Game, right? Which is to say, they don't have programming that is not explicitly Western focused, that still manages to take over everything and sort of be in everyone's minds and sort of own that mind share.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  And so while the $17 billion spend is wild, it has also paid off for them in a way that is undeniable. That being said, this is the cost that comes with sort of being the trendsetter, sort of laying the blueprint for everyone else. It makes it easier for everyone else to sort of catch up to you. Not necessarily get to your same level, but sort of recreate your success to a certain extent, enough so that you can become the kind of competition that scares Netflix into, not necessarily scares, but gooses them into thinking, well, we have to think a little bit more strategically about how we're gonna maintain our position and sort of stave the, like keep the competition out from being able to really steal our lunch.

• 7:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Two things. One, I feel as though I have to disclose that I'm the EP of a Netflix show called Key Trouble. We should go watch Netflix. It's great. And also our company makes shows for every one of these streaming platforms. So take, go watch all the Vox Media shows on every platform. It's great. Two, I think the really interesting thing about that competition moment is Netflix, even just last week, Reed Hastings was at the Dealbook conference that I was at, and he was like, our competition is everything. It's video games, it's the other streamers, it's TikTok, it's YouTube.

• 8:17Nilay Patel?

  They think about their opportunity is, you know, the hours in the day that you are watching something, that you're looking at a screen. They've kind of solved this problem by just throwing money at it. If you push the button on your remote, Netflix is going to show you oceans of content. I think when we go talk about the other streamers, they have solved this problem by saying, here's the best thing you should watch.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  That, I think, is where the real end of Netflix stuff came from, right? The strategy has shifted, and now Netflix is going to spend less money, which means they're going to have to make harder decisions about what they spend money on, which just changes the dynamic for everybody.

• 8:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, we've all had that experience where you turn on Netflix and it's like, I want to watch something. What am I going to watch? And you're like, well, there's so much. There's so much. Their UI does, none of the UIs are particularly good about, like, discovery, but nothing about Netflix in particular lends itself to giving you a sense of what you're going to be in for. And, you know, we live in the age of decision paralysis, which I'd be very curious to hear what kind of internal conversations Netflix has had about, like, we need to, we need to make it easier for people to sort of want to try our things out without necessarily thinking that they need to have the, you know, to go watch a show from beginning to end without any kind of interruption. I think it's really telling that we've gotten into a space where all of the streamers like to brag about hours watched for something like that's sort of become the default metric that they use to

• 9:37Speaker 03

  tout the success of a particular thing. A metric that means nothing to regular people, right? Like, oh, like, X billion people watched X hours of show. Like, that means nothing to me as a regular watcher who tries to stay away from, like, that superfan investment, like, rah rah, like, let's cheer for the multi-billion dollar company. But I do think that it is reflective of what you were saying earlier, that these companies are starting to be a little bit more transparent about what success looks like to them internally, right? It isn't necessarily, obviously, they all love it when they get nominated for awards, right? Like, I'm sure Hulu was overjoyed that the dropout, not swept, but really sort of.

• 10:17Alex Cranz?

  Cleaned up.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, cleaned up. But at the end of the day, like, what they're really concerned about is, is this a part of your, is this a part of your daily consumption habit? Like, are you, do you wake up and just reflexively turn the television on, put something on, and then just let it go for the rest of the day? Because that's kind of sort of what they all want.

• 10:34Alex Cranz?

  No, because after three episodes, it'll ask if you're still watching.

• 10:37Nilay Patel?

  Netflix did fine, right? Are they the winner? Are they the loser? Like, who knows? But the underlying dynamic that got expressed that Netflix got hit by hardest is you have to make a case for people to spend money on you every month. And if people aren't hitting that button on their remote every day or every couple of days, because you're just going to give them something, then your other option is to make hits. And hits are just way harder. And where Netflix has had hits is in stuff that has generated a lot of controversy, right? The Chappelle specials or stuff that has gone viral on other platforms for reasons no one could predict. Like, we are in the middle of the weird Goth resurgence around Wednesday,

• 11:22Nilay Patel?

  which is a former guyliner boy. It's very confusing to me all around. Like, everyone is just, like, cosplaying my teens right now. I don't quite understand it. But it's weird, right? Netflix doesn't have that marketing prowess that the HBOs of the world do. They don't create cultural moments because they just release everything as a binge. So then Wednesday gets completely decontextualized into a Lady Gaga remix video, which is great. Like, I'm not knocking it at all. It's just, that wasn't the plan, right? It just happened to them.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  That all speaks to how, like, Netflix has sort of just become terrestrial TV for a lot of people, even though we are paying a premium for it. I think it's more akin to terrestrial TV than to basic cable, like the basic cable that we grew up with, in that it is sort of the expectation that you're going to have a Netflix subscription just so that you can participate in, you know, the discourse about a Wednesday, the discourse. I'm thinking way back to, like, the early hits that Netflix had, like, The Orange is the New Black. It was just sort of the thing that you talked about. But this is the downside to being the big fish in the pond, right? Eventually, people stop thinking about you as that young upstart that's doing bold, ambitious, I'm thinking again of Orange is the New Black things, things versus this sort of state,

• 12:37Speaker 03

  safe bets that draw their success from controversy, like Chappelle. Ted Sarandos coming out and being like, "We're gonna keep greenlighting Chappelle specials until people stop watching them," says to me, like, "Oh, like, that's not, that's not the position of an executive who's confident in the studio's ability to create, to create up on its own exactly." It really, that to me does say, like, "Well, that's safe." It doesn't telegraph strength to me.

• 13:05Alex Cranz?

  We've seen that too with how Netflix has been very eager to like watch Disney go on this IP binging and just buy up all the different IPs and Paramount's done it and HBO's done it and Amazon Prime has done it. Everybody's done it and Netflix kind of got left out in the cold. And so they're like, okay, we need, we need IP too. And so like Addams Family, Wednesday would not be a success, probably if it didn't have that Addams Family IP attached to it. If it was just about a weird goth girl going to her school with her werewolf friends.

• 13:33Nilay Patel?

  Look, the world needs more original IP about young goth teens and their werewolf friends, just in general. And I don't know why we got away from it. And I think we should go back.

• 13:44Alex Cranz?

  But like you've seen it even happen on Netflix itself. It's done similar shows that just haven't had that same reach. And because there was that, that IP connection, we've seen it with The Witcher. That's like their big IP bend. Their only success in, in creating their own IP has really been Stranger Things and to an extent Squid Game, right?

• 14:03Nilay Patel?

  Well, no. So Bridgerton is huge.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  People loved Ozark.

• 14:06Alex Cranz?

  But Bridgerton was based on a very successful series of romance novels that have been out for years. And I guess the other one you said Ozark, that's a fair, that's a fair one.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  In, in the grand scheme of like winners and there's just Netflix is fine, right? Like Netflix, all, all of the calls like, ah, Netflix is doomed. Like everyone, everyone likes that narrative because it's fun, right? In the same way that it's fun that Netflix has a show, two shows, excuse me, about Blockbuster. Everyone gets like a little bit of a thrill out of like, oh, is Netflix finally going to fall off the throne? Maybe. But like, this isn't the year for it exactly. Like if and when we do see them really sort of take a tumble, it's not probably going to be like a very dramatic and immediate thing. It is just going to be a slow win win of the market share that comes, you know, as a function of the competition just being stronger and smarter.

• 14:51Alex Cranz?

  Okay. So if we had to say Netflix was a winner or loser?

• 14:54Nilay Patel?

  No, we got to do this first cast style. Go 90 scale of Doom streaming services. Okay. Zero is alive.

• 15:00Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 15:01Nilay Patel?

  And 90 is dead. In honor of Go 90, the streaming service from Verizon, which honestly Verizon was like, here's what you want to do. You want a YouTube where you join a gang? That was basically their pitch for it. Bundled on your mid-range Android phone. So zero is alive, 90 is dead. I'm putting Netflix, like Netflix was flatly at zero, right? For a long time. I'll put them at like five.

• 15:22Alex Cranz?

  I'm gonna put them at three unless they cancel a show I'm really into right now, in which case 90.

• 15:28Nilay Patel?

  If Netflix cancels a show that a fanbase is into, they're like 90 immediately.

• 15:32Alex Cranz?

  Immediately.

• 15:33Nilay Patel?

  Doom saying is out of control. My argument for five is like, they've never faced competition like this, and they are reorienting the company. They're rolling out ads. They're doing all this stuff that is unproven. So there's an element of risk to Netflix that has not existed before, which takes them to five.

• 15:50Alex Cranz?

  All right, I'm at five asterix 90 if they cancel Warrior None. Charles, where are you?

• 15:57Speaker 03

  I think they're at like a two. I think, I think, I'm trying to, I'm trying to, weirdly, my mind immediately went to like, at what point in House of the Dragon, right? At what point, like King Viserys is like decrepitness in Netflix right now?

• 16:13Speaker 03

  And I think it's still like early in the season, right? Like, there's just maybe like a little pockmark, just one or two.

• 16:18Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see. Wow. So in a long enough timeline, every streaming service.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Oh, and a long enough timeline, just face falling off, right?

• 16:26Nilay Patel?

  Fair enough. By the way, this thing about the scale is really funny, because if I had said 10 first, all of you would have both said five. But I said five, so you're like two and three.

