The 2024 Streaming Draft (live from SXSW)

The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz choose their picks for The Vergecast Streaming Draft of 2024 in front of a live audience at SXSW. Watch video version with a scoreboard on YouTube Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:26Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of South by Southwest.

• 0:31David Pierce?

  Suck it, brother. South by Southwest podcast.

• 0:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:34Alex Cranz?

  We're the only one.

• 0:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You've just got to take it.

• 0:36Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 0:37Nilay Patel?

  You've just got to take it and have it. I'm your friend, Neelai. That's Alex Cranz.

• 0:40Alex Cranz?

  Hey, I'm your friend who's very happy to be in Texas.

• 0:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:43Alex Cranz?

  Woo-hoo.

• 0:44Nilay Patel?

  Alex is from Texas.

• 0:46Alex Cranz?

  It's true. That's why I wear my little cowboy boots today.

• 0:48Nilay Patel?

  Where's your hat?

• 0:49Alex Cranz?

  It's up in Fort Worth.

• 0:51Nilay Patel?

  Where's your pickup truck?

• 0:52Alex Cranz?

  Also in Fort Worth. Sorry.

• 0:54Nilay Patel?

  Very good. David Pierce is here.

• 0:56David Pierce?

  I have no cowboy hats. I wore a cowboy hat one time and literally a stranger told me I looked stupid in it. That's a true story.

• 1:03Alex Cranz?

  I think you'd look cute in one.

• 1:04David Pierce?

  It was, they were like trying to be nice, but it was very much a like, honey, like, that's not for you.

• 1:08Alex Cranz?

  Take it off.

• 1:09David Pierce?

  Kind of vibe. And I just, that was the end of my cowboy hat face.

• 1:11Alex Cranz?

  That's fair.

• 1:12Nilay Patel?

  Were you wearing it in a cowboy hat appropriate situation?

• 1:15David Pierce?

  Evidently not.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  Were you like at the bank?

• 1:17David Pierce?

  I was in Austin.

• 1:18Alex Cranz?

  Cowboy hat appropriate.

• 1:20Nilay Patel?

  Well, it depends on where the bank is.

• 1:21Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, that's true. New York, no.

• 1:23Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 1:24Alex Cranz?

  Austin, kind of. Fort Worth, definitely.

• 1:27Nilay Patel?

  So you can see that Texas is coming out of Alex now.

• 1:28David Pierce?

  We're learning things here. This is good.

• 1:30Nilay Patel?

  All right. So here's what we're going to do for this live Vergecast. By the way, if you're listening to this in your car, we have an audience here at South by Southwest. Make some noise, audience.

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  Very good. I'm very excited for this ridiculous gimmick that David has come up with. David, explain what we're going to do. And then we're going to play this game that David's come up with. And at the end, we'll have some questions. But explain the game.

• 1:50David Pierce?

  Okay, so about a year ago, we were trying to figure out how to talk about the streaming world and like who's up, who's down, who's winning, who's losing. So we did this draft, and we all basically picked a bunch of streaming services that are like ours for the year. And then everything changed, like immediately between recording that episode and putting out that episode, the whole streaming world changed. So now we're gonna do it again. We're gonna go back. I've made it more complicated, and it's gonna be much more work for everybody. And I'm the only one who can see everything, so I'm gonna win for sure. David's gonna cheat. Yeah, he's cheating. Uh, but we need help from all of you a few times throughout this. First, telling us who is going to pick first. I'm gonna explain the rules of the draft in a second, but the first thing we need to do is I'm gonna recap last year, and then y'all are

• 2:33David Pierce?

  gonna decide who won last year's draft and thus gets to go first. Does that sound good? Okay, cool. So, last year, Neelai Patel ended up, we each ended up with five things. Neelai had TikTok, the Disney bundle, YouTube TV with Sunday Ticket. I don't know why we gave you both of those. This is outrageous. I murdered. In retrospect, outrageous. There's 0% chance that anyone did better than me in this draft. Go ahead. Apple Music and his friend Vipin's Plex server, aka. Choice. Like, not even mine. I didn't pick Alex's weirdo Plex server. It's way better. Alex Cranz picked HBO Max, Womp Womp, Paramount Plus slash Showtime, Channels, the app for watching the internet. It rules. It still exists. That one's good. Criterion. It still exists. Apple won.

• 3:18David Pierce?

  Still exists? But that, I don't know how you got away with that one. Because you got Disney bundle. So you picked the bundle that includes iCloud? And games. It was basically music and Apple TV Plus. Yeah. That was the idea. And then Alex got a bonus pick because she spent the least money, and she picked Xbox Cloud Gaming, which was a choice. It was a very entertaining pick. Like, everything I would, I would pick all of those again in 2023. I don't recommend that. My picks were YouTube Premium, Peacock, Netflix, Discovery Plus, Womp Womp, and Hulu with Live TV. So. I won. I know I just said a lot of things all in a row. Who thinks Neelai won the draft? Obviously. Nothing. Dead silence in this room. In your face. Because I talk too much shit.

• 4:03David Pierce?

  Who thinks Alex won the draft? Yes! Come on, cheer. Yes! I saw that. I brought ringers. Oh my god, he's, David's definitely. Who thinks David won the draft?

• 4:19David Pierce?

  Katie Drummond clapped for me, so I won the draft. Okay, so the rules of this draft, Alex, you're gonna get to go first, because I think you actually won the draft.

• 4:27Alex Cranz?

  Thank you.

• 4:28David Pierce?

  Neelai came in last, is what we learned just now. That's the most important part, Neelai lost.

• 4:31Nilay Patel?

  This is brutal.

• 4:32David Pierce?

  So, for this year, the new addition to the draft is we have categories. And you can't just pick anything, you have to fill the categories with draft picks. And we have six categories. Like I said, this is gonna be very complicated. You both have this on your phones, you can check it as you'd like to.

• 4:46Alex Cranz?

  Can I have my phone out?

• 4:48David Pierce?

  The categories are cheap, which means it has to have a tier that costs under 10 bucks. Awards, which means the streaming service has to have won an Oscar. An Oscar, not something else, an Oscar. There's 4K, which is pretty self-explanatory, it has to have stuff in 4K. Which rules out a surprising number, but we can talk about that. Live, which means it has to have some live stuff. Niche, which means it has to be something very specific. And we can litigate that as we-

• 5:12Nilay Patel?

  This is the Alex Cranz memorial category.

• 5:15David Pierce?

  And then there's wildcard, which is anything you want.

• 5:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:17David Pierce?

  So, we're not going in category order, but there are going to be six rounds of the draft, and it is your job to fill out all six categories over the course of the draft.

• 5:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 5:26David Pierce?

  Sound good? Everybody feel good?

• 5:27Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 5:28David Pierce?

  Alright, Alex Cranz, you're up first, so you have to pick a service and a category.

• 5:31Alex Cranz?

  Okay, I'm gonna go 4K for my first one. And I'm gonna choose Netflix.

• 5:36David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 5:37Alex Cranz?

  Because I've gotten really into K-dramas, and they've got a lot on there. And also other, it's Netflix.

• 5:42Nilay Patel?

  So, here's my proposed wildcard addition to this draft.

• 5:46David Pierce?

  Oh, good.

• 5:46Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 5:46Nilay Patel?

  Every time anyone says a streaming service, we have to rank how close to death the streaming service is on the Go90 scale of Doom streaming-

• 5:54David Pierce?

  Because it turns out several of them last year were very close to-

• 5:57Nilay Patel?

  Very close to that. So, if you are in our audience, you don't know what the Go90 scale of Doom streaming services is. Verizon, which is a cellphone carrier, launched, that's just an important fact along this road, launched a competitor YouTube called Go90, this is ages ago. The competitor featured the ability to turn your phone sideways to watch videos in landscape, which Verizon tried to brand Going 90. This is a real thing that happened from one of our nation's largest companies. They also had features in it called, like, "Join a Crew", because they thought the youth would like gang-related terminology in their video apps. This is all real, I'm not making this up. It quickly failed. Like, I can't even tell you how fast it failed, it went 90.

• 6:38Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 6:39Nilay Patel?

  Uh, much like Quibi, another service that was predicated upon turning your phone to watch videos in landscape. So we have the go 90 scale of doom streaming services. So zero is alive, 90 is dead. So Alex, where is Netflix on a go 90 scale of doom streaming services?

• 6:56Alex Cranz?

  Okay, I'm about to be really honest. I mainly picked it so neither of you could pick it because I actually-

• 7:01Nilay Patel?

  There's a lot of gamesmanship in this.

• 7:03Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's all about beating them and feeling good about myself. So I actually think it's like a 40 because I-

• 7:09Nilay Patel?

  Forty?

• 7:10Alex Cranz?

  Because I think they have a lot of programming problems and they need to improve it. Like, I like the K-dramas, but I don't know if everyone else likes the-

• 7:17Nilay Patel?

  Wait, but Alex, I would remind you that the scale is not like the suckiness scale of its program.

• 7:23Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Nilay Patel?

  It's the scale of does it exist?

• 7:26Alex Cranz?

  In a year?

• 7:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:27Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 7:27Nilay Patel?

  You don't have to say in a year.

• 7:28Alex Cranz?

  Is it like, yeah, does it exist?

• 7:30Nilay Patel?

  How close to death in this moment? Right.

• 7:32Alex Cranz?

  Hmm, I still think like-

• 7:34Nilay Patel?

  Forty.

• 7:35Alex Cranz?

  I kinda wanna say 40. I'm out there like, I think Netflix has some issues that they can solve.

• 7:40Nilay Patel?

  I feel like at this moment in time, it's appropriate to do our disclosures.

• 7:43Alex Cranz?

  Where are you at?

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  I produced a Netflix show. One. Very good. So the future of you should watch it. Uh, our company has a significant investment in it from NBC Universal, which is owned by Comcast. Uh, they don't like us very much at all, given our coverage of Comcast. Uh, we make other television shows for other services at our company. Uh, and I personally watch television.

• 8:07Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  Quite a bit.

• 8:10Nilay Patel?

  Alex does too, but only illegally, so it's fine.

• 8:12Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:12Nilay Patel?