• 16:33Alex Cranz?

  Two and three.

• 16:34Nilay Patel?

  This is like, this is how you mess with the numbers. I'm just letting you know. You do anchoring. It's like a real thing. All right, both five. That's what we're saying for Netflix. Five, two, three. Okay.

• 16:43Alex Cranz?

  Let's talk about one that is like probably closer to the 90 side right now. HBO Max.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  Speaking of Game of Thrones.

• 16:51Alex Cranz?

  Slash Discovery. You have it here. So Charles worked a lot on the rundown for this episode. Charles, you have the two kind of bundled together.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  So like, in my mind, HBO Max and Discovery Plus are still two separate entities. Like, I get that internally, Warner Brothers Discovery is like, these two things are soon to be merged and be called Max. And if and when, like, when I can download.

• 17:13Nilay Patel?

  Death, that, that, just stop it. Everybody stop it.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  When I can download Max, the app from the App Store onto my, onto my TV and onto my phone, then I will officially be like, all right, the merger is done.

• 17:26Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying there are people in this world named Max, including one that I am very responsible for, and I think they're all mad.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  Congratulations on Max's new app. That's gonna be great.

• 17:37Alex Cranz?

  They had a year, right? Like, like David Zaslove, finally, they finished the merger of the companies, not, obviously, of the apps. They finished the merger, David Zaslove came on. He originally did that kind of tour. He went and talked to a lot of execs, a lot of people in the industry, and was like, hey, I'm just a cool guy here to make some cool content.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Emphasis on content.

• 17:57Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. And then, and then things got a little messy.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, if you call like the Raising of Villages and Assaulting of Earth messy, sure. You know, there were just lots of big fires everywhere with HBO this year. I mean, I think we all sort of remember the famous like, oh, like, things are just disappearing from HBO Max, left and right. What's, what's going on? Oh, Batgirl's not gonna come out. It's done, but like, we're not gonna release it because it would be prudent for us to just take the tax write-off rather than sully HBO Max's good name by putting out this, you know, this...

• 18:30Alex Cranz?

  Mediocre.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Apparently. We'll never know. But I mean, like, when people look back on 2022 for HBO Max and Discovery, it will be the year that David Zaslove came in and started to clean up house under the auspices of getting the company on track to be more financially solvent, right? More into the business of putting out movies for theatrical releases that then have pretty sizable theatrical windows before they eventually make the jump to the streaming services months after. And a lot of that was course correction from 2021, right? That those halcyon days of the pandemic where people could not, right, right? When people were not going to movie theaters, right? And the studios were verklempt and unsure what to do. And the old guard was like, put it all on Max.

• 19:14Nilay Patel?

  Well, they were not necessarily the old guard. Like, we can't talk about HBO Max and what is happening to it now without talking about the fact that AT&T bought this whole company, had no idea what to do with it. Their entire theory of buying this company was, we're gonna preload Warner Brothers content on AT&T phones. Like, that's what they wanted to do. Like if you bought an Android phone from AT&T, they were gonna preload it with apps that delivered like byte-sized versions of Game of Thrones to you. And that's why you would buy AT&T phones over Verizon phones. I cannot even believe that I am saying this. Like hundreds, thousands of richly paid executives and consultants came up with this

• 19:59Nilay Patel?

  plan that just saying out loud to the Vergecast audience plainly, I know what people are doing. They're crashing their cars and jumping off bridges because it's so stupid. But this was their plan, was that they would differentiate AT&T's network by having Warner Brothers content. Yeah. Which is a plan that has failed every single fucking time anyone has ever tried it. Do you know who else tried to, AOL tried to do that with Warner Brothers content. Does anyone know who owns AOL now? Like, no. It's a disaster. And so they spent all this money, they hired Jason Kilar to come in and like be the head of the studio. And he wasn't like, I'm afraid of what's happening with pandemic audiences.

• 20:40Nilay Patel?

  He said, I'm pulling the lever on streaming as hard as I can, using the opportunity that pandemic, screw you theater, screw you Hollywood, A-list talent that has backend deals to get profit from theater revenue, all that stuff. He just said, screw it, the pandemic is an excuse. And basically broke the studio. Whatever Zaz is doing now, it seems like he is being very harsh. I don't disagree. I just like what he was handed, what he bought was a disaster of AT&T's making. And like, I don't think that there's a way out of that disaster without the perception of harshness.

• 21:16Speaker 03

  So like, I'm looking at this from the perspective of a consumer, right? Like, for a hot second there, HBO Max was sort of the awkward, late-to-the-game sibling. Everyone's like, well, what is HBO Max supposed to be exactly? What is my interest in this outside of watching things that are just gonna be on HBO? And for a while, HBO Max sort of was coming into its own as having, having interesting content, having rather interesting original content and interesting original series, as well as like the established HBO brand. But then they were getting all of these, you know, blockbuster Movies immediately on to the platform. And from the consumer perspective, like that was the dream, right? It was like, look, I will pay a premium. I will pay like a premium premium, even if, even if we weren't necessarily dealing with the pandemic.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  If the studios are like, hey, welcome to our app. Pay us anywhere between thirty to sixty dollars to watch the movie that is in the theater right now. Watch it here on the app. People have been wanting something like that for the longest time. And HBO Max, you know, through all of these, you know, all, all of the, the situation was able to give people something like that. And because all of these platforms, not just the platforms, but the companies that own them are constantly paying attention to one another. For a few months, there was the dream, like, is this going to be the direction that they all go in? Are they all going to start prioritizing streaming in this way? Because they understand that that's where eyeballs are. Were we going to be on the precipice of a sea change where people just weren't flocking to theaters the way that they used to?

• 22:43Speaker 03

  Which is why you saw, you know, last year, the year before, this really big push for the sentimental appeals to theater going like, hey, you guys, movies are where we fall in love and where we discover ourselves. And it's like, funny, look, I know you want to sell this popcorn, but you got to calm down with all that because it's doing a lot. It's doing a lot.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  But now, you know, you know, Zazlov comes in and he is a businessman, right? You are right. He's looking at this like, yeah, we're not, we're not going to be solvent if we keep moving like this. And so his plan, as best as we can tell from looking from the outside in, has really just been to cut spend, to cut spend in the long term. In the short term, that looks like, all right, we need to free up space on the platform for cheaper content that we are going to eventually start producing for Max in the future. You can have your feelings about whether or not the clearing of house could have been done in a more judicious and quiet and less sort of like bombastic kind of way.

• 23:45Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they were pulling stuff off, a lot of animated shows I know got pulled with the, the creators not even knowing about it. And suddenly there's like just zero way to watch their, their shows they, they worked on.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  And that's why, not that I'm coming out as a defender of Zaslav, but like, when you look at everything that he's done on paper, you can see what he's doing. He's trying, he's trying, he's trying to save money. The issue and the reason that people have begun to look at Zaslav and WBD in such a dim light is just because of his methodology, right? Just because there does seem to be a lack of care and attention being paid to the fact that, you know, these, the content is the work of artists and creatives, some of whom this is their life's work, right? And it is, it's disheartening to see your baby sort of just like thrown off the ship in the name of, you know, in the bottom line.

• 24:34Alex Cranz?

  Buried in the vault, never to be seen unless he has to pay the IRS back.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  The winnowing of Max also came, again, not to bring it back to award season, but it came, it came in a year where HBO had a really strong showing throughout award season, you know? Succession, Hacks, Euphoria, The White Lotus, they were nominated, they were winning these awards and it, you know, did sort of play into this idea like, oh, HBO Max, you know, to what you were saying earlier, HBO Max isn't just a streaming platform, it's a streaming platform that's putting out really good content, things that people like, things that fans like, critics like, it's something that's actually worth the investment of your time and energy. And then to see the platform just having an axe taken to it, it really sort of felt like, ah, why would you do this? Like, why would you do it, especially since you've gotten the platform in such a healthy, good, productive space at this point?

• 25:23Nilay Patel?

  But there's two parts to that, which I think are fascinating. One, if you had to ask me what I would cut down to right now, I would pick HBO Max.

• 25:31Alex Cranz?

  Right, same.

• 25:32Nilay Patel?

  What is most consistently winning an hour of my evening? It's HBO Max, right? It just has some of the most interesting stuff on it. If I had to pick two, it'd be HBO Max and Netflix for sure. But if you had to just ask me, like, you get one, I'd probably pick HBO Max, just because I could mine the archive of movies and be happy for a long time.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:48Nilay Patel?

  But that's HBO. I think what, what got the whole platform kind of sideways is they added in all this other stuff, including the noise of Warner and DC and HBO itself, the thing that makes really good TV shows. Just had to like, carry the weight of the, like, they're not cutting a bunch of HBO content. They're cutting a bunch of like Warner Brothers movies and animated series stuff that like, makes no sense. And now they're gonna like, smash it together with Max and add a bunch of reality TV stuff and like, TLC stuff.

• 26:21Alex Cranz?

  Well, they've already started adding it, right? Like, we saw all, you know, they bragged about how Chip and Joanne Gaines' new special about rebuilding a castle in Waco, Texas, was one of the most watched things on HBO Max this year. Like, they're already testing it and pushing that stuff.