  You don't have to disclose that. Yeah. Uh, we all have Apple products. It's a very important disclosure. Go ahead. All right. I'll let you go next because I'm feeling magnanimous today. Uh, what's your first? Reverse serpentine order? Yeah. All right, I'm starting where I started last year. TikTok. Which category? Uh, cheap. Famous, Oscar-winning? TikTok is notably cheap. Okay. It's funded entirely by subsidies from the Chinese government and extremely crap garbage that is sold on a TikTok shop. You did see the ban bill that was passed- Oh yeah, TikTok currently is eighty-nine. In the last twenty-four.

• 8:49Nilay Patel?

  TikTok is about it in 89.

• 8:51David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  It is the most alive thing that has ever been that close to death in the history of streaming services.

• 8:56David Pierce?

  The most alive, okay.

• 8:58Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 8:58David Pierce?

  Sure. It is the whole go 90 scale all at once.

• 9:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it is the full spectrum of going 90.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  Have you ever seen those TikToks where it's like turn your phone slowly as the plane flies? It's that, that thing. Can I, this fact about TikTok today is, to me, very funny. Semaphore just had this reporting. So TikTok had a full screen, unkillable splash screen on load that said, "Call your representative" yesterday, and the only things you could do were force quit the app or call your representative. You had no other choices. Like, if you wanted to engage with TikTok, those were your choices. So Capitol Hill was flooded with calls from angry teens. And there was one quote from one congressional office. "Our offices are flooded with calls from angry teens and boomers who spend all day on the app."

• 9:48Nilay Patel?

  Really expands the definition of TikTok there.

• 9:50David Pierce?

  I just love a bunch of teens being like, "This is the first phone call I've made in my life."

• 9:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:54David Pierce?

  "Give me TikTok."

• 9:56Nilay Patel?

  "I need this." So you would think that this would work. Other apps have famously done this. Uber famously did this to get preferential treatment in cities around the world during the Uber time. This utterly backfired on TikTok. Congressional Republicans, the bill sailed through to basically punish app stores that carry TikTok. That's how they're gonna do it. They're saying this is, you know, the stuff that congressional Republicans say. "China's bad," you know, in the accent. And the quote they gave to Semaphore was, "We're worried the Chinese government is programming our teenagers' minds, and this is proof." Because they got all the teens to call.

• 10:30David Pierce?

  They made phone calls.

• 10:32Alex Cranz?

  I mean.

• 10:33Nilay Patel?

  It's very good.

• 10:35Alex Cranz?

  The teens did call.

• 10:36Nilay Patel?

  They did.

• 10:37Alex Cranz?

  They did program the teens to call.

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  And for some reason, they're all speaking Mandarin. It's a very good use.

• 10:40Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 10:42Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so it's an 89, but I'm taking it first off the board. I feel good about it.

• 10:45David Pierce?

  Okay, fair enough.

• 10:48David Pierce?

  I'm torn. Apple TV won an Oscar.

• 10:51Alex Cranz?

  It did.

• 10:51David Pierce?

  That's a thing that happened?

• 10:52Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, for Coda.

• 10:53David Pierce?

  I'm gonna take Apple TV Plus in the awards category.

• 10:56Alex Cranz?

  Ooh.

• 10:57David Pierce?

  For my first pick.

• 10:58Alex Cranz?

  I hate you, but good.

• 10:59David Pierce?

  I think there's a decent chance that is going to be the most complicated category. Because it turns out, not a lot of Oscars in those. But I'm taking that one. On the Go 90 scale, it's like a six.

• 11:10Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 11:10David Pierce?

  Like, it's, Apple just has all the money in the universe, and Eddie Q just like hangs out in LA and does whatever he wants.

• 11:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Nilay Patel?

  Tim Cook likes Ted Lasso.

• 11:20David Pierce?

  Yeah, he's like friends with Lionel Messi now. That's like, it's great.

• 11:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I will say that Apple keeps claiming that its movies make money, and they definitely don't.

• 11:29David Pierce?

  Well, it was great, because there was-

• 11:30Alex Cranz?

  They do make money, just they don't profit.

• 11:32Nilay Patel?

  Not enough.

• 11:33Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 11:34David Pierce?

  Well, it was one of those things where they were like, we spent all this money on, you know, a handful of huge movies, Killers of Flower Moon and a couple of others. Famously invested like $700 million into a few movies, and they're like, but they're super profitable. And there were a bunch of people who were like, you know, we can see the box office data, right? Like, it's just, it's just right there. And, and it's just adding three numbers that don't come anywhere near $700 million. But like, whatever. Apple's fine.

• 11:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Apple's fine.

• 11:57David Pierce?

  I'm not worried about Apple TV Plus making a profit for Apple.

• 12:00Nilay Patel?

  I will say that everyone says it's the best one, like, people are like it. It's the new HBO. And my fundamental belief is like, some things are very good, and then the things that are very bad are some of the most comically bad things anyone has ever spent money on. Like, Apple, you can't open an Apple TV right now without it being like, you're gonna watch Argyle. And it's like, no, I'm not. Like, I read the reviews of Argyle. I've seen other people react to the concept of Argyle.

• 12:25David Pierce?

  I saw Argyle in theaters.

• 12:27Nilay Patel?

  What is wrong with you?

• 12:27David Pierce?

  I don't know.

• 12:28Nilay Patel?

  You have a child!

• 12:29David Pierce?

  Yeah, he was asleep. It was-

• 12:31Alex Cranz?

  Did you pay for a babysitter?

• 12:33David Pierce?

  No, I, the honest-

• 12:35Nilay Patel?

  I went alone.

• 12:35David Pierce?

  The honestly true story is-

• 12:37Nilay Patel?

  Did you see Argyle alone?

• 12:38David Pierce?

  I did.

• 12:40David Pierce?

  My wife is doing grad school again because she collects master's degrees. I had nothing to do while she was in class and my child was asleep. And so I was like, I'm gonna go to a movie and the literal only thing playing at the time that I wanted to see it was Argyle.

• 12:56Nilay Patel?

  Should I watch it for free on Apple TV plus? This is what I mean, the hit rate is good.

• 13:01David Pierce?

  Argyle is a movie to watch.

• 13:02Nilay Patel?

  It's a solid, consistent.

• 13:03David Pierce?

  In like the last 25 minutes of a plane ride, when you land and you're kind of like, oh, I should finish that eventually and then you never do, like that's Argyle.

• 13:10Nilay Patel?

  So, okay, I've had this idea, tell me if this is a good idea or better. We review movies, this thing we do at The Verge, and that's fine. And most movies are reviewed on like the tomato meter scale, like five stars. I have a long thought, we need to build a product that just tells you where to watch a movie. Right? That's the actual ranking. It's like, should you spend money on this in the future?

• 13:30David Pierce?

  You mean like physically in the world?

• 13:31Nilay Patel?

  Should you physically take your body to Argyle alone while your child is sleeping?

• 13:35Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 13:36Nilay Patel?

  See, answered right there. Should you wait to pay for it when you can buy it or rent it in the first window?

• 13:41Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 13:42Nilay Patel?

  I answered for Argyle, I was like a hard no.

• 13:44David Pierce?

  What's at the bottom of that, like on your phone?

• 13:46Nilay Patel?

  Airplane, seat back on Delta One.

• 13:48David Pierce?

  Five minutes at a time at Starbucks.

• 13:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. In one minute clips on TikTok.

• 13:53Alex Cranz?

  Yes. Perfect.

• 13:55Nilay Patel?

  Wouldn't this be like vastly more useful than star ratings? If I was just like, this movie is good enough to watch on a JetBlue flight where you're a little bit hung over. Like, that's all, we're gonna, we're gonna roll this out.

• 14:08David Pierce?

  Okay, wait, now I want to know, what is the movie that you've seen the most of exclusively in one minute TikTok clips?

• 14:13Nilay Patel?

  Moneyball.

• 14:14David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 14:15Nilay Patel?

  The TikTok algorithm is like, you are gonna watch Moneyball today.

• 14:18Alex Cranz?

  Is it Sully? Is that what it's called? The one where Sully lands the plane?

• 14:22David Pierce?

  With the plane? I think it is Sully, yeah.

• 14:24Alex Cranz?

  I never learned because I only see.

• 14:25Nilay Patel?

  That is a hard movie to watch in one minute clips.

• 14:27Alex Cranz?

  Only, yeah, they only want to show me like the plane landing.

• 14:30Nilay Patel?

  I get actually.

• 14:31Alex Cranz?

  Over and over again.

• 14:32Nilay Patel?

  Similarly, I get a lot of Flight with Denzel Washington.

• 14:35Alex Cranz?

  Ooh.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  Which is a very intense movie to watch in the form of one minute TikTok clips.

• 14:38Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 14:39Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna call this.

• 14:40David Pierce?

  Mine is Real Steel, by the way, the one where Hugh Jackman fights robots. Perfect TikTok.

• 14:45Nilay Patel?

  Can I call it just my favorite new podcast right now? There's a producer, Esme Nation, who has a podcast called The Irishman. I don't know if he ever finished his project, but he was watching all of The Irishman, which is a three and a half hour movie, in one minute increments and then making a four minute podcast about that every single day. And he calls them men's and he's like, this man was really hard to watch. You only watched a man.

• 15:13Nilay Patel?

  It is unclear whether he's going to do killers of the flower men.

• 15:17Alex Cranz?

  I want that.

• 15:18David Pierce?

  It'll take six months to do that. I love that. Okay, are we, are we snake drafting or are we going back to the top?

• 15:24Nilay Patel?

  That snake drafting.

• 15:25David Pierce?

  Snake draft. Alright, so I get to go again.

• 15:27Alex Cranz?

  Wait, I hate this.

• 15:27David Pierce?

  I know, this is great news for me. Let's see. I'm gonna go to the live category and I'm gonna pick Amazon Prime Video.

• 15:33Alex Cranz?

  Ooh.

• 15:33David Pierce?

  Which has football, which is live.

• 15:35Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's good. Okay.

• 15:36Alex Cranz?

  Wait, are you doing the, with the 399?

• 15:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you doing ads or no ads?

• 15:40Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Ads or no ads?

• 15:42David Pierce?

  I'm fine with ads.

• 15:43Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 15:44Nilay Patel?

  It's because you're, you're buying it for football.

• 15:45David Pierce?

  Not fine with the ads on the Fire TV where you turn on your TV and it's like, would you like to watch some ads? No, thank you.

• 15:52Nilay Patel?

  But you're, you're taking it for football.

• 15:54David Pierce?

  No, I get it because of football, but I'm taking it because frankly of Mr. And Mrs. Smith, which kicks ass.

• 16:00Nilay Patel?

  Okay, okay.

• 16:00David Pierce?

  And I would like that show.

• 16:01Nilay Patel?

  So you're, you're like backing into the category.

• 16:03David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Nilay Patel?

  Cause there's like one low rent AFC game a week. That's, okay.

• 16:06David Pierce?

  Al Michaels gets me this one.

• 16:08Nilay Patel?

  This is an ad.

• 16:09David Pierce?

  So I'm happy.

• 16:10Alex Cranz?

  There you go.

• 16:10Nilay Patel?

  I'll allow it.

• 16:11David Pierce?

  Thank you. And I now have the two that are never gonna die because they're funded by billionaires who don't care. It's perfect.

• 16:17Nilay Patel?

  Fair enough. Okay.

• 16:18David Pierce?

  There's only one more of those left on this list. We'll come back to that. It's gonna be alright.

• 16:23Alex Cranz?

  Wait, how does the serpentine, does this mean?

• 16:24David Pierce?

  That means Neil eyes up.

• 16:26Alex Cranz?

  I hate this.

• 16:26David Pierce?

  And then you get two in a row.

• 16:27Alex Cranz?

  Okay. Do you get ever any in a row?

• 16:30David Pierce?

  No.

• 16:31Alex Cranz?

  You get none in a row? So you really do?

• 16:33David Pierce?

  We actually deliberately did this to screw over Neil.

• 16:36Alex Cranz?

  Okay, then it's all great. Nevermind.

• 16:37David Pierce?

  But don't tell him we said that.

• 16:38Nilay Patel?

  I'm still gonna win this draft.

• 16:39David Pierce?

  Yeah, we'll see.

• 16:40Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna do it with my next pick.

• 16:42Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 16:42Nilay Patel?

  Which is the Disney bundle, which is unbeatable.

• 16:45Alex Cranz?

  Wait, what is the Disney bundle? Is it Disney and ESPN and Hulu?

• 16:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And in India, Hotstar.

• 16:51Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 16:52Nilay Patel?

  For the cricket fans out there.

• 16:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 16:54David Pierce?

  Do we allow bundles?

• 16:55Alex Cranz?

  Hmm, I feel like bundles shouldn't be allowed this time.

• 16:57Nilay Patel?

  It's hard to buy Disney without Bob Iger coming to your house and being like, you're gonna get Hulu. Just take it.

• 17:02David Pierce?

  That's actually sort of true. It is genuinely easier to get the bundle.

• 17:05Nilay Patel?

  Also Hulu is now integrated into the Disney app itself. You know, the app for families. It's like, here's the handmade sale.

• 17:10David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 17:11Alex Cranz?

  Well, what are you taking it for? Are you taking it for live? Are you taking?

• 17:14David Pierce?

  Yeah, what's your category?

• 17:15Nilay Patel?

  We're taking it for bluey. Like dead ahead.

• 17:18Alex Cranz?

  That's not a category.

• 17:19Nilay Patel?

  I just built like an insane home theater in our house. Can I talk about this?

• 17:23David Pierce?

  For bluey?

• 17:24Nilay Patel?

  For bluey.

• 17:25Alex Cranz?

  Bluey.

• 17:25Nilay Patel?

  Like what is watched in this thing is bluey. It's very good.

• 17:30David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 17:30Alex Cranz?

  All right.

• 17:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:31David Pierce?

  So.

• 17:32Nilay Patel?

  Can I, Max rolls up to the TV, huge TV on the wall, and she tries to scroll it, which is wild, because it's bigger than her.

• 17:40Alex Cranz?

  Oh, wow.

• 17:40Nilay Patel?

  So she's just like, come on.

• 17:42David Pierce?

  What does she think is gonna happen?

• 17:43Nilay Patel?

  She thinks I'm gonna use the remote. And that's what she wants. That's, she's five. That's good.

• 17:50David Pierce?

  Fair enough.

• 17:51Nilay Patel?

  By the way, Disney is, I believe, at a 30 on the Go 90 scale.

• 17:55David Pierce?

  The whole bundle?

• 17:56Nilay Patel?

  Disney, I'm putting all of Disney.

• 17:58David Pierce?

  Oh, just the company?

• 17:59Alex Cranz?

  The company.

• 17:59David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 18:01Nilay Patel?

  And that's 10 for, no one knows what's going on with Marvel.

• 18:05Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 18:05Nilay Patel?

  Just some weird stuff there. 10 for no one, they've got a big debt load with Hulu and all this other stuff, they gotta do that. And then 10, uh, because Max made me watch a series of movies called The Descendants. They're so bad. Uh, it's the villains of Disney movies, all have had children, and then they dance fight to bring their cities together.

• 18:26Alex Cranz?

  No, that sounds great.

• 18:27Nilay Patel?

  And they made three of these things.

• 18:29David Pierce?

  Wait, is that the one they made after The Hunger Games? And they were like, this is kind of like that. And then it was awful, and they were like, don't worry.

• 18:34Nilay Patel?

  I don't wanna talk about it.

• 18:37Alex Cranz?

  That's the rest of this podcast.

• 18:39Nilay Patel?

  It's just, it's hard pivoting to Descendants more. It's very bad, and that, to me, I think moves Disney closer to death than not.

• 18:47David Pierce?

  I do feel like you have to add like, five or six more points for just like, Bob Iger might literally just burn it down on the way out. You might be like, I'm actually retiring this time and just torch Disney.

• 18:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:58David Pierce?

  Uh, okay, well, what category do you want that in? I believe it qualifies for everything you have available except for niche, because.

• 19:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's definitely not niche.

• 19:06David Pierce?

  No.

• 19:07Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna put Disney, the, the bundle in awards. I think the awards category is the hardest to fill. It's my, my feeling.

• 19:13David Pierce?

  Hulu won an Oscar. You can have it.

• 19:15Nilay Patel?

  I believe Disney, the Disney Corporation has.

• 19:18David Pierce?

  Not Disney Plus, though.

• 19:21David Pierce?

  I don't think any Disney Plus originals are tearing it up at the award shows right now.

• 19:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh, come on.

• 19:26David Pierce?

  High School Musical, The Musical, the series, like crushing it.

• 19:28Nilay Patel?

  Give it a sound design. It sounded like candy.

• 19:32David Pierce?

  That's probably true. All right, Alex, you get two picks now.

• 19:34Alex Cranz?

  Okay, I get two picks. I've done 4K.

• 19:37David Pierce?

  Correct.

• 19:37Alex Cranz?

  So I need cheap. So for cheap, I'm gonna go Peacock.

• 19:41David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 19:41Alex Cranz?

  Because they got the live stuff.

• 19:43David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 19:43Alex Cranz?

  You could watch the State of the Union if you wanted to on Peacock. You got the, the Olympics are coming and stuff like that.

• 19:49David Pierce?

  It's true. It's actually a good year to have Peacock.

• 19:50Alex Cranz?

  And it's like, it's mad cheap.

• 19:51David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 19:52Alex Cranz?

  It is very affordable, but for...

• 19:54David Pierce?

  It's also where I watch Parks and Recreation, so it's very important to my life.

• 19:57Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I know. I, it was, this was, again, I knew you had picked it last year, so I wanted to...

• 20:02David Pierce?

  It was gonna be my next pick.

• 20:03Alex Cranz?

  You're welcome.

• 20:03David Pierce?

  That was right there. Thank you for that.

• 20:04Alex Cranz?

  I got you. And then, ooh, what are the other categories again?

• 20:08David Pierce?

  You still have awards, live, niche, and wildcard.

• 20:12Alex Cranz?

  See, those are also easy to fill, I feel like.

• 20:14David Pierce?

  One substantially less so.

• 20:17Alex Cranz?

  Hmm, I'm gonna save awards for last. I've, I've got a, I've got a good, I've got one in the pocket for awards.

• 20:21David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 20:22Alex Cranz?

  But, uh, I'm gonna go niche this time. I'm gonna go Crunchyroll.

• 20:26Nilay Patel?

  Ooh. Wait, did you rank your last one?

• 20:30Alex Cranz?

  Oh, no, I have to rank it. You're right, you're right. Peacock, ooh, I think that's like a, like a 20.

• 20:37Nilay Patel?

  20?

• 20:37Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 20:38David Pierce?

  You think Netflix is more likely to die than Peacock?

• 20:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 20:41Nilay Patel?

  You think Disney is more likely to die than Peacock? Peacock is in danger of just directly being forgotten about.

• 20:48Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, but it's, it's growing.

• 20:49Nilay Patel?

  Just straight up, the Roberts family that owns Comcast is like, we did Peacock. Who named this?

• 20:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, nobody knows it exists, but it's still like there. I think it's like the sixth most subscribed, like, platform right now for, or streaming platform. So like, people are doing it, mainly it's David, and other people who wanna watch Parks and Rec.

• 21:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:08Alex Cranz?

  And so, so yeah, and I feel like Parks and Rec is really gonna like, let it survive in a way that Netflix can't because Netflix doesn't own it.

• 21:15Nilay Patel?

  Direct subscription to Parks and Rec.

• 21:17Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:18David Pierce?

  First of all, I would pay for that for the rest of my life.

• 21:20Alex Cranz?

  Same.

• 21:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:21David Pierce?

  But also, Netflix has Suits, Neelai's favorite show on television.

• 21:26Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna start hissing at you. I don't know if I've told this story, I have a niece and nephew there in college, they're doing great. And they hit their first exams in their freshman year of college. And my niece, who wants to be a, she wants to do forensics, so she's a chem major. She texted me and said, "What's law school like?" Because she had encountered her first, like, chem exams. And I was like, "What is going on here?" Like, this is hard, don't go to law school, first of all, just like, blanket advice. And she's like, "Well, I've been watching a lot of Suits." And I was like, "This is a danger to America." Like, this dumb show...

• 21:59Alex Cranz?

  But wait...

• 22:00Nilay Patel?

  Is like, single-handedly taking women out of STEM.

• 22:03Alex Cranz?