• 26:38Nilay Patel?

  One thing that is true about this entire conversation is that there's no accounting for taste. And so like, you can say whatever you want, and then you look at the most popular lists, and it's always just the craziest garbage is the most pop- like, The Big Bang Theory was the most popular show in America for years running.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. And Zaslav is very transparent. He's like, "Look, you can have your critical darlings, and you can have your little Emmys, but so long as the kids are tuning into Chip and Go Joanne Gaines, we're going to be greenlighting more of it." And while we can have our feelings about that, like, a business perspective, that is a smart kind of move. Now, I would also be curious to hear from anyone within HBO, or rather, from WBD, like, how much does the prestige perception matter to the company, right? Like, arguably, part of HBO Max's success was the fact that it was able to ride the HBO brand and sort of, like, HBO as a brand is one of these like, intergenerational names that really just sort of consistently

• 27:35Speaker 03

  means quality to people within like, the entertainment space. And to see the direction that the company is turning towards with Max, I wonder whether or not, like, obviously, we've heard rumblings, like, "Oh, there's gonna be like, an HBO hub within Max where you can go for, for your White Lotus." But is the company concerned about people just seeing Max as like, the least imaginably named of the service?

• 27:59Nilay Patel?

  It was a great name for a little girl. I just wanna put that out there. It's a horrible name for a streaming service. Four years ago was a killer name for our daughter.

• 28:08Alex Cranz?

  Extremely good name for a kid.

• 28:10Nilay Patel?

  So I think one of the things here is like, I don't know that this is true, but I know this is the theory, is that allowing HBO to become a tile inside of a Mac, an app called Max, allows HBO to maintain its brand. The same way that allowing Lucasfilm or Marvel to be tiles in Disney+ allow them to be somewhat distinct. But the Halo brand there is Disney. And here the Halo brand is Max. And I just, and also like, the feelings you get from Marvel are close enough to the feelings you get from Lucasfilm, are close enough to the feelings you get from Pixar. Like Disney makes a thing that is expressed through these gigantic franchises.

• 28:50Nilay Patel?

  The feelings you get from the White Lotus should not be the feelings you get from Chip and Joanna Gaines. But like, that's the problem, right? There's a, there's an emotional and creative mismatch between the tiles inside of the forthcoming Max app.

• 29:05Alex Cranz?

  I love to rip on Zaslov because I think a lot of what he's done has not been done delicately enough. And he could have, he could have saved people a lot of heartaches with better communication and things. But he is a TV guy. He's like a terrestrial TV guy. Like, he, he turned Discovery from this little tiny, like, random assortment of the Learning Channel and these other things into Discovery, which is kind of a behemoth in the cable space now. And, and his plan is to do the same here. He, he, he knows that like, brands matter, and he knows that, he knows how people watch TV, I think is the, the most crucial thing here. And his kind of bet is that people are moving from terrestrial TV. They're gonna move to just paying companies directly, instead of paying their cable operators,

• 29:50Alex Cranz?

  instead of watching stuff and, and sitting through ads. And so, his bet is like, I'm gonna build the new terrestrial TV, and you're gonna give all of your money to me, because I'm gonna have Discovery, and I'm gonna have HBO, and I'm gonna have your little superheroes over here. And I know he talks about them that way. He says they're the little superheroes.

• 30:10Nilay Patel?

  Little baby Batmans. Go 90 scale time. So technically, HBO Max is at 90. This is gone. We already know it's gone.

• 30:19Alex Cranz?

  Well, it's technically at 89. It's at like 89.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  Until it's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. It's not a 90, but it's packing up.

• 30:29Nilay Patel?

  It's looking for the door. I checked out. It has senioritis.

• 30:32Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 30:32Nilay Patel?

  And so is Discovery. I start every new streaming service out at 45, 50 50 shot. So I would say Max, the new service has a 50 50 shot at 45.

• 30:41Alex Cranz?

  I'm like a 20.

• 30:42Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Really?

• 30:43Alex Cranz?

  Again, I dislike Zaslav, but he's a business guy and he knows how to get people's eyeballs on stuff.

• 30:50Nilay Patel?

  I've decided to be a Zaslav apologist. I know Charles was like dancing around like full on like do it slash and burn. Let's see what happens. Everyone's too polite. Do some Elon stuff.

• 31:00Alex Cranz?

  Like, I think if he, I think if he can separate it enough and be like, yeah, I'm gonna have, I'm still gonna have my HBO section over here. So you want to go do some artsy shit that'll win you some awards, you go hit up my HBO guy. But you want to make some money? I'm over here with Chip and Joanne.

• 31:16Speaker 03

  So if we're starting at like a baseline of 45, I put it at like a 60.

• 31:21Alex Cranz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  I think that we are at a point where there is fatigue amongst consumers for signing up for these things. I do think, I think realistically, there is a degree to which people are kind of tired of being sold on the idea of new subscription platforms. And that there is, at least I'm speaking, I'm speaking to my own experience. I'm very comfortable with the subscriptions that I have and the idea of getting logged in into a new thing really does kind of fill me with a, an existential dread that I don't think is unique. But yeah, Zaslav, he's not, if he were canceling successful HBO shows left and right, then yeah, the future would look pretty bleak. But as it stands now, while our faves may be getting the acts, like the things that people are watching on the platform, they are performing very well.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  And he's made clear his intention to make more of it. So will Max at least be around for five years? Probably.

• 32:10Nilay Patel?

  I can't wait for us to spend 15 minutes on Peacock. But we've like in our feelings on Netflix and HBO Max and like, we have to get to Peacock still.

• 32:21Alex Cranz?

  Okay, we're gonna get back to Peacock and Disney Plus and more, but first we're gonna take a break. We'll be right back.

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• 33:42Alex Cranz?

  Okay, we're back. All right, Neelai, Charles, let's talk about one more big behemoth in the room. Disney Plus. Big year this year. Obviously, the end of this year has been huge for them. Chatpick is out, Iger is back. And Iger has been pretty vocal about what he wanted to see from the platform, I think, especially at Recode earlier this year. Or at Code Conference earlier this year. So what's going on there? Like, how are we feeling about Disney Plus right now? Before we get to the ratings, the scores.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  I mean, from a content perspective, I think that Disney Plus, it's the best example of a studio having that vertical system in place. It's like, hey, here's our thing, and we filled it with all of our stuff that you love so much. Won't you come pay us a premium for it? Of course you will. You love us. And it has proven consistently to just sort of be the dream from that perspective. But obviously, it's not necessarily the content. It's not. It doesn't have the same kind of Subscriber rates that it wants. That being said, I in in being sort of like, hey, we are the home for Disney things. It in my mind has always sort of been like, it's the Disney one, right? The selection is less diverse in terms of what it is that you can get when you open up the app.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  And while that is definitely a feature rather than a bug, I think for a lot of people, it does just like compare it to the other ones. It just makes it look like like a less dynamic kind of space in the grand picture of things we would.

• 35:08Alex Cranz?

  Here's my question. If you didn't have a small child or you didn't watch a lot of Star Wars and Willow, everybody should watch it. It's great. But you didn't have that kind of like that nerd gene and you didn't have a child.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  Do you have a plus subscription?

• 35:24Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Do you have one? And I don't think you do, right?

• 35:27Speaker 03

  I mean, unless you're really, really, really into The Simpsons, I guess, but I think you can get on Hulu.

• 35:30Alex Cranz?

  But then you're a nerd. Like, if you're that into The Simpsons, you're a nerd.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  A comedy nerd. But yeah, this speaks to Disney's larger plan for things. It's like, we need to become a part of like their emotional DNA so that everyone has an into Disney. Like, that is sort of the galaxy brain brilliance of Disney, right? It's like, we live inside you. You can't get away from it. Right? And you are going to pay us to feel good about our existence. Don't question it. And so with that in mind, like Disney Plus sort of, that is sort of like the the underlay trick of Disney Plus. I think you'd be hard pressed to find people who are completely outside of that, which is sort of what they're banking on. But you're right, like, there isn't a lot, at least here in the US, right?

• 36:14Speaker 03

  There isn't a lot on Disney Plus that would necessarily appeal to Disney adults and, you know, those a few step from proper Disney adult status.

• 36:23Nilay Patel?

  Wait, hold on. This is the generation gap here is real. I encourage you all to live with a small child. Disney Plus is on in our house every single day.

• 36:32Alex Cranz?

  Well, yeah, because you got a kid.

• 36:33Nilay Patel?

  Right. I'm just saying, like, between Bluey and Encanto.

• 36:36Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's what we pay the money. I do the math almost every day of like, could I buy this archive? And just have it versus paying the money a month and Disney, because it's like three things. And there's the promise there will be more things. The math is, I should just say subscribe to it. Because we get, we just, it's just on constantly everywhere we are. It's like, how do we get half an hour of peace in our lives? It's just like a little bit more in Kanto.

• 37:05Speaker 03

  I can still listen to the Encanto soundtrack and not like reflexively flinch at it because I've heard it so many times. Like Bluey, I am a Bluey fan. I'll put it on every now and then. It's like, you know what? What are those Australian kids up to? Let's find out. And it's not, I'm not Bluey poisoned yet. And that's kind of why.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  That's why I wanna, I, Disney Plus, like you dip in every now and then, get what you need. You dip back out, go on with your life. But no, I totally get from, if you have children in your life, I can totally see like the value add to having Disney Plus in your life.