  The point of the show is that the guy doesn't go to law school.

• 22:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:07Alex Cranz?

  So why would she want to go to law school, watching...

• 22:09Nilay Patel?

  The point of the show is also that it rots your brain and soul with every passing minute. So I just like Suits, I don't know if it's coming through.

• 22:17Alex Cranz?

  You love it.

• 22:18Nilay Patel?

  I've watched several episodes of the show. The other thing everybody should know is, Neil, I auditioned for Suits, didn't get it. We're the Meghan Markle role, actually. It was a weird callback. I can see it. You're like, "Can you fit in this dress?" And I was like, "Not at all."

• 22:31Alex Cranz?

  Just a little...

• 22:32Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so that was...

• 22:33Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, alright.

• 22:34Nilay Patel?

  So we, like, hard diverged in this...

• 22:36Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, sorry, sorry.

• 22:37Nilay Patel?

  So Peacock, you think is close, less close to death than Netflix?

• 22:40Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, because Peacock is an entertainment company. Like, I fully believe that companies that are built on entertainment are going to have their streaming services probably survive longer than the companies who are built around tech, because the tech companies are trying to make art like technology. And that's just, there's a lot of similarities between those two, but there's a lot of things that are not similar.

• 23:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Netflix is like, can we algorithmically recreate a movie?

• 23:07Alex Cranz?

  Right, and that's dumb. Whereas, like, Peacock's like, can we make Poker Face? And that's cool, I mean, four people watched it, I was one of them, but I bet a bunch of people in the crowd...

• 23:17Nilay Patel?

  It's very good, though.

• 23:18Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, Poker Face was great. That's the only one, like, anybody...

• 23:20Nilay Patel?

  For the audience in the car, there was dead silence from the crowd.

• 23:26Alex Cranz?

  We can put that in post. We can put that in post. Yeah, I fully believe in Peacock.

• 23:31Nilay Patel?

  All right, Crunchyroll, go 90 scale.

• 23:32Alex Cranz?

  Crunchyroll, ooh, that one's harder. Because they just are like, they're killing off a lot of stuff over there, right? Every time Zaslav notices he owns a company, he's like...

• 23:43Nilay Patel?

  No, Crunchyroll is Sony. That's the anime.

• 23:45Alex Cranz?

  Is it owned by Sony?

• 23:45Nilay Patel?

  Sony.

• 23:46Alex Cranz?

  Sony?

• 23:46Nilay Patel?

  And Sony merged it with a company, this is a real name of the company, Funimation.

• 23:51Alex Cranz?

  Oh yeah, Funimation's from my hometown.

• 23:53Nilay Patel?

  Super cool.

• 23:54David Pierce?

  Can you imagine the meeting where they had to decide whether to keep Crunchyroll or Funimation?

• 23:59Nilay Patel?

  It's very good. So yeah, Sony owns both of them, they merged them together, they got rid of the the digital purchases, that was a big uproar, one of those words.

• 24:06Alex Cranz?

  So Crunchyroll, but they're just on Macs then? They just like have a license?

• 24:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're doing the distribution thing.

• 24:11Alex Cranz?

  Okay, well, ooh, that changes it a little on the go 90 scale, right? If there doesn't have the specter of...

• 24:17Nilay Patel?

  Well, it depends on how much you think touching HBO Max immediately brings you closer to death. Like if you acknowledge HBO Max, like are you closer to death?

• 24:26Alex Cranz?

  That's true, that's true. So 10 points because it was on HBO Max, so it's been like acknowledged by that. 10 points because it's owned by Sony and Sony also often forgets it owns things. And then 10 points for the weeps. I'm a weeb, I'm sorry. I hope that's not a...

• 24:42Nilay Patel?

  So you're a compliment of 40?

• 24:44Alex Cranz?

  No, I'm at 30, that's just 30.

• 24:46Nilay Patel?

  30, okay.

• 24:46Alex Cranz?

  So it's a 30, it's a 30.

• 24:48David Pierce?

  So still less likely to die than Netflix.

• 24:50Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:51David Pierce?

  This all makes perfect sense.

• 24:52Nilay Patel?

  Anime fans are hardcore.

• 24:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they are hardcore.

• 24:54David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  Here's a shot, we just had the president of Crunchyroll on Decoder, and he was like, "We're ready to go." He was very excited about it.

• 25:01Alex Cranz?

  Like, that thing started for just like people who wanted to pirate anime from overseas. And then they were like, "What if we just make ourselves legit?"

• 25:09Nilay Patel?

  What if we sold it to them instead?

• 25:11Alex Cranz?

  And they did, and it's like, "Cool, that's awesome. I support you Crunchyroll."

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 25:15David Pierce?

  I love it. All right, Neela, you're up.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  And I'm looking at my list here. All right, I'm gonna fill out 4K last.

• 25:21Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 25:21Nilay Patel?

  I feel very confident that I can fill out 4K last and get ahead. So I'm gonna go with wildcard.

• 25:27David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 25:28Nilay Patel?

  And I am picking HBO Max, my friends.

• 25:31David Pierce?

  First of all, it's just called Max. Well, if you want to pick HBO Max, that's fine.

• 25:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:34David Pierce?

  I'm actually good with that. I take it back.

• 25:36Nilay Patel?

  I refuse to call the streaming service by the name of my daughter. We're going full Warner Brothers owned and affiliated HBO Max.

• 25:45Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 25:45Nilay Patel?

  You know, the whole name. By the way, David and I, do you have your tote bags? When you come to South by Southwest, you register and they give you a tote bag. The tote bags are sponsored by Paramount Plus and by HBO Max.

• 25:56Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 25:56Nilay Patel?

  Everybody has to pick one. Who picked the Paramount Plus one in this room?

• 26:00Alex Cranz?

  I think you know who on stage.

• 26:02Nilay Patel?

  Five people. Who picked the HBO Max one? That's every...

• 26:05David Pierce?

  Wow.

• 26:06Alex Cranz?

  Oh, people holding them up.

• 26:08Nilay Patel?

  So David and I got our tote bags.

• 26:09David Pierce?

  Like 90%.

• 26:10Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 26:10Nilay Patel?

  For Max. So we asked all of the people getting out the tote bags. And they all tried to be really diplomatic. They're like, it's about half and half. But the HBO Max one's really good. And then one woman, this is a real thing. This is reporting. You cannot cancel me for this. This is a quote. I'm a little worried about this quote.

• 26:26Alex Cranz?

  Oh, no.

• 26:26David Pierce?

  I was there for this. I can...

• 26:27Nilay Patel?

  This is a true thing that was said to us. And then I just backed away from this situation. One of them said to us, "The ladies are taking the Paramount one because the logo is prettier."

• 26:38Alex Cranz?

  Ooh.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  See, I didn't say that. I didn't make that up. Someone else said that to me and I'm just reporting to you what was said. And I guarantee you this was said to us just to even out the idea that everyone was taking the HBO Max one.

• 26:50David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 26:50Alex Cranz?

  Ooh.

• 26:51David Pierce?

  Well, because the first person was like, "Oh, yeah, it's the Max ones." And then it was like, "Well, no, I mean, it's like, it's fine. They're both great. It's like 50/50. Don't even worry about it." And then there was somebody two seats down who was like...

• 26:59Nilay Patel?

  What if I make some shit up about the logo being... That was like very much how this was going. Anyway, I took the HBO Max bag to give to my daughter Max and promptly forgot it, so.

• 27:09Alex Cranz?

  Aww.

• 27:10Nilay Patel?

  That's fine. She'll be fine. She knows her name.

• 27:14Alex Cranz?

  I hope so.

• 27:15Nilay Patel?

  HBO Max, by the way, also at an 80 on the Go90 scale of Doom streaming services.

• 27:20Alex Cranz?

  How do you, how do you measure that? How do you get those points?

• 27:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, I don't think you have to add them up. That 80 is a real vibe.

• 27:27Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 27:27Nilay Patel?

  That's just the looming presence of David Zaslog in his decision making.

• 27:31Alex Cranz?

  He just looks over and he's like, "What's that?"

• 27:32Nilay Patel?

  Um, HBO Max, as you know, a product of a doomed merger with AT&T, in which AT&T convinced a federal judge that this was, quote, "a vision deal", and that the vision was they would put short versions of Game of Thrones on Android phones.

• 27:48David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:49Alex Cranz?

  That would have ruled.

• 27:50Nilay Patel?

  And our nation's justice system looked at this and was like, "Sick."

• 27:54Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, because it would have been cool.

• 27:56Nilay Patel?

  It's like a real thing that happened.

• 27:57David Pierce?

  Do you ever say a sentence out loud and be like, "That can't possibly be true"? Like, "There's no way that thing I just said is real."

• 28:02Nilay Patel?

  It's super happened. They're like, "The vision is we're gonna preload stuff on mid-range Android phones, and it's gonna be Game of Thrones clips." Uh, that didn't pan out, uh, as many of you may have noticed. It all fell apart. They've got an enormous amount of debt, and what they have is a lot of AT&T customers who can't quit HBO Max. I'm one of these people. I'm grandfathered into an HBO Max plan, and so I cannot put this in the 4K category, because my AT&T account no longer knows about HBO Max, and I can't leave whatever version of the service I'm currently subscribed to, which no longer has 4K.

• 28:40David Pierce?

  That sounds right.

• 28:40Nilay Patel?

  This is, these are some of the, the biggest, most sophisticated companies in our country. And they're like, "Our database forgot about you."

• 28:49David Pierce?

  But they'll keep charging you. Don't worry about that.

• 28:51Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 28:51David Pierce?

  They will keep charging you.

• 28:52Nilay Patel?

  They're definitely gonna keep charging me. So I believe, yeah, the wild card.

• 28:55Alex Cranz?

  Would the 4K have even been good, though, coming from Max?

• 28:58Nilay Patel?

  I...

• 28:58Alex Cranz?

  Excuse me, HBO Max?

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  No. No, no, no. No, definitely not.

• 29:02Alex Cranz?

  It would have been bad.

• 29:03Nilay Patel?

  I watched, what's the, what's the one where they fight? Let them fight? Godzilla?

• 29:08Alex Cranz?

  Godzilla.

• 29:10Nilay Patel?

  That's how my brain works. Uh, I'd watched that in their version of Atmos and Vision.