• 37:36Alex Cranz?

  Like when you come out of the, you know, the baby's born and they give you your baby. Do they also just give you a Disney Plus?

• 37:43Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah. The hospitals are starting, the hospitals do this already with like brands of formula and like, they're like, yeah, like having a baby is a fully monetized experience. At some point, Bob Iger is going to realize that the three month Disney Plus subscription is going to convert in every hospital for the rest of time.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  The first way you know you're pregnant is your CVS. Your CVS receipt just prints out a subscription.

• 38:04Nilay Patel?

  The data brokers announce and like suddenly you're subscribed to D plus. That's great. That's the future of all ad based tracking. What's more interesting to me is those Disney adults, right? Like, cause people with kids, they all hear about Bluey. Bluey is like a viral phenomenon. Like it's not a marketed show.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  No.

• 38:20Nilay Patel?

  Right? It's just, it's a phenomenon because people are like, I can watch this with my kids and I don't hate myself. Caillou.

• 38:30Nilay Patel?

  But it's the Disney adults that I feel like, man, Disney just believes that we'll watch like anything. Like.

• 38:36Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Nilay Patel?

  I watched Moon Knight and I was like, this is insulting. Like the whole show is like just fully insulting to me that you think this is worth my time.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  You didn't like the show about the Latino slash kinda English man who becomes an avatar of justice wrapped up in Egyptian mythology?

• 38:54Nilay Patel?

  That's a show where it's like Disney assumed I would like the concept and the fact that it was Marvel and that there would be an infinite variety of SEO targeted webpages about the backstory of the character and not care at all about the actual show that was on my television, which had a CGI budget of $5, right? And I was like, I'm watching this and like everything about me is primed to, I love Oscar Isaac. Everything about me is primed to love this show. And I wanted to go away. Like, I think you should start over was basically my reaction to this. And I think that's, that's just true of a lot of Marvel stuff lately. And I think that's actually a bigger problem than Disney wants to admit.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  I think that we're, what we, Krantz and I talk about this a lot because, you know, we're those people. But I think that what we have sort of, part of the, oh, is Phase Four a flop with Marvel? I think that part of what people are picking up on are shifts within the studio, right? Shifts within the budgeting, right? We are seeing, we are all very familiar with what a production that involves volumes looks like these days. And we have our feelings about them. A lot of people, I think the volumes are a big part of Moon Knight. And that was a big part of what made everything feel so music video-y. Because it's not cheap. It's not that, it's not that they look cheap. They do look very

• 40:07Alex Cranz?

  Expensive.

• 40:08Speaker 03

  Expensive isn't the word. They look like the presence of money is involved, right?

• 40:14Speaker 03

  But it's not necessarily leading towards something that feels polished, despite it feeling shiny. And I think that

• 40:21Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  From Marvel's perspective, there are financial reasons as to why it makes sense to work that way. Right? When you are just looking at the list of productions that are going on, you have to keep them under a certain kind of budget, particularly for these projects that live on Disney+. We are at a point right now where when we are seeing a significant part of the franchise existing in episodic format, right? Even though the Netflix shows were sort of the big deal when they first launched, Disney/Marvel didn't get really serious, serious about TV, sorry, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., until Disney+ existed, right? I mean, putting out shows that were directly meant to feed into the movies in a significant kind of way.

• 41:00Nilay Patel?

  But then they didn't. But even, even this, I feel like I did all this homework about the multiverse. And then it just didn't matter in that movie.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  I think that there was a lot of planning that went into it, but I don't think that the execution has been all that great. I think that what we are seeing is one of the biggest corporations in the world trying something out and not entirely sticking the landing, despite the fact that their inordinate amount of resources should have made it impossible for them to mess it up quite like this.

• 41:27Nilay Patel?

  It literally feels like watching Wandavision was now homework that I did not need to do. It was like entertaining homework side reading that was not important for any reason.

• 41:36Alex Cranz?

  It just feels a lot like comics. Like if you're in the comic space right now, then you're like, oh no, there's a big crossover. I gotta go pick up like Captain Marvel from three years ago, number 12 and read that. So I know what I'm going to be expecting. And that's a lot of work.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  And you know, it's weird to say, but like the MCU became comic booky in phase four, which is both a positive and a negative. Do you want ridiculous stories that don't exactly make much sense and sort of don't? And don't gel with the character motivations that have clearly been outlined in this recent story by a different creative team. Then here you go. Like that's just comics in a nutshell, and it rubs moviegoers the wrong way because we have been, you know, we've been taught to expect not that.

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  Especially by Marvel, right? Which, which successfully shed some of that baggage in translating the comics to the screen. And so the MCU is different and is focused and you understand what Robert Downey Jr. Is going to do. He's got a couple of moves. They're great. They're the best moves, honestly. And like, we're going to deliver those moves to you in an escalating series of conflicts until we kill him. Right? And like, that's great. And now they're just like all over them. And I, the reason I bring this up is to some extent, the entire strategy for Disney plus is you're going to want more Marvel stuff. You're going to want more Star Wars stuff. You're just want these franchises to get milked until they're dry and then you got to make them crazy.

• 43:02Nilay Patel?

  That's their monopoly strategy beyond your kids are going to watch Encanto three times a week. And that's fine, like great. But like, there's not a lot of rewatch potential inside the Spider-Man movies or whatever.

• 43:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:15Nilay Patel?

  Like they're, they're just like missing something now. Where they're just getting crazier and crazier. And it seems like the Marvel audience, the big danger here is the Marvel audience is like, is this one gonna be worth it?

• 43:26Speaker 03

  Right, and I think that that's kind of, that is the unfortunate reality of where it is right now. Like, it's interesting to think of what other alternatives a studio could have gone for. Is it, alright, well now that Thanos is gone, things have to just get bigger and more cosmic and more ridiculous. Is it that, or is just, let's just start over? Like, let's just start over with a different group of people who exist in this world. And the fact that the studio didn't decide to go in that direction, or rather, has only just started to kind of do it with the Thunderbolts, and they're sort of like, like, let's just sort of, and I'm not sure that raising the stakes was the right move for something that is presumably meant to exist in perpetuity, right? Like, comic books are created with the assumption that the, like, the stories are just gonna

• 44:09Speaker 03

  keep going, long enough that it won't matter when stories come back around and you sort of see the cyclical nature of the business. But movies have never worked that way, right? Sequels always have to be bigger and more expensive and better. And unfortunately, Disney slash Marvel have not sort of recognized that they are in a position to encourage their audiences not to think that way. They have sort of fed into the expectation that you're always going to get sort of like a more spectacular product. And in doing so, it's kind of worked themselves into this weird corner where it's like, well, how do we, how do we keep making these things bigger and better? I'm not really sure that you can.

• 44:46Alex Cranz?

  Well, it's like, they haven't, they haven't acknowledged that, basically, they're doing soap operas, but with fancier colors. And they just need to embrace, like, the whole story mechanism that soap operas figured out in the 60s. But we got it, we got it, we got a vote, like, Disney Plus, go 90 scale, where is it right now?

• 45:04Nilay Patel?

  Disney Plus or Disney?

• 45:05Alex Cranz?

  Disney Plus, we're just talking about Disney Plus, which is where the Marvel lives, which is where Bluey.

• 45:09Nilay Patel?

  Disney Plus is a zero. It's a zero. Iger's back, they got Bluey, right? Like, you know, you don't know what to watch, Avengers Endgame is right there, it'll burn three hours, zero.

• 45:20Alex Cranz?

  Alright, so zero, unless, with an asterisk, if they get rid of Bluey. And then it's like a five.

• 45:25Nilay Patel?

  If they get rid of Bluey, it's a 90. I'm just like, they're dead to me, get out of here. Hulu, I think, is at like an 85. I think the future of Hulu is deeply up for grabs. But I will also say this Hulu has been at 85 since the first day Hulu existed.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:40Nilay Patel?

  This is an improbable product.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  The Weird Frank service?

• 45:43Alex Cranz?

  Charles, where's your Disney Plus? Your Disney Plus is at a zero?

• 45:47Speaker 03

  There's always a little bit of fatalism in me, so like, no one is safe. But like, I think that they're at like a solid 15.

• 45:53Nilay Patel?

  Wait, you gave Netflix a two and you're giving Disney Plus a 15?

• 45:55Speaker 03

  I'm going to stick with what I said, because I said it, and I'm not going to backtrack just because I was challenged on it. But I do, I do think that there is a, just because Disney Plus is a newer service, I am still waiting to sort of see Disney Plus prove what its thing is, aside from, hey, we got the Disney content.

• 46:13Alex Cranz?

  We got the babies.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  We got the babies and we got the Star Wars nerds. And I get that that's, you know, that is a successful business strategy, but it doesn't light me up. So in my mind, I'm like, I don't know, you gotta watch out.

• 46:24Alex Cranz?

  All right. Before we get to Hulu, quick, quick break to talk about Amazon Prime. It's still there. You are still required to have it if you get Amazon Prime for shipping. It is technically, I think, larger now than Netflix, simply because everybody gets Amazon Prime for shipping.

• 46:43Nilay Patel?

  Can I just say that I love that the signature show of Jeff Bezos's streaming network is The Boys? It's just, it's like, it's perfect.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Isn't that wild?

• 46:53Nilay Patel?

  It's so good. That like, when you're like, Jeff Bezos, what is your biggest hit in streaming? It's like, The Boys. The show about billionaires and superheroes who are actually evil. Like, first of all, The Boys is great, and it's amazing that Amazon just lets them run with that show. Like, I think it's great. I mean, if you haven't seen it, you should go watch it. It is a great show, and it's so funny to think about. There are so many scenes of that show where I stop and just start laughing and thinking about Jeff Bezos watching the scene, that scene. And being like, and he's like, well, this is what I paid for.

• 47:28Alex Cranz?

  But this wasn't supposed to be his big series, right? Like, this wasn't supposed to be the big landmark series of Amazon Prime. It's supposed to be the one that just came out this year, The Rings of Power, which I finished watching. Everybody else in my group watched, tapped out after like, episode five. They couldn't go any further.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  The Rings of Power was, it was, it was interesting. The three, three episodes that I made it through. But it's kind of like, it is the danger in chasing these kinds of established IP that are very big and very popular, but have been so thoroughly mined already that the question becomes, what is, not just the point, but sort of like, what is the ad here? What is the ad for me, an average consumer who is not a Diet in the Wolf fan of these things? I think that it's really interesting to look at how the streamers are gunning for fandom and sort of like, hoping that they are able to tap into, not just a specific fandom's interest in a thing, but a fandom's desire to promote that thing and sort of spread its message to other listeners.

• 48:31Speaker 03

  And I think that that was definitely a part of the logic behind chasing The Lord of the Rings Estate.

• 48:35Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 48:36Speaker 03

  And hounding them down for chunks of the IP, but not the great chunks of the IP. To Amazon's credit, like, they put this all together. It's solid. The cast is great.

• 48:46Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  Love the world building, but it's, it's also just, this was obviously meant to be Amazon Prime's Game of Thrones, and that kind of logic just never, I don't think it ever translates well. I think that once you as a consumer can like sniff out that kind of logic from the studio's perspective, you're immediately kind of like, uh, I'm not, I'm not hot on it.

• 49:04Nilay Patel?

  Also, everyone knows what happens. I just want to, like, you can't be like, this is our Game of Thrones. Also, everyone knows what happens, has since they were a teenager, and have for 50 years. Right? Like, there's, there's something broken with that calculus. Whereas Game of Thrones had, no one knows what happens, including the guy who has not yet finished the books. And then they failed to stick the landing because he was like, I know some shit happens. Like, here's the, like, the outline of it, and they were like, we're done with this. Like, just get it done.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  I think we can all agree that in the end, the House of the Dragon did emerge as like, the more... The stickier Sword and Sorcery show that came out this year as opposed to the Rings of Power. And I think it does sort of speak to not just that Game of Thrones still sort of, despite the fact that it crashed and burned in the end, still sort of has like a, people still have a lot of fondness for it. I think it does just sort of speak to what you're talking about. There is a degree to which this IP has not been so thoroughly mined, both with projects and in people's own free time, that there was still like a curiosity there. Whereas with Lord of the Rings, the fandom for Lord of the Rings, the hardcore fans, they've read these books.

• 50:14Nilay Patel?

  They were, I said 50 years, 70 years. They were 50 years old when I read them as a teenager.

• 50:21Speaker 03

  And so it's like, well, what could Amazon have done that would have made it a success? I don't know. Right? Like, I'm not exactly sure that there is a way that you take this and turn it into something that's going to be a phenomenon, just because it has already existed in the public consciousness like this for so, so long.

• 50:37Nilay Patel?

  We should talk about the other part of Amazon. So they've got like the Jack Ryans of the world, and they've got their, their little TV franchises. That's not their economic model, right? Their economic model is, we give you this when you subscribe to Prime, you are much more likely to stay on for Prime, or we need reasons for you to want this, so you become a Prime subscriber, and all the other benefits of Prime make it hard for you to leave. Like, Amazon's business model for this service is just wildly different than Netflix or HBO Max or whatever. And so they're doing things that the other streamers basically won't do or can't do, in particular, live sports. Right? They bought this gigantic NFL package. If you want to watch football on a Thursday, you have to go to Amazon.

• 51:18Alex Cranz?

  How's that working out for you, Neelai?

• 51:19Nilay Patel?

  It's hilariously fine. Like, I'll just complain about this because this is the Vergecast and it's me, but they spent all of the money, they're very proud of having spent all of the money to do 4K football broadcasts, and then they are still not doing 4K football. Like, there's just something about sports in America where it's like, even when we spend all the money and go and get the trade press around our first in the industry, end-to-end 4K broadcast workflow, they're like, we're gonna go with 1080 this year. Brutal.

• 51:50Alex Cranz?

  Seven twenty I.

• 51:51Nilay Patel?

  But it's fine. They're able to do it because they're like, look, football fans want to watch their team. It's a guarantee that they're going to get irritated into paying for Prime. This is what every football fan has ever said. Just let it, let me watch the game wherever I am. They're going to pay for it and then they're going to get Prime and then they're going to get music and then like their Alexa will work better and then the shipping will be free and whatever bundle of Prime things you care about will happen to you and then you'll stay.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 52:13Nilay Patel?

  And so they're able to front investments into things that basically no one else can do. And Charles, I wonder, like, we've talked a lot about just sort of how the business affects the content in the context of HBO and Netflix. I'm wondering if you see any differences with Amazon there? Because that's the, I would also put them at like a zero on the go ninety scale. They're not going anywhere because their business is a subsidy and is subsidized.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  Right. And it's such a, it's weird to think about it this way, but in my mind, just because I've been covering these things for so long, Amazon Prime, rather, Amazon Studios is still a side project for Amazon in my mind, right? Like even though that is an entire, like that is an entire beat unto itself. And obviously, Amazon has proven itself to be a strong contender in this space just by dint of the volume of content they put out. It's not what, you know, it is not the company's sole reason for existence. And in being that sort of like side hustle from Amazon's perspective, it does sort of ensure that it's not always going to exist, but there's no reason for them to get rid of it, right? It's not, and it's proven itself to be a successful sort of business strategy for them. In a way that

• 53:19Speaker 03

  I'm, I think that's part of why you do see, I'm thinking in my head right now, like Disney Plus is trying to do like, hey, do you want to buy these things from us? And it's such a, it's such an odd sort of pivot for them. Like, hey, we're opening up a shop to a limited number of our subscribers where you can buy Star Wars paraphernalia. And it's like, that's cute. And I'm sure, you know, they'll get a few hundreds, few thousand maybe sales out of that. But it does sort of just feel like a pale comparison to the structure of HBO Max, which is just like, hey, while you're watching the boys, also get on Amazon and buy the comics. Sorry, on Amazon, right? Like, buy the comics, buy the Funko Pops, buy all of these things. Send us more data points to know which characters you Like on the show so that we just, you know, you know what I mean?

• 54:02Speaker 03

  It just sort of all seems that the thing that's happening at Disney Plus does sort of feel informed by Amazon's ability to collect all of this information, but it's something that the other studios aren't in a position to really replicate. I don't think it's not something that any of them can sort of reverse engineer, at least not at this point, in a way that would make financial sense for them. And I think that that is definitely something that is always going to keep Amazon on these like, it's just going to keep Amazon in this space.

• 54:28Nilay Patel?

  All right. So I'm at go 90 zero. Are you at zero two?

• 54:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, nothing like nothing is hurt Amazon in a way that would ever make me think like, oh, Amazon Studios is probably.

• 54:38Alex Cranz?

  Amazon Prime is going to exist forever. As long as Amazon exists,

• 54:44Alex Cranz?

  you're going to be able to get this. Will the content be good? Who can say?

• 54:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. By the way, we just had Steve Boom, who runs Amazon Music. Actually, he just got promoted to run even more things than Amazon. But Steve was just on Decoder and he was like, here are the three things people get out of Amazon Prime. Shipping, Prime Video, distant third music. Like it's, they're the two things. It's the, it's the shipping and the video that are the point of Amazon Prime right now. Everything else in the bundle is like mathed out, but those are the top two. And that means I think it's safe forever.

• 55:14Alex Cranz?

  That's fair. All right. Now we're going to talk about the really unsafe one, which is Hulu. Because the big thing here is Hulu's jointly owned by Disney and Comcast right now.

• 55:26Nilay Patel?

  We need to disclose that Comcast is minority investor in Vox Media, our parent company. I assure you, if you're listening to this, they don't like us very much, but there's your disclosure.

• 55:36Alex Cranz?

  But basically this contract is kind of ending next year, right?