• 29:14Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Nilay Patel?

  And it was like, "What if we do this at 2 bits per second?"

• 29:18Alex Cranz?

  Yeah!

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  It was just like a series of shapes and colors and noises, you know?

• 29:22Alex Cranz?

  Beautiful.

• 29:22Nilay Patel?

  Like a baby toy was just like happening, and then the one guy was like, "Let them fight." It's good. That's how you wanna experience Godzilla.

• 29:28David Pierce?

  Love that, yeah. Um, all right. I can't believe no one has picked YouTube yet. I feel obligated to pick YouTube, uh, which I'm...

• 29:33Nilay Patel?

  Wait, YouTube TV or YouTube Premium?

• 29:35David Pierce?

  Well, so I'm gonna put YouTube in cheap, so neither.

• 29:38Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 29:38David Pierce?

  I'm getting...

• 29:39Nilay Patel?

  You're on full YouTube with ads.

• 29:40David Pierce?

  All the ads. Like, every single ad you can imagine, I'm gonna watch it.

• 29:44Nilay Patel?

  That is the worst choice on this list.

• 29:45David Pierce?

  I'm gonna watch it.

• 29:45Nilay Patel?

  YouTube with ads is the worst choice on this list.

• 29:48Alex Cranz?

  No, I disagree. That's a good choice. That's how I watch YouTube now.

• 29:52David Pierce?

  I'm logged in, so I get recommendations, but I have to watch all the ads. I get mad at people who have ads now on YouTube. That's a thing that has happened recently. But I'll get over it. Win the draft, I will get over it. The best deal in streaming. Yes, I agree with that, but I don't get to have it. But you're going ads. I'm going YouTube. You're just going straight American cheese. Other cheeses are available, but just slices in the mouth. Just want it. Just give it to me. Okay, so that's the end of round three. YouTube is a zero on the Go90 scale. Yeah, it's fine. Feel very good about that. It's the only part of Google that feels like it knows what it's doing. It might be the only thing left on the internet at the end of all of this. It's just YouTube and The Verge, and that'll be it. It'll be great. Two websites, very different ideas.

• 31:13David Pierce?

  Okay, so we are at the end of round three. We're halfway through the draft. Alex so far has Peacock, Netflix, and Crunchyroll. Neelai has TikTok, the Disney bundle, and Max. I have YouTube, Apple TV, and Prime Video. I think it's very clear who is currently in third place, but we'll leave that alone for now.

• 31:31Alex Cranz?

  I'm in first.

• 31:31David Pierce?

  Wow. Just wait. Yeah, we're doing fine.

• 31:35Alex Cranz?

  I'm crushed.

• 31:36David Pierce?

  Okay, so for round four, I get to go again, which I am not prepared for.

• 31:41Alex Cranz?

  What are your leftovers?

• 31:42David Pierce?

  Haven't you been cheating this whole time? No. Is this just like you hustling us? You're like, I don't know how to play pool.

• 31:48Alex Cranz?

  He's just moving everything around. He's giving himself Netflix, giving himself Max.

• 31:51David Pierce?

  I did briefly give Neelai two of my picks, so that was confusing. You're doing great. So I have 4K niche and wildcard left.

• 31:58Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 31:59David Pierce?

  And I think I can't do any of the 4K ones I know of anymore, so that's bad. Does Tubi count as niche? What do we think? No.

• 32:09Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 32:10David Pierce?

  Tubi is like what happens when you turn on Tubi. I got a yes from the audience. That's just, they don't know what Tubi is.

• 32:16Nilay Patel?

  Tubi is like mainstream, free, ad-supported. Alex loves these things.

• 32:21Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's just free ad-supported television. It's got all of the stuff.

• 32:25David Pierce?

  You just made that sound very boring and very niche. That's kind of my point.

• 32:27Alex Cranz?

  No, no, because it's got, well, no way I can describe it as going to support.

• 32:32Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, like, if you...

• 32:33Alex Cranz?

  Damn it.

• 32:33David Pierce?

  No, you're right.

• 32:34Nilay Patel?

  If you're one of these boomers and you get off TikTok, you do your eight hours of TikTok in the day,

• 32:38Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Nilay Patel?

  and you go turn on the cheapest TV that you bought at Best Buy, you're watching Tubi. Like, it's just happening to you.

• 32:44David Pierce?

  That is probably true.

• 32:46Nilay Patel?

  I don't mean that to denigrate the TikTok-riddled boomers that populate the middle of the country. I am one of them. I mean to say that that is a thing that happens on TVs by default, and that makes it not mainstream.

• 32:56David Pierce?

  Fair enough. All right, well, then I won't take that. I will take Criterion.

• 33:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's, see, that's much more appropriate.

• 33:01David Pierce?

  Yeah, that feels right.

• 33:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:03David Pierce?

  Criterion is like, I don't know, it's like in the 20s on the scale, I would say. Like, I want it to continue to exist, and so do lots of people.

• 33:11Alex Cranz?

  I think Criterion wants it to continue to exist.

• 33:13David Pierce?

  But like, maybe all of Criterion will not exist forever.

• 33:17Alex Cranz?

  No, it feels pretty sustainable, yeah. There was that really great story recently about just kind of how sustainable it is and its whole business.

• 33:24Nilay Patel?

  But isn't the sustainability like James Cameron wants it to exist?

• 33:28Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 33:28David Pierce?

  Yeah, that is...

• 33:29Alex Cranz?

  Therefore, it will exist.

• 33:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, that's fair.

• 33:31David Pierce?

  It's like the Letterboxd app, where like, it'll be fine because Martin Scorsese uses it. So like, push comes to shove, it's gonna be all right. All right, so I'm taking Criterion. That's my pick. Neel, you're up. You have three categories remaining. You have 4K, live, and niche. Those are your three.

• 33:46Nilay Patel?

  YouTube TV or Sunday Ticket? I don't think you understand that I'm just recapitulating my draft that already won this thing. You two nerds are like, what do we do with Discovery Plus? Like, I'm just like, straight America.

• 33:59Alex Cranz?

  But it didn't win.

• 33:59Nilay Patel?

  I picked... huh?

• 34:00Alex Cranz?

  You didn't win.

• 34:01Nilay Patel?

  Well...

• 34:01David Pierce?

  Yeah, you objectively did.

• 34:02Alex Cranz?

  In fact, I won. So I'm just coming in again. I'm just saying.

• 34:06Nilay Patel?

  Alex, I like to think that we have a good relationship. In this situation, I would like to just directly gaslight you and say that I won.

• 34:15Alex Cranz?

  All right, what are you gonna do? No, you chose YouTube.

• 34:17Nilay Patel?

  YouTube TV Sunday Ticket is a straight zero.

• 34:19Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 34:20Nilay Patel?

  Like, you can't... You're fighting the service that delivers Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce to millions of Americans every week. Like, it's fine. It is the fastest-growing cable service in America. It has the most stuff, because it's a cable service. And it has the full backing of our nation's military slash NFL.

• 34:37David Pierce?

  I mean, it bought a decade of football, which means it bought a decade of existing.

• 34:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. So for 10 years, it's a zero. 11 years?

• 34:45Nilay Patel?

  Or until they break up. But from the reports I've read, it suggests that he's in Singapore right now. So I think things are...

• 34:50Alex Cranz?

  That's true.

• 34:51Nilay Patel?

  And that, you know, they both discuss taking the next step.

• 34:55Nilay Patel?

  What, you think I'm not following this? Am I crazy?

• 34:58Alex Cranz?

  I'm in the heights, I get it.

• 35:00David Pierce?

  All right, so that's yours. And I want you to know that I'm giving you YouTube TV because it is a separate product from YouTube.

• 35:06Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 35:07David Pierce?

  But if you now try to just be like YouTube TV but not Sunday Ticket, no.

• 35:10Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 35:11David Pierce?

  Neelai, no.

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what you're arguing with or who you're arguing with, but you've won.

• 35:15David Pierce?

  I have played these games with you before.

• 35:18Nilay Patel?

  Yes, and I'm now directly guesting.

• 35:20David Pierce?

  There we go. Okay. Alex, you're up. You get two now.

• 35:23Alex Cranz?

  Okay. I get to go two in a row?

• 35:24David Pierce?

  You get two picks.

• 35:26Alex Cranz?

  Wow. What's left for me?

• 35:27David Pierce?

  How do you not know how this works?

• 35:28Alex Cranz?

  I don't know. I didn't...

• 35:29David Pierce?

  Your three left are awards, live, and wildcard.

• 35:32Alex Cranz?

  Okay. I'm saving awards for last. I've got a good one for that one.

• 35:35David Pierce?

  I know, you're very excited about this.

• 35:36Alex Cranz?

  So I've got live.

• 35:38David Pierce?

  Live and wildcard.

• 35:39Alex Cranz?

  And wildcard. Ooh. That's tricky. So live, I'm gonna go channels again.

• 35:45David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 35:46Alex Cranz?

  It worked last time.

• 35:46David Pierce?

  Explain to the people what channels.

• 35:48Alex Cranz?

  Okay, so channels is an app. It's like a DVR app. You can plug it into your cable, if you still subscribe to cable. You can plug it into an antenna, and then you just DVR everything.

• 35:58David Pierce?

  It also gets all the fast channels.

• 35:59Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it gets all the fast channels, so you can go and like, just have your Pluto and have your Tubi, and then have your ABC and all of your other...

• 36:07David Pierce?

  I think it was you that described it to me as like an RSS reader for TV, which I found very compelling.

• 36:12Alex Cranz?

  That's...

• 36:12David Pierce?

  Like, the nerdiest possible thing, but it's awesome.

• 36:15Alex Cranz?

  And it's sick. The guy's like, very actively developing it. It's got a really pretty UI. I just dig the hell out of it. I use it a lot.

• 36:22David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 36:23Alex Cranz?

  So I'm gonna go with that for my live, because it gives me all of my lives. And then my wildcard. I think this one's really obvious. It's gonna be Paramount because you know,

• 36:34David Pierce?

  Somebody had to.

• 36:34Alex Cranz?

  It's like it's an 89 on the Go 90's scale.

• 36:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the most 89.

• 36:38Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, channels is like a zero because I don't think he's

• 36:41Nilay Patel?