• 55:40Speaker 03

  So this is a holdover from Disney's 2019 acquisition of Fox. Fox owned a third of Hulu along with Comcast and Disney. And rather than buying Fox's portion of Disney, because they say, I forget exactly how much Disney bought Fox for. They left those rights to exist with Comcast because bringing them all on at once would have just been too expensive. The deal at the time was, hey, look, you can keep this third of Hulu, but in 2024, you're going to sell it back to us for a price that we agree on now. Like, we're going to set this price. This is just the minimum. 2024 comes around, we're going to renegotiate this. The deadline to follow through on this deal is coming up and it's coming at a time when.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  The streaming landscape is just different, right? Disney is all in on Disney Plus and it wants to sink as much money as it can into just buffing out Disney Plus. Spending the money to buy back those rights from Comcast, it could, it definitely could. It doesn't necessarily want to because it's just a level of spend that all of the streamers universally are sort of like trying to like cut down on. If they're going to be spending millions of dollars, it better be on themselves rather than just buying out something else. Also, just in buying Hulu, what Disney gets out of it isn't immediately clear to me. Obviously, they would get access to some of the content on Hulu, but then does that get folded into Disney Plus? It's not exactly clear. It would kind of-

• 57:03Nilay Patel?

  Well, so, but they're kind of doing it.

• 57:05Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I was, I mean, probably the same thing you were gonna say, but a lot of that content is already folded into Disney Plus in other markets. It's just in the United States where it's split off. And when, when Disney Plus was launched, they said, okay, Disney Plus is for the kiddies and the Star Wars people and the Disney adults. And then Hulu is for normal people. And that's gonna be where all of our FX stuff goes and that's where all of our adult stuff is gonna go. And they, they've kind of kept that branding, but we've seen both Chapick and Iger be like, eh, do we need those two separate platforms? And, and be a lot more hesitant on that. And then we've also had Comcast say, yeah, actually, we want to own this whole platform and, and, and just do that because our business is going to die soon and all we're gonna, we're

• 57:48Alex Cranz?

  gonna be in the internet business and that's about it. And we need some sort of TV revenue stream and we're really good, really good at it. I'm using air quotes here. So we, we want it so that we can be playing in this space that everybody else is playing in the streaming space. So you've got these like two companies who are both pretty invested and have good reasons to own it, who are gonna have to fight in 2023 over it.

• 58:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I fundamentally, it's, they both want to use it, they want to kill it to bolster their other products, right? Comcast wants to bolster Peacock and Disney wants to obviously bolster Disney Plus. And it's funny because Hulu itself is a good product that its customers like. Its owners have always hated it. And this has been the dynamic since it is, like, since the first day, that it is, it is successful despite the fact that its ownership has actively been trying to kill it since its inception.

• 58:40Alex Cranz?

  Originally, it was like just this little upstart and you're like, oh, you want to watch TV live? We figured out a way to do it, use Hulu. And then all the TV companies were like, wait, that's our content. We're just gonna buy you all together and own you. So that you become our official streamer. Cause remember ABC Go?

• 58:57Nilay Patel?

  Do you remember when every Disney brand was on at the go.com subdomain for some completely unclear reason?

• 59:02Alex Cranz?

  Absolutely brutal. So Hulu is facing a space, but it's also like it's winning awards. As you noted earlier, the dropout cleaned up pretty reasonably at the Emmys. Amanda Seyfried won for the dropout. Elizabeth Holmes lost and is now in jail for 11 years.

• 59:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, Hulu is fine and has some good stuff. It is another one of those sort of default players. It has a good live TV bundle. People like it. If, you know, there's a handful of them out in the market, YouTube TV and Hulu are seemingly the leaders. It exists. Like there's a conviction to Hulu that is shocking, given its ownership. And I think that's just a success. I would say that a year from now, when one of these, one of the two owners has eaten it, it's gone. And that will actually, it will be in some ways a tragedy.

• 59:52Speaker 03

  I mean, it is going to come down to who is willing to either spend slash forego the cash, right? Like that is going to be the thing that determines Hulu's future. And I genuinely don't feel that anything that's going on at Hulu is going to keep it from being destroyed, unfortunately. Just because everyone who has a financial interest in it does stand to gain something either by its acquisition or destruction. So they won't just leave it to exist.

• 1:00:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's funny because we're basically predicting it's going away, but it's the, as I look at the list. Well, Apple TV plus is on this list and so can anywhere, but as you look at the list, right? The list here is like Netflix, HBO, Disney, Amazon, Hulu. Those are the ones where you don't feel bad about recommending that anyone pay money for them. Right? You're going to get your money back out of those subscriptions in one way or the other. You're going to be entertained. The apps aren't going to crash on you. You know, there's just something solid about these ones. We're about to turn the corner into, uh, maybe there's one show you want, right? And it's funny that Hulu is the last one to talk about because it is the one that is, yep, it's the one you can feel safe recommending. It's also the one that is definitely going to go away.

• 1:01:02Nilay Patel?

  Right. And this is the, this is the corner that's turning where the business models of these and the ownership structures of these companies are more determinant of their futures than their content or the quality of the content. So, okay, go 90 scale for Hulu. I'm putting it solidly at 80.

• 1:01:17Alex Cranz?

  80?

• 1:01:18Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's done for.

• 1:01:19Alex Cranz?

  Charles?

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, 80 feels right, especially because like, because the deadline is coming up and I don't think that it would benefit either side to just not move on it. Like, they can't just ignore the deadline and be like, we're just gonna pretend that we never had those conversations.

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  They are gonna, they are, they are gonna move on it and it's probably gonna lead to Hulu's destruction, unfortunately. So, 80.

• 1:01:41Alex Cranz?

  I'm putting it at 85, just to be contrarian. I think it's even closer to death because Comcast is gonna buy it.

• 1:01:48Nilay Patel?

  AT&T buys it.

• 1:01:50Alex Cranz?

  No. Okay, we're gonna take one more break and then we're gonna come back and we'll get into Peacock, Paramount Plus, and my personal favorite, the Taylor Sheridan Universe.

• 1:02:05Speaker 05

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• 1:02:34Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web and how CloudFlare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 1:02:55Speaker 06

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, you won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online. And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you, if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be a thousand times human traffic online.

• 1:03:20Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. This series is presented by EY.

• 1:03:40Alex Cranz?

  Okay, we're back. Now, let's talk about Neelai's personal favorite, Peacock. Peacock exists. If you want to watch Yellowstone, you have to subscribe to Peacock.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  The number of emails I get about Yellowstone.

• 1:03:54Alex Cranz?

  This new show with Carlo Gugino, you have to subscribe. That's all I know about Peacock.

• 1:03:58Nilay Patel?

  So we have started watching Yellowstone because everyone has recommended it to us.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  It's good.

• 1:04:03Nilay Patel?

  It's one of those shows that is, you know, it's like the water, it's everywhere, but no one talks about it. Except once you, once you tell the algorithms of the internet that you are mildly interested in Yellowstone, everyone's talking about it. First season's great, second season's, it's just, it's one of those, like, they're doing the thing where they keep escalating the stakes. And so it's just, it's just getting sillier, but that's fine. It's well acted. It's great. I get why people are into it. It's succession on horses.

• 1:04:30Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Nilay Patel?

  Can't say no.

• 1:04:32Alex Cranz?

  Sometimes there's guns.

• 1:04:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the number of characters that are introduced on the show merely so that they can be murdered, like, ever, this, it's, we could do a whole hour on it. It's so funny. Like, people talk about how beautifully written it is, and there are some banger lines in every episode. And then there's just some, like, oh, our, our character who murders people needs some more people to murder. Here's some people that are gonna show up to get murdered. Like, it's just like nakedly happening, like, oh, these people are gonna die. So it has its moments in the way that a big sprawling soap opera has its moments.

• 1:05:06Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 1:05:06Nilay Patel?

  But it's also found an audience for Peacock, for Paramount Plus, right? Like, Paramount Plus is fully invested in this universe. They're doing prequels after prequels. They're bringing in star talent.

• 1:05:18Alex Cranz?

  1923 is coming.

• 1:05:20Nilay Patel?

  Right, and then they're gonna do 1883. Like, they're going back in time, in like a hilarious way. The stars all want to work with Taylor Sheridan. Like, they've built a Marvel franchise out of a ranch in Montana. And it's sort of like under remarked upon, except now everyone, they're realizing, like, oh, the money is here.

• 1:05:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Nilay Patel?

  And you might be able to stand up an entire streaming network. Full of the Paramount library on the back of this franchise. It's, by the way, Taylor Sheridan, like writes and directs every episode himself. Their bet is that he won't keel over and die. But that's like it. That's, that's what they got. They got that. And then like, everyone just bought Top Gun Maverick. So like, they didn't even like, get the window of Top Gun.

• 1:06:03Nilay Patel?

  There's not a lot else there. And I'm, I'm, and I'm bundling Paramount and Peacock together.

• 1:06:07Alex Cranz?

  You're bundling them together.

• 1:06:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, just because the thing that's driving Peacock right now is Yellowstone.

• 1:06:12Alex Cranz?

  Right. Because Paramount Plus didn't think about it at the time when they were, when they were like, we need to sell the streaming rights. And instead of keeping it on Paramount, yeah, all right, Peacock, you can have the streaming rights to this. It'll be fine. And they're, they're now like, we have a lot of regret. We asked Peacock if we could have the rights back and Peacock was like, no.

• 1:06:30Nilay Patel?

  No, it's the only reason people subscribe to Peacock. Straight up. So I would say Peacock to me is, is at the most honest 80 of them all.

• 1:06:39Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:06:40Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's straight up, it's, it's the Comcast NBC disclosure about Comcast as always. It doesn't have hits. They wanted the hit to be the Olympics, trying to figure out that company's approach to streaming the Olympics. Like, that was the most honest how to watch SEO target bait that we've ever done, you know, like, because it was hard. It was like legitimate, like this is a good service to our audience to be like, how do I do this? Because they're so complicated. They haven't gotten the 4K stuff on sports right at all.

• 1:07:08Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:09Nilay Patel?

  And then the rest of it is what used to be Netflix's sort of like sleepy time binge watch stuff like The Office, right? And they thought that bringing The Office would bring all that audience over. And it turns out Netflix would be like, nope, you want to nap while you watch stuff? We have infinity content for comfort napping to be, to happen. So I just think like, they've got to make a huge change to Peacock. And maybe it means going away and buying all of Hulu and leaning into Hulu.

• 1:07:35Alex Cranz?

  Peacock's gonna be a channel on Max and Amazon Prime. I think that's what happens.

• 1:07:39Nilay Patel?

  Oh, just like one of those, like you subscribe to it within a larger bundle.

• 1:07:43Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I think, I think a hundred percent that's what happens to it.

• 1:07:45Nilay Patel?

  But why wouldn't you just do that with NBC?

• 1:07:47Alex Cranz?

  Because it's called Peacock, Neil.

• 1:07:50Nilay Patel?

  This is what I mean. Like, this brand isn't worth anything to anyone. Like, you buy Hulu and you like run it as Hulu and you like merge everything together. Or you sell NBC or your constituent, like famous, good brands as channels into the bigger services. There's no reason to try to build up a thing called Peacock, your desire to have a product like this.

• 1:08:09Alex Cranz?

  Right. Like, they just, it was like, I want to be a part of this as well moment for them. And I think you're right that, like, it's an 80. It doesn't last much longer. What about you, Charles?

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  I'm going to put it at a 79. Right? For one reason. One reason, and it's not, it's not just the contrarian. I'm legitimately excited to see what Poker Face is about. Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne's thing that's coming out where she's a non-paranormal detective who can somehow always tell when people are lying. Like, it's like, it's silly premise. The trailer looked great. And I'm like, Peacock, why, unfortunately, you should have, like, been leading with stuff like this. You know, the gritty Fresh Prince reboot was not exactly going to make me sign up for a new service. And then the show wasn't particularly good. And so I thought to myself, oh, Peacock's no one to pay attention to. But then just happened to casually see this and it's like, oh, like, that looks interesting. Is it enough to save a streamer?

• 1:09:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:02Speaker 03

  Could it? Yes, it could. It could. It could. And so that's why I'm putting it at a 79. Because maybe that will be the thing. Maybe it will be.

• 1:09:10Nilay Patel?

  One show.

• 1:09:11Speaker 03

  It will be their Game of Thrones and their Orange is the New Black and their Transparent, all rolled into one and everyone.

• 1:09:17Alex Cranz?

  Ted Lasso, everything at once.

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:19Alex Cranz?

  All right, let's talk about Paramount Plus, because that's, that's the other kind of weird, wonky service started by a terrestrial TV show.

• 1:09:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm telling you, Paramount Plus, Yellowstone Universe, Red America, yeah, that thing is solid. Like, they've got a franchise that they can build on. They've got to do all the rest of the stuff.

• 1:09:37Alex Cranz?

  They've got multiple franchises. They've got, they've got the Avatar franchise from Nickelodeon. They've got all of the Star Trek. A lot of it's just been like nostalgia bait, which is lazy, but I'll watch it.

• 1:09:49Speaker 03

  People like Lower Decks.

• 1:09:50Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, people like Lower Decks. People like the one with Ants and Mount. It seems to be popular. And then Halo came out. I know a lot of people found it pretty forgettable. I'm still tuning in for season two.

• 1:10:01Nilay Patel?

  Here's, okay, so here's the argument for it not being under 45.

• 1:10:05Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 1:10:05Nilay Patel?

  Right, under 45 is more alive than dead, right?

• 1:10:07Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Nilay Patel?

  The argument for more dead than live, 45 and over, on the Go90 scale of doing streaming services, a thing that we invented, it makes no sense. But the argument that it's more dead than alive is we're in the honeymoon phase of a just-launched streaming service that has a couple of hits and the money and the attention and the vibes are good and there's no, the underlying corporate structure.

• 1:10:32Alex Cranz?

  But Paramount Plus is not just launched.

• 1:10:35Nilay Patel?

  Well, it kinda did, right?

• 1:10:37Alex Cranz?

  But it didn't.

• 1:10:38Nilay Patel?

  Like it.

• 1:10:38Alex Cranz?

  It was a rebranding of CBS All Access, which started almost immediately after Hulu, because CBS said, "We don't want to be a part of Hulu, we want our own thing."

• 1:10:48Nilay Patel?

  Sure, but CBS All Access was like not a huge hit. What I'm saying is Paramount Plus is the, the new home of the merged CBS Viacom corporate entity,

• 1:10:58Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Nilay Patel?

  which did not exist before.

• 1:11:00Alex Cranz?

  Which did not, yeah, that's true.

• 1:11:01Nilay Patel?

  Right, so they rebranded, they took the CBS All Access tech platform and they rebranded it Paramount Plus after CBS and Viacom merged. By the way, this, if you want succession, like the actual history of CBS and Viacom and that Redstone, like, it's crazy, the Redstone family is nuts. But they, now the company, it's one merged company, they've got all the brands and they are in that honeymoon period of new leadership, new company, new product with some big hits. There's nothing aside from that that tells you, oh, these vibes will continue, right? There's not an enormous business model success underlying it. There's not a history of technology innovation here from this company in particular.

• 1:11:41Alex Cranz?

  I don't think it's history of tech innovation, but I do think like we cannot ignore the fact that CBS for decades has been very, very good at finding what people want to watch and getting it in front of them. Like CBS. Dominated.

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  We denigrate like the NCISs, you know, of the world, but they are successful franchises that have been on since time immemorial because people want to watch them. And us talking about the fact that people are still watching Big Bang Theory on HBO Max, I think that CBS is definitely in a position to leverage its terrestrial audience on to Paramount Plus. They have not demonstrated any sort of plan or ability to do so yet. They are still so new into their existence.

• 1:12:24Alex Cranz?

  You know, no, I'd argue that this Yellowstone thing is their plan, right? Because most of the people who are originally watching Yellowstone are watching it on Paramount TV, a terrestrial, like a cable channel, or they're maybe watching it on Peacock to catch up. And then they're saying, okay, you watched that, you liked that. Now, do you want to watch this thing where Harrison Ford plays Kevin Costner's, I think, great uncle in the 1920s and Helen Mirren's there in Irish? Come, watch that. And so like, that's, that's what they're doing is they're trying, they're trying to do kind of what Netflix originally did, which is say, you like these characters, you like this stuff. You are scared of streaming because you live in rural Colorado. I'm thinking of just like one specific friend of mine.

• 1:13:07Alex Cranz?

  Come, spend your $4. And it's just like watching regular TV. You still get your commercials, spend your $4. And now you get to watch this premium show with Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford. And like, I, like, I think we all kind of discount them because it's CBS, it's Paramount. Like, it's the people who gave us NCIS and the Chicago series. But at the same time, those things are hugely, hugely popular. A lot of people watch it. And I think that's going to continue to be the case for Paramount Plus. I'm really curious to see what their subscription numbers are like.

• 1:13:41Nilay Patel?

  All right, I'm putting them at 45. After this conversation, I'm putting them at 45.

• 1:13:44Alex Cranz?

  I'm putting them at like 32.

• 1:13:46Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:13:46Alex Cranz?

  It's a fun number.

• 1:13:47Speaker 03

  I would still put them at like a 55 because it does, again, like if they are not able to really sort of get it together and figure out how to convert that old school audience into subscribers, then yeah, Paramount Plus is going to be in a really rough position. But if they are able to make it seem like the easiest and sort of most familiar service for their fans to sort of blow them onto, yeah, it will be around.

• 1:14:11Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I think 1923 is going to be a big deal for them, or at least a big change for them one way or the other. All right, now we're going to talk about Apple TV Plus. No Ted Lasso this year, but Severance. Severance was huge for them. The Major League Soccer finally launching there. Nobody watches it because it's Major League Soccer.

• 1:14:30Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, Rob, Alice.

• 1:14:32Alex Cranz?

  But it's a sport.

• 1:14:33Nilay Patel?

  David Pierce is so mad at you.

• 1:14:35Alex Cranz?

  He can't be here. Go play with your baby, David. Enjoy your adorable baby. But, you know, they're getting Oscars, they're winning Emmys. This is kind of the, a lot of people have said this is the new HBO.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  Who has said that? Who?

• 1:14:47Nilay Patel?

  Apple says that. Eddie Q is walking around being like, it's the new HBO.

• 1:14:52Speaker 03

  Let's be specific about who's saying this.

• 1:14:54Nilay Patel?

  No, so they have a really high bar. One thing, if you open the Apple TV app, there's a lot of stuff in there now.

• 1:15:00Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:00Nilay Patel?