  You can't kill RSS.

• 36:42Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you can't kill RSS. But Paramount Plus is definitely like an 89. It's as close as you can get until like they sell it in a couple of weeks or whatever. So, but yeah, I think it's a good wild card. It's a fun, I enjoy the Cowboys and I enjoy the live stuff and I enjoy the Star Trek. So it like, it gets everything for me.

• 37:06Nilay Patel?

  And that wasn't enough to keep a streaming service alive?

• 37:09Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 37:09Nilay Patel?

  Cowboys and Star Trek?

• 37:10Alex Cranz?

  You would think it would have been in 1966.

• 37:15Alex Cranz?

  And unfortunately, me and the boomers are the only ones that still watch it.

• 37:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Alex Cranz?

  But you know, it'll get merged with Peacock or something, so I'll have it all together again.

• 37:23Nilay Patel?

  There is a really good article about the demise of Paramount Plus that just talks about the sheer hubris which this product was launched.

• 37:31Alex Cranz?

  It's beautiful.

• 37:32Nilay Patel?

  Where they're like, well, we don't have a lot of stuff, but we've got CBS, we've got Star Trek, and we have Taylor Sheridan. And everyone's like, that's not enough stuff. Like, do you know how much stuff Netflix has? They're like, no, no, no, CBS.

• 37:43Nilay Patel?

  It turned out that the

• 37:43Alex Cranz?

  I mean, it worked for them for like, what, 30 years as a broadcast network? CBS was the most watched broadcast network. So they're like, yeah.

• 37:50David Pierce?

  And you're one of only three things that exists to watch.

• 37:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Yeah, when they had like a monopoly, kind of like a pseudo monopoly, they crushed it. And then more competition came and they, they're an 89.

• 38:02David Pierce?

  Yeah, it gets tougher when you're not Channel 2.

• 38:05Nilay Patel?

  One thing, single-handedly keeping CBS alive, this is a true story. Alex is addicted to 60 Minutes.

• 38:10Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 38:11Nilay Patel?

  She walks into our newsroom at least twice a week and is like, I saw this thing on 60 Minutes. And all of us have to be like, well, definitionally, Alex, that means it happened eight months ago.

• 38:20Alex Cranz?

  It's true. I love it. It's my favorite show. It just gives you a really good insight into what CBS wants boomers to think about.

• 38:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:28Alex Cranz?

  And I love that. I want to know that, too.

• 38:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:32Alex Cranz?

  It's a good time.

• 38:32Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 38:33Alex Cranz?

  Leslie Stahl, I mean, oh my god. I could talk about her for hours, but we don't have that much time to go, so.

• 38:39David Pierce?

  We don't.

• 38:40Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 38:40Nilay Patel?

  When I think about South by Southwest, I think about Leslie Stahl.

• 38:43Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, Leslie Stahl fangirling specifically.

• 38:46Nilay Patel?

  We really, yeah, exactly. David?

• 38:47David Pierce?

  You're up next.

• 38:48Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's me!

• 38:50David Pierce?

  Crap.

• 38:50Nilay Patel?

  Alright, well I've got, I've got two left, right?

• 38:52Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 38:53Nilay Patel?

  Uh, 4K.

• 38:54David Pierce?

  4K and niche.

• 38:55Nilay Patel?

  Niche. Well, this next one can go into either one.

• 38:58David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 38:59Nilay Patel?

  I'm picking my new favorite streaming service. Bravia Core.

• 39:02David Pierce?

  Oh god.

• 39:03Nilay Patel?

  The streaming service only available on select Sony.

• 39:05David Pierce?

  Yeah, I just instantly lost the draft. Congratulations.

• 39:08Nilay Patel?

  It has four movies on it, and they all look amazing.

• 39:11Alex Cranz?

  They're all Spider-Man.

• 39:12Nilay Patel?

  80 megabits per second is out of control. Sony owns no movies, it owns no IP. It's just like old Spider-Man movies. Uh, you have to set the TV to allow it to stream at like this level of bandwidth.

• 39:23David Pierce?

  To like call your cable company, you're like, "Listen, it's about to get weird. Two hours."

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  So, this is a true fact. Sony is like such a big disconnected company. They make the TVs. Only the TVs support the streaming service. They did not put an ethernet port on the TVs that is fast enough to support the streaming service. So you either have to use wifi, or you have to buy a USB ethernet adapter, like a US... This is a tr... So I did it. It's great. I love it. I've never had more fun in my life not watching movies and instead configuring the settings of my TV. It's very good.

• 39:54Alex Cranz?

  So where is it on the Go90s? It's like a zero, right?

• 39:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's a... Sony loves this thing.

• 39:58Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they're never getting rid of that.

• 40:00Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah. If you've ever wanted to watch Ghostbusters 2 in the most pristine quality of your entire life...

• 40:05Alex Cranz?

  Like, you can see every core.

• 40:07Nilay Patel?

  Which I did. I did it so... I watched the shit out of Ghostbusters 2. And I showed it to other people, and they were like, "Why are we watching Ghostbusters 2?" Like 4K IMAX right now.

• 40:16David Pierce?

  You don't have to pick this. You know that, right?

• 40:18Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 40:19David Pierce?

  No one, no one from Sony is like back there.

• 40:22Alex Cranz?

  You have choices.

• 40:23David Pierce?

  Pointing anything at you.

• 40:24Alex Cranz?

  There's a lot.

• 40:24Nilay Patel?

  In the free, the glorious state of Texas, I'm exercising my free market rights as an American to pick Bravia Core. The best streaming service that is the weirdest to use, that has a credit system that makes no sense. Sometimes it just forgets that it gave you. It's all very bad, but it's all glorious. Like, I want every one of these services to offer me, like, "Stream a Blu-ray to me." And that's, that's what David's just like, he's like, "You should stop talking."

• 40:52Alex Cranz?

  Horrified.

• 40:53Nilay Patel?

  It's good.

• 40:54David Pierce?

  I just always thought it was a bit when you would come in and be like, "I watched a movie on Bravia Core." And now I'm like, "Oh, no, Neela loves Bravia Core."

• 41:01Nilay Patel?

  I do.

• 41:02Alex Cranz?

  Like, do you have, like, a little monitor to show it, so it always shows you what the bitrate is?

• 41:05Nilay Patel?

  Do you think I don't have the Eero app on my phone open, showing me how fast the internet speed is going on the TV? While, while I watch something like Zero Dark Thirty again?

• 41:14David Pierce?

  You usually don't watch Zero Dark Thirty, it's just up there while you watch your Eero app.

• 41:18Nilay Patel?

  That's very good. And then, I've told this story before. If you watch Zero Dark Thirty and then you have a small child who is not compliant about eating, you start accidentally, like, saying torture words to your small child. She's like, "Zero Dark Thirty is, like, very intense." And then the next day, I was like, "Your behavior determines how you're treated." And she's like, "I'm not eating the apples." "Don't do that. Just, like, don't do that to your child."

• 41:40David Pierce?

  Um, alright, now, it's me.

• 41:42Alex Cranz?

  You've got one left?

• 41:43David Pierce?

  I have two left, but I get to do them both right now.

• 41:45Alex Cranz?

  Oh, wow.

• 41:45David Pierce?

  Uh, which feels like a lot of pressure. So I'm gonna pick Tubi for 4K, because I just now, the second confirmed that there is at least one 4K thing on Tubi. And it's a fireplace video. Like, it's like a Yule log situation. But it counts. It's 4K, and it's on Tubi, so I get to have it. So that's going in 4K.

• 42:03Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 42:04David Pierce?

  Pretty psyched about it. I should've picked Tubi for a different one. I did this draft poorly.

• 42:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:08David Pierce?

  As it has turned out.

• 42:09Nilay Patel?

  Here at the end, we're just picking stuff.

• 42:10David Pierce?

  But we're coming around.

• 42:11Alex Cranz?

  It could've been a lot.

• 42:12David Pierce?

  We'll be fine. I just realized all of my wild cards were gone two rounds ago, so it's been, like, kinda messing with me for a while. But it's okay. So I'm picking Tubi.

• 42:20Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 42:21David Pierce?

  Which I actually think is, like, 30, somewhere in that range on the scale. It's, like, doing really well. It's, like, sneakily very popular. Also, Fox has no other streaming anything to do, so they just give everything to Tubi. But also, Tubi's whole thing was, it's free and there's ads, and that's where everybody else is going.

• 42:41Alex Cranz?

  Yep.

• 42:42David Pierce?

  So, that could be bad.

• 42:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:44David Pierce?

  And so now they're like, "What if we had..." Yeah. They're like, now they're like, "Well, we have to get some good content. How do we do that?" It's like, "Oh, no." Welcome to everyone else's hell from the last one.

• 42:53Alex Cranz?

  Well, they just go to, like, Zaslov, and they're like, "Hey, is there any show you wanna cancel? And can we just, like..."

• 42:58David Pierce?

  Can we just, like, have it? And he's like, "No, tax cuts."

• 43:02Alex Cranz?

  Absolutely not. I gotta put it in the vault. Can't have it. That was my Zaslov.

• 43:08David Pierce?

  That was good.

• 43:08Alex Cranz?

  I'm sorry.

• 43:09David Pierce?

  That was perfect.

• 43:10Nilay Patel?

  It was great because I actually don't know what David Zaslov sounds like.

• 43:12David Pierce?

  That, exactly.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  It's like that.

• 43:13David Pierce?

  She nailed it.

• 43:14Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 43:14David Pierce?

  She was working on it.

• 43:16Nilay Patel?

  Put it in the vault.

• 43:16Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 43:17David Pierce?

  Yeah. I think for, for my wild card, I think I'm taking Instagram reels. Which feels insane as I say it out loud.

• 43:27Nilay Patel?

  I just want to, you can't.

• 43:29Alex Cranz?

  You know, he can't, if you choose TikTok, he can absolutely choose the TikTok clone.

• 43:33Nilay Patel?

  TikTok doesn't have pictures. Instagram famously.

• 43:35David Pierce?

  Hey, TikTok has slideshows now.

• 43:38Nilay Patel?

  The slideshows are effectively a form of video. Videos are just pictures all in a row.

• 43:44David Pierce?

  When, when do, when does the slideshow become a video? And you're like, let's talk about this.

• 43:49Nilay Patel?

  Like, what is it?

• 43:50David Pierce?

  If I go through my PowerPoint really fast, embed a video.

• 43:53Nilay Patel?

  You were swipe a TikTok carousel 24 frames per second? It's called persistence of vision, Pierce. Aren't you a tech journalist?

• 44:01David Pierce?

  No, I'm giving it to me.

• 44:01Nilay Patel?

  I think.

• 44:02David Pierce?

  I'm typing it in here.

• 44:03Nilay Patel?

  By the way, taking Tubi and Instagram reels back to back is just the saddest, man.

• 44:08David Pierce?

  It feels great.

• 44:09Alex Cranz?

  No, it's.

• 44:09Nilay Patel?

  Those are the last two cars on the rental lot.

• 44:11David Pierce?

  Do you know how much content I have now? All the good stuff.

• 44:17Nilay Patel?

  You know how much repurposed garbage from other people's platforms?

• 44:20Alex Cranz?

  He's getting TikTok.

• 44:21David Pierce?

  I baited you. I literally just got TikTok, like five rounds after. Which is perfect. You're gonna see everything and then two weeks later, I'm gonna see it.

• 44:29Nilay Patel?

  That's great. I'm, I'm super happy for you.

• 44:31Alex Cranz?

  With the same UI too.

• 44:33David Pierce?

  Yeah. I'm psyched about it.

• 44:34Alex Cranz?

  Under yours.

• 44:34David Pierce?

  I think, I think this is great. But I also, I really feel like we started with like, things that have won Oscars and we're all the way down at things that unironically call themselves content. And that's, this is the spectrum that I have created. I'm very proud of it.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra because it's not just a superior like beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 45:23Alex Cranz?

  All right, who's next?

• 45:24Nilay Patel?

  Eli. Crap, I wasn't prepared.

• 45:25Alex Cranz?

  This is why I don't know certain ones.

• 45:26Nilay Patel?

  Your last one is niche. This is all you have left. David just updated the spreadsheet with the word Sony Bravia Court, and somehow Google Docs transmitted his disdain.

• 45:39Nilay Patel?

  All right, so the last category I have left is niche.

• 45:41Alex Cranz?

  Uh huh.

• 45:43Nilay Patel?

  Which is tough here.

• 45:47Nilay Patel?

  I... You are not allowed to take a Plexer. Have to think of a streaming service. Just FYI. Okay, I know, I know what I'm gonna do. I feel weird about it, I'm gonna say it. It's only because my father-in-law is at my house, and he has been watching this streaming service non-stop since he arrived. Motor Trend TV.

• 46:07Nilay Patel?

  Tell us about Motor Trend TV. A Motor Trend TV is an app that plays Motor Trend content at you. If you are interested in older cars being turned into nicer cars, do I have an app for you, my friends? Have you ever thought about watching a show where some dudes go to a car auction? That's it? That's the whole...

• 46:26Alex Cranz?

  Do they bid, or do they just go?

• 46:28Nilay Patel?

  Well, they talk about whether they would bid, is it worth it? It's very much like PBS, but with cars. You know, I also find it captivating, I'm a car nerd. I just can't... The duration, it's currently being displayed in my home, is really quite something. And so, just for the family, I'm doing this. And this is like a thing you can turn on, and it just keeps happening at you? Yeah, it is like a full grid guide of Motor Trend content. Fair enough. Yeah.

• 46:54Alex Cranz?

  It is niche.

• 46:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's the most niche.

• 46:56Alex Cranz?

  I would say that is the most niche.

• 46:57Nilay Patel?

  I'm pretty certain my father-in-law is keeping this service afloat.

• 47:00Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's just him.

• 47:01Nilay Patel?

  Is this Motor Trend one word or two words?

• 47:04Alex Cranz?

  It's one-worded.

• 47:04Nilay Patel?

  One word, but two-word... Like, TV is a different word? You know what I'm saying? Motor Trend TV. Yeah. Got it. That's right.

• 47:09Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 47:10Nilay Patel?

  Okay, that's not what I thought you were gonna say. What do you think I was gonna say? Something other than that. So many choices.

• 47:18Alex Cranz?

  I was really excited to find out.

• 47:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I was really thinking about like, what's at the bottom of my Apple TV grid? And then, uh, the

• 47:25David Pierce?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 47:26Nilay Patel?

  It's just a, it's a wasteland of gone night.

• 47:28David Pierce?

  Mine is like BBC America.

• 47:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:31David Pierce?

  And like a PBS app that won't let me log in anymore because I canceled my account when I moved. And they were like, no, you hate PBS in America. You can't get in anymore.

• 47:40Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they get really mad when you move.

• 47:42David Pierce?

  Very upset.

• 47:43Alex Cranz?

  PBS is just so.

• 47:44David Pierce?

  NPR is mad at me now. It's a whole thing.

• 47:46Alex Cranz?

  I'm sorry.

• 47:46David Pierce?

  All right, Alex, you're up last.

• 47:48Alex Cranz?

  All right.

• 47:48David Pierce?

  Awards.

• 47:48Alex Cranz?

  Last awards. I'm gonna go movie.

• 47:51David Pierce?

  Which has won an Oscar.

• 47:52Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 47:53Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 47:53Alex Cranz?

  It's one, because it's.

• 47:54Nilay Patel?

  Can you say the name of the thing again?

• 47:56Alex Cranz?

  Movie. M U B I.

• 47:58Nilay Patel?

  M U B, okay, okay.

• 47:59Alex Cranz?

  It's real. It's real. And it's.

• 48:01Nilay Patel?

  And that's not Tubi.

• 48:02Alex Cranz?

  No, it's movie.

• 48:04Nilay Patel?

  Got it. Okay.

• 48:06Alex Cranz?

  It's real. I swear it's real. I saw it when I was walking in. They had some signs outside and I went and I.

• 48:12Nilay Patel?

  You're like, in case they need to think of a fifth streaming service.

• 48:15Alex Cranz?

  I forgot about movie.

• 48:16Nilay Patel?

  And then you checked to make sure they'd won an Oscar.

• 48:18Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, because, because movie is all independent films from the last few decades.

• 48:24Nilay Patel?

  That's good.

• 48:25David Pierce?

  What Oscar did it win?

• 48:26Alex Cranz?

  A lot.

• 48:27David Pierce?

  No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. This is not a movie that won an Oscar is available on this service.

• 48:33Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 48:34David Pierce?

  That's nothing. This is, this is a movie original.

• 48:38Alex Cranz?

  He chose Disney Plus as his award.

• 48:41Nilay Patel?

  Because they pay for the movie.

• 48:42David Pierce?

  Won an Oscar.

• 48:43Alex Cranz?

  What did?

• 48:43Nilay Patel?

  Like Disney wins the Oscar.

• 48:45David Pierce?

  Documentary Oscar thanks to Questlove, Alex Cranz. And then I made a whole Disney Plus original joke. Where have you been, Alex?

• 48:52Alex Cranz?

  Wait, wait.

• 48:53David Pierce?

  Where have you been this?

• 48:53Alex Cranz?

  You're saying that I can't just choose like?

• 48:55David Pierce?

  No, that's all of them.

• 48:57Alex Cranz?

  So I couldn't have?

• 48:58David Pierce?

  You, it has a movie available that has won an Oscar is, is, is TikTok in one minute increments.

• 49:03Alex Cranz?

  Exactly.

• 49:04David Pierce?

  That's all of them.

• 49:05Alex Cranz?

  Exactly. I was, I was all ready for it.

• 49:08David Pierce?

  So you were just gonna pick?

• 49:09Nilay Patel?

  Like, it has a movie available that has won an Oscar is Reddit.

• 49:13Alex Cranz?

  A hundred percent. All right. Hmm.

• 49:15Nilay Patel?

  This was the hardest category because of, for the, for, because of this rule.

• 49:18David Pierce?

  For this exact reason.

• 49:20Nilay Patel?

  Because if not for the rule, it would be the easiest category.

• 49:22David Pierce?

  Right, because.

• 49:22Alex Cranz?

  It is the easiest category. All right.

• 49:24Nilay Patel?

  Twitter has movies on it that have won.

• 49:27Alex Cranz?

  I know.

• 49:27Nilay Patel?

  By the way, uh, he says it's a video first platform. Does Twitter count? You could pick Twitter.

• 49:33David Pierce?

  If Tucker Carlson has won an Oscar while on X, he can have it.

• 49:38Alex Cranz?

  So it has to have been a streaming service very specifically?

• 49:42David Pierce?

  Yes. The company that hosts it has to have made it and it has to have won an Oscar.

• 49:48Alex Cranz?

  Then I'll choose Hulu.

• 49:50Nilay Patel?

  She can do that because she's not in the bundle.

• 49:51David Pierce?

  That is true. Okay.

• 49:53Alex Cranz?

  Bam!

• 49:53David Pierce?

  That's fair.

• 49:55Alex Cranz?

  But Mubi's better.

• 49:56David Pierce?

  No.

• 49:57Nilay Patel?

  You heard about Mubi just now.

• 49:59Alex Cranz?

  I know, and it looks really sick. I'm gonna go subscribe. It's got 4K.

• 50:03Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 50:04Alex Cranz?

  It's got a lot of old movies.

• 50:05Nilay Patel?

  Many of which have won Oscars.

• 50:07Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's got award-winning content on it.

• 50:10David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 50:11Alex Cranz?

  So Hulu...

• 50:11David Pierce?

  It theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, unlike everything else that does that exact same thing.

• 50:17Nilay Patel?

  I feel like the best-case scenario for buying display advertising at South by Southwest is people on a stage Googling what your company is in front of an audience.

• 50:25David Pierce?

  It legitimately was like 40%.

• 50:27Nilay Patel?

  Zero people have signed up, but we have definitely Googled it now.

• 50:30David Pierce?

  Alex Cranz, where is Mubi on the Go 90s?

• 50:33Nilay Patel?

  This is the worst-case scenario.

• 50:36Alex Cranz?

  Wait, no, it's Hulu now, right?

• 50:38David Pierce?

  Well, I'd like you to do both.

• 50:39Alex Cranz?

  Okay, you want me to do both. Okay, Mubi is, it feels like it's gonna be pretty low on the Go 90s scale. It feels like a 20. Because a lot of you, like, it was just like...