  Right? They just licensed like all the Will Ferrell movies for a while because they've got the new Ryan Reynolds Will Ferrell movie. Like, I was like, this is weird. Like, I'm watching Old School in Apple TV Plus right now. Like, this doesn't make any sense. But they're starting to like fill out the catalog in these like little spurts. So you're like, oh, Apple's got all the Will Ferrell movies. That's fun. I'll like watch a bunch of those and then they're going to go away. They're going to do it again. So they've got new programming ideas that make the app feel full, even though the catalog is nowhere near as big as everyone else. They're making a bunch of stuff. They just improbably made three seasons of See, one of the silliest shows ever made.

• 1:15:40Alex Cranz?

  They all wear masks, but they can't see. Why do they wear the masks?

• 1:15:45Nilay Patel?

  The number of Reddit threads are like, wait, can they see? It's like very funny on that show.

• 1:15:49Speaker 03

  I feel like that's Apple's goal, to just like

• 1:15:51Nilay Patel?

  Confuse a Reddit conversation into existence. They're just making stuff and they're, some people really like the shows, but then they only have had, I think, the two or three breakout hits. Like, they've made three seasons of Mythic Quest, which is a fun show to watch, and also the sort of show that Netflix would have definitely killed after the second season, right? And Apple's like, yep, we're going to re-up it because some people are watching it.

• 1:16:13Alex Cranz?

  Tons of critical acclaim. Everybody really, really likes Mythic Quest. I think it even got nominated. Did it get nominated for Emmys this year?

• 1:16:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the best part about Mythic Quest, by the way, is how much it relentlessly dunks. It's a show about a game studio.

• 1:16:24Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:24Nilay Patel?

  And the characters at the game studio relentlessly dunk on the concept of mobile gaming at every turn.

• 1:16:30Alex Cranz?

  It's great.

• 1:16:30Nilay Patel?

  It's the funniest shit you've ever. It's like, Apple made this show.

• 1:16:34Alex Cranz?

  A lot of, a lot of like game developers say it's the most realistic version of their world, which horrifying, you guys.

• 1:16:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Alex Cranz?

  What is happening to your industry? But, but yeah, like outside of Severance and Ted Lasso, there's a lot of shows I really like on it, but I am alone. Like I don't, there's a lot of other people watching them.

• 1:16:52Nilay Patel?

  We can dispense with this one quickly. Apple's at a zero. It's not going anywhere. It's part of their services strategy. It makes their bundle more valuable. It's the same situation as Amazon Prime. Eventually, Apple's getting to the place where you pay them a hundred dollars a month for your phone, your cell service, and the bundle of Apple stuff. And then every year or two, you get a new phone. Like, they're headed towards just pay us a fee for a phone service and all the stuff that comes on the phone, right? And that's going to be their, their model for, and that's the regular Verge chat that we can talk about that at length. But the TV stuff, they know it's sticky. They love that acclaim. I think Tim Cook likes going to the award shows. Oh, yes.

• 1:17:31Nilay Patel?

  Fine. But the question is, they wanted to do more, right? They want to do sports streaming. They have done baseball. They're starting to do soccer. There's all this noise about them doing football. They actually have no aptitude at this. Their baseball productions are laughably bad and people hate them. We have not yet quite seen what they're going to do with soccer, right? Just getting started. And they have told the NFL, we want more than the traditional rights because we want to do something innovative. And the NFL is like, we make the most money.

• 1:17:58Alex Cranz?

  Like buy NFL if you want it.

• 1:18:01Nilay Patel?

  But it's interesting, right? Because Apple, like Amazon, is, right? The product is subsidized, but it also creates a subsidy for everything else. They're able to go into other parts of the ecosystem that the traditional streamers like Netflix and others won't do. And so I think that. To me, the future of Apple TV Plus is whether they bring on live sports and live news and take over that part of the cable bundle that a Netflix or a Disney Plus just never will.

• 1:18:28Speaker 03

  That'd be interesting if they decided to pursue that because I do my reticence about, not reticence, I just, for whatever reason, Apple's shows have not stuck with me. And I don't think it's just because I watch so many of these things. It's just because there is some part of my mind that's like, ah, Apple's doing TV now. What do you have to say, Apple? And it all feels like an A student going through the motions of putting out what it thinks of as prestige TV, but it doesn't feel, Apple's productions never feel like creative endeavors from like a corporate level that they're trying to share with the world. It does very much sort of feel like a transparent business story, which is fine, right? I get it. But it is something that always leaves me a little bit cold to like a schmigadoon. It's like, I, I, I'm not exactly sure what the company

• 1:19:13Speaker 03

  could be doing differently to make me feel differently. But the idea of Apple really pushing TV as a bonus utility that sort of comes along with just being a part of the Apple ecosystem does feel like the most prudent way to ensure its success going forward.

• 1:19:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I think the question is whether they, you know, Apple TV Plus as a service is the unique Apple product that is everywhere. Like you can just get it on Roku. You can just get it on Android TVs. Like it's strange in its way. And I think that's part of the underlying dynamic there is, does it ever have to be a business? Or is it always this sort of factor in this long mathematical equation of the lifetime value of an Apple customer? And that, you know, kind of doesn't have to justify itself all the way. Because that is really, and Apple's the richest company in the world. That's somebody who prints money. They're going to subsidize this thing forever and a day. But the question is whether the service creates an identity by having that sort of existential need to

• 1:20:12Nilay Patel?

  exist in a way that, you know, like Hulu has an identity because at every turn, it has had to prove itself as a brand.

• 1:20:20Alex Cranz?

  Well, I feel like it's kind of like with Amazon. I feel like when I, when I open up the Amazon Prime app, it's Jeff Bezos going, enjoy your content and just flinging it at my face. And then with Apple TV, it's like Tim Cook being like, hey, would you like to sit down and enjoy your content? But they asked me to sit down first and it's really polite. So I'm down for it. I'm going to give it a 10 rather than a zero, just because at some point, I wonder if the cost is too much for, for the company.

• 1:20:51Nilay Patel?

  No, you, you, you have to have an entire CEO transition.

• 1:20:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:55Nilay Patel?

  Tim Cook cannot knife his own baby.

• 1:20:57Alex Cranz?

  Tim Cook's not going to do it, but I'm putting it at a 10 because Tim Cook is going to retire.

• 1:21:01Nilay Patel?

  You're putting it at 10 because like on a long enough timeline, everyone dies.

• 1:21:04Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's your 10.

• 1:21:05Alex Cranz?

  That's my 10. At a long enough timeline, everyone dies and so too, well, Apple TV+ Plus. Charles, what about yourself?

• 1:21:11Speaker 03

  I think they're a solid zero. It's Apple. To come so late to the streaming game and then to be like, hello, everyone, welcome to Apple TV Plus. And then for them to have a couple of flops, and we all know it. And then to, to sunset the service would be an embarrassment, I think, that the company does not want to have. So even though I'm saying that it's mostly saving face, they will keep Apple TV Plus for.

• 1:21:33Alex Cranz?

  All right. So we're going to wrap up this episode. I feel like we've learned a lot about TV this year and we've got a bunch of new news coming next year.

• 1:21:41Nilay Patel?

  Send us your submissions for the go 90 scale of Doom streaming services. We want to hear them.

• 1:21:46Alex Cranz?

  Let us know. If you're Comcast and you're planning to buy Hulu, you can email me at [email protected]. Just let me know. Give me a heads up. I want to hear all about it.

• 1:21:57Nilay Patel?

  And also if you're ever around an executive of one of these streaming services, just start casually saying they went 90.

• 1:22:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:03Nilay Patel?

  Get this, get this in the boardrooms of America. That's all I'm asking for.

• 1:22:08Alex Cranz?

  Okay, that's it for the Vergecast today. Thank you guys for listening to all of that rambling and ranting and raving about streaming. I really appreciate it. As always, there's tons more coverage on everything we talk about here at theverge.com. You can also follow all of us on Twitter. Charles is at Charles Pulliam. Neelai is at Reckless Patel. Or I mean, you can talk to him at his real Twitter. Account, which is at reckless. And I'm at Alex H. Krantz. The show is produced by Andrew Moreno and Liam James. Nori Donovan is our executive producer and Brooke Menters is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you have thoughts, feedbacks, feelings, or Christmas presents, you can always email [email protected].

• 1:22:53Alex Cranz?

  And if you have questions, call the hotline. It's 866-VERGE11. That's 866-VERGE11. Send us all your big thoughts and questions about all things tech, especially e-ink, but all the other cool stuff, too. Nilay and I will be back on Friday to chat with more of the Verge crew about whatever is happening this week. Until then, we'll see you later. Rock and roll.

• 1:23:22Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Nilay Patel, editor in chief of The Verge. And Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web and how Cloudflare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 1:23:43Speaker 06

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, you won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online. And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be 1,000 times human traffic online.

• 1:24:08Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. This series is presented by EY.

• 1:24:24Speaker 07

  Support for this show comes from Canva Enterprise. Design is the face of your brand. It's how you stand out in a noisy world. That's why Canva Enterprise is the all-in-one visual communication platform that lets your organization create, collaborate, and publish high-impact on-brand content at scale. Canva Enterprise was designed to clear up bottlenecks so your teams move faster, stay on brand, and create content that stands above the rest. Whether it's social, presentations, docs, or video, scale your content without scaling your team. Give your team the power to create their best work today with Canva Enterprise. Learn more at canva.com/enterprise.