• 50:50David Pierce?

  You've put a movie in... Year 2028, Netflix is gone.

• 50:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 50:55David Pierce?

  But Mubi...

• 50:56Alex Cranz?

  Mubi versus this, because like, nobody knows about Mubi and Mubi's just like...

• 51:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they can't kill it if you can't find it.

• 51:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's just like, it's just thriving over there in a corner and periodically you're like, you know what, I'll turn on Mubi. And Netflix, though, everybody's gonna like, flip on it.

• 51:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Netflix is like, public company, like, Reed's gotta get out there and explain his content. Mubi is just like, I don't know, we just licensed Oscar-winning independent films.

• 51:18Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they could do whatever.

• 51:19Nilay Patel?

  All right, I buy it, I buy it.

• 51:20Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Hulu, on the other hand... I chose a lot of 89s on this one, huh? Because that's definitely like an 89, like it doesn't have a lot of time left in this world.

• 51:32David Pierce?

  Hulu might be the most 89.

• 51:34Alex Cranz?

  More than Paramount Plus.

• 51:35Nilay Patel?

  No, yeah, no way.

• 51:37David Pierce?

  Hulu is already actively dying. The person who owns Hulu has said he's.

• 51:41Nilay Patel?

  Saying like trying to rank different 89s, which is actually why you have other numbers. I didn't give anything an 89. This is a Q, bro. What is the most 89? It's like a question that has long been solved.

• 51:54Alex Cranz?

  Paramount Plus is now an 87.

• 51:56David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 51:57Alex Cranz?

  And then we'll put Hulu at 89.

• 51:59David Pierce?

  Okay, there, I.

• 51:59Alex Cranz?

  And then TikTok is at.

• 52:01Nilay Patel?

  TikTok is 89, like that's straight up.

• 52:03Alex Cranz?

  88.

• 52:04Nilay Patel?

  You think it's 88?

• 52:05Alex Cranz?

  Which do you think is more likely to not be here at the end of the year? Paramount Plus?

• 52:09Nilay Patel?

  Or TikTok might not be here at the end of the week.

• 52:11Alex Cranz?

  That's fair.

• 52:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it probably will.

• 52:15Alex Cranz?

  The teens are strong. The teens are strong. People love their TikTok.

• 52:18Nilay Patel?

  They do, and they will VPN into China immediately. The teens are like, get me on the other side of that firewall.

• 52:23Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, a lot of people are learning about VPNs. So I think it'll persist. I'm putting it at 88.

• 52:30Nilay Patel?

  All right. Again, what is the most 89 is a baffling question. Uh, I think TikTok is right now, at this moment, who knows what's gonna happen?

• 52:38Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 52:38Nilay Patel?

  I think TikTok is 89. I think Paramount Plus is an 88. I think Hulu is an 87.

• 52:42Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 52:42Nilay Patel?

  Hulu is famously unkillable. Like many, many, many people have tried to kill Hulu and they can't do it.

• 52:48Alex Cranz?

  I would love if Bob was just like, couldn't do it. Just let it persist.

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  That's his next press conference.

• 52:53David Pierce?

  Somehow someone's.

• 52:55Nilay Patel?

  I've been trying to kill this thing.

• 52:56Alex Cranz?

  He's like, Hulu keeps going. We're gonna enjoy it.

• 52:58Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I think, but I think they want to merge it into Disney. I think they want that to be the brand, like all this stuff.

• 53:03Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 53:04Nilay Patel?

  It's gone. It's my, my feeling.

• 53:07David Pierce?

  Yeah, Hulu is not going to be around for very long.

• 53:09Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna be so wrong. Like, it's gonna be Hulu and Movie.

• 53:12David Pierce?

  I'm so excited to do this next year, and Netflix has just gone out of business, and Alex is like, I told you.

• 53:17Alex Cranz?

  I'm gonna be so vindicated. Paramount Plus is still around, Hulu's still around, and Netflix is gone.

• 53:22Nilay Patel?

  Please watch my show on Netflix before.

• 53:28Alex Cranz?

  You can watch it in one minute sections on Instagram reels.

• 53:31Nilay Patel?

  Please watch the future of in one minute increments on Instagram reels. That's gonna go great for us.

• 53:36David Pierce?

  It's perfect. All right. That is the end of the draft.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  Would you like to recap?

• 53:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 53:39Nilay Patel?

  Yes, please.

• 53:39David Pierce?

  You've done it. Okay. Alex Krenzmann first.

• 53:42Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 53:42David Pierce?

  And you picked Peacock, Mubi slash Hulu. I'm actually gonna give you both. I just feel like you should have both.

• 53:50Alex Cranz?

  Thank you.

• 53:50Nilay Patel?

  Fine.

• 53:51David Pierce?

  Netflix, channels, Crunchyroll, and Paramount Plus.

• 53:55Alex Cranz?

  I'm gonna have a great time watching all of my content.

• 53:58David Pierce?

  I think there's a legitimate-

• 53:59Nilay Patel?

  There was just a dismissive hiss laugh from over there. I just wanna be very clear.

• 54:02David Pierce?

  I think there's legitimately a chance only two of yours still exist by the time we do this next. Neil and I picked TikTok, the Disney bundle.

• 54:10Nilay Patel?

  Nailed it.

• 54:10David Pierce?

  Sony Bravia Core, which is a real, real tank. YouTube TV with Sunday Ticket, Motor Trend TV.

• 54:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:17David Pierce?

  And Max.

• 54:18Nilay Patel?

  I just wanna point out, this is like-

• 54:19David Pierce?

  You were all over the place today.

• 54:20Nilay Patel?

  This is breadth, this is depth, this is Oscar winning.

• 54:24Alex Cranz?

  Motor Trend TV.

• 54:26Nilay Patel?

  At this point, if they don't win an Oscar, what are you doing?

• 54:29Nilay Patel?

  Everyone else has. Mubi. Yeah, I would say the range here is unparalleled. The quality is unparalleled. The 4K is available if you can get off your AT&T plan. There's no fighting it.

• 54:40Alex Cranz?

  Is Motor Trend TV in 4K?

• 54:44Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no, it's not.

• 54:47David Pierce?

  360p, David.

• 54:48Nilay Patel?

  That is being shot on a GoPro from 1994. That's the situation.

• 54:53David Pierce?

  I love it.

• 54:53Alex Cranz?

  David, what did you pick?

• 54:54David Pierce?

  I picked YouTube.

• 54:56Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 54:56David Pierce?

  With ads.

• 54:57Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 54:57David Pierce?

  All the ads. Apple TV, Tubi, Prime Video, Criterion Collection, and Instagram reels.

• 55:04Alex Cranz?

  Honestly, that's-

• 55:05David Pierce?

  Which I'm still having a lot of feelings.

• 55:06Alex Cranz?

  I think you won, actually. Thinking about it, I'm like, no.

• 55:10Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry, you picked YouTube with ads and Instagram reels?

• 55:12David Pierce?

  You picked Bravia Core and Motor Trend TV.

• 55:15Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, yeah, like-

• 55:16Nilay Patel?

  80 megabits per second.

• 55:17David Pierce?

  You can't all have winners, man.

• 55:19Nilay Patel?

  Why do you even have a gigabit inner connection?

• 55:21David Pierce?

  What was the new movie that just came to Bravia Core that you were all excited about?

• 55:24Nilay Patel?

  Anyone But You. A movie which does not contain any sequences of action fast enough to require 80 megabits per second. Like, that movie can be compressed into a series of still frames.

• 55:33David Pierce?

  Glenn Howell taking his shirt off, looking great.

• 55:34Nilay Patel?

  Here's Glenn Powell. Here's Glenn Powell next to another Jack guy. Like, just one frame at a time. It's barely, it's just a series of pictures going by very quickly.

• 55:42David Pierce?

  That you could watch in one minute increments on TikTok and probably get the vibe.

• 55:46Nilay Patel?

  And I'm confident that that will be, like TikTok's entire content strategy is a copyright infringement.

• 55:50Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 55:51Nilay Patel?

  And also Chinese propaganda. And you can just see, I maintain a list of TikToks that I think should be media studies PhDs. Happy to share. And all of them are just layers upon layers of copyright infringement.

• 56:03David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's good stuff. All right, that's it. That's the draft.

• 56:06Nilay Patel?

  We did, who won?

• 56:08David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah, let's, okay, let's do this again.

• 56:10Nilay Patel?

  You can't just declare yourself the winner.

• 56:11David Pierce?

  You're right.

• 56:11Alex Cranz?

  I declared him a winner too. Two out of three.

• 56:14Nilay Patel?

  We have an audience.

• 56:15David Pierce?

  Okay, you're right. Okay, who thinks Neel I won the draft? Yeah, that's correct.

• 56:20Alex Cranz?

  One person did raise their hand.

• 56:22Nilay Patel?

  That guy runs Bravia.

• 56:23David Pierce?

  That was really nice of you. Yeah.

• 56:24Nilay Patel?

  That's Steve Sony right there.

• 56:27David Pierce?

  Alex Cranz.

• 56:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, look at that. Crunchyroll fans out there.

• 56:32David Pierce?

  And who thinks I won the draft?

• 56:36Nilay Patel?

  With YouTube with ads?

• 56:39David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 56:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 56:40David Pierce?

  I'm one of the, I'm one of the people.

• 56:41Alex Cranz?

  You can, you go to the bathroom during the ads.

• 56:43Nilay Patel?

  We gotta end this. That's it. That's the Vergecast, everybody. Thank you all for coming here at South by Southwest. To all the people in the cars that are here, thank you for listening to our show. Send us your own draft orders. We'd love to hear from you. David and I have received a number of emails from people showing us photos of decorative plates in their homes. After an offhand mention of a decorative plate, that's very confusing, but continue to send us your parents' silverware.

• 57:07David Pierce?

  Yes, please.

• 57:08Nilay Patel?

  That's very good. And we'll be back next week. That's every week for the rest of our lives, we will be talking about these issues.

• 57:14Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 57:14Nilay Patel?

  That's Vergecast Rock and Roll.

• 57:21David Pierce?

  And that's it for The Vergecast this week. Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866VERGE11. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. That's it. We'll see you next week.

• 57:39Speaker 05

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