Pod Insights The Vergecast Who will win the 2024 streaming wars? About this episode Today on the flagship podcast of endlessly looping sounds:
02:33 - David Pierce dives into one piece of music that has taken over "North Sea TikTok"
20:45 - Alex Cranz joins the show to preview new TV shows coming to streaming in 2024, and gives predictions about which streaming service will come out on top this year.
55:36 - This week's Vergecast Hotline question about E Ink at CES.
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Transcript 13,062 words · 12 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 David Pierce? Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of endlessly looping sounds. I'm your friend David Pierce and I'm inside. All I've been is inside these last few days because I'm in Washington DC where it's freezing cold and snowing. And not only is it nasty to be outside, but this seems to be one of those cities where everyone just forgets how to drive as soon as any kind of precipitation happens. Like even the idea that it might rain and everybody just starts driving 1,000 miles an hour into medians for some reason. So basically, not only is it just kind of gross to go outside right now, it's legitimately dangerous to my health. So the last few days, I've gone out to walk the dog and go grocery shopping and that's pretty much it. Here's hoping
0:47 David Pierce? for better weather, both for me and for a lot of folks, really soon. Anyway, we have a great show for you today. Now that the holidays and CES are over, we are back to our regularly scheduled Vergecast programming and we have a bunch of good stuff for you today. We're going to talk about TikTok, specifically one part of TikTok, and even more specifically, one sound that has taken over that one specific part of TikTok in a totally fascinating way. Then we're going to talk about streaming services because this is going to be another big year for streaming services and not everyone is going to survive it. All that's coming up in just a sec, but first I have to find the space heater because even just looking out the window is making me cold. This is The Vergecast. We'll be right back.
1:28 Speaker 01 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 light 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.
1:56 Speaker 02 Blowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them? That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out. In. Dashboard. Confessions.
2:06 Speaker 03 I remember telling my boss, "It'll be good for the brand," when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't.
2:14 Speaker 02 Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.
2:29 David Pierce? Welcome back. So, a few weeks ago, I noticed I started hearing this one song on TikTok over and over and over and over again. That itself is not surprising or interesting, right? I mean, there's a new viral thing on TikTok once a week, and I think at this point I know 30 seconds of every popular song on Earth just because of TikTok. But this song just immediately jumps out as different. It's not the backing track for a dance challenge and nobody's using it to make cute videos of their kids. It's the opposite, actually. This song seems to be the official soundtrack of terrifying TikTok videos. Like, videos showing Bigfoot sightings and deep-sea monsters
3:12 David Pierce? captured through all of those always blurry camera shots. You know what I'm talking about? Videos with captions like "Things They Didn't Want You to Know About", but mostly it's videos about the North Sea.
3:25 David Pierce? North Sea TikTok has been booming the last couple of months, and this song is the soundtrack. Big ships crashing down into huge waves, workers dangling from oil rigs while the water roils around them, deep, dark water capsizing ships or tossing a bunch of shipping containers overboard into the sea. This trend seemed to take off really in late November and early December, and is still going strong now. And it seems like practically every one of those videos has this song underneath.
4:26 David Pierce? This song is called Hoist the Colors. It was originally written by Hans Zimmer for the not very good movie Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End. It's this early scene in the movie where a bunch of pirates or people accused of consorting with pirates are about to be hanged, and they start to sing a song together at the gallows. Here's what it sounds like in the movie.
5:06 David Pierce? The version going viral on TikTok is by a group called The Bass Singers of TikTok. And the story of this song starts with this guy.
5:14 Speaker 04 So you can enter me as Bobby Waters, also known as Bobby Bass. My real name is not Bobby Bass, that's just my stage name.
5:22 David Pierce? If you're a regular TikTok viewer, there's a decent chance you've heard of Bobby too, or at least seen some of his videos. He's gone pretty viral a few times. He started posting on the platform a couple of years ago during the pandemic.
5:34 Speaker 04 I was in my junior year of college and everyone went home. So I just had all this time on my hand. I was only taking like one online class over the summer.
5:41 David Pierce? Bobby's friend showed him a TikTok of this emerging trend at the time where bass singers would add bass to other songs on TikTok.
5:58 David Pierce? They just give them some real like low end energy, you know? Bobby, as I'm confident you can tell by his voice, is a bass singer. He dug the trend and he started doing the same thing, duetting a song on TikTok and adding a deep, boomy bass to it.
6:24 David Pierce? This group of bass adders became kind of a community on TikTok.
6:28 Speaker 04 TikTok was a great way for bass singers to kind of like add what they do, whether it be a duet or whether it would be singing a song like an octave lower or just doing their bass thing. It drew a lot of attention to bass singing in general. So a bunch of young bass singers were like, oh, I didn't know I could do this. So they would hop on the app and kind of do a similar thing. And so now we have all this like new generation of bass singers coming up. And then around the end of 2020, I was saying like the sea shanty craze started happening.
6:57 David Pierce? You remember the sea shanty craze, right? Especially the one song, Soon May the Weller Man Come. It was like completely ubiquitous for a while.
7:05 Speaker 05 Soon may the well man come to bring us sugar and tea and rum. One day when the tonguing is done, we'll take our leave and go.
7:16 David Pierce? Everybody, including these bass singers, was making sea shanty videos for a while. Things got weird during the pandemic, you guys. This particular video from a singer named Nathan Evans and a bunch of other folks was probably the apex of the whole thing. The sea shanty trend got so big that Bobby and a few other singers formed a group called The Weller Men. They got a record deal and they made an album of these sea shanties.
7:38 Speaker 06 The water, the whale's tail came up and caught her. Her hands to the side, harpooned and fought her when she dived down low.
7:47 David Pierce? On his own TikTok, though, Bobby kept making stuff, duetting other songs to add bass and just seeing what worked. Part of being on TikTok is you just try stuff and you see what works. And a super bassy cover that he had done of Hoist the Colors did pretty well.
8:11 David Pierce? Bobby also just happened to really love the song.
8:15 Speaker 04 Just like one person just starts singing and then everyone joins in. All the pirates join in and it's kind of like this. It's almost like scary. It's like they're singing, dude. Like just imagine if everyone who you're about to execute just starts singing the whole song and literally the whole sea can hear it. It lends itself very, very well. Songs like that, songs like Misty Mountains, they're very like bass anthem-y. These like slow minor songs that just kind of almost folky, almost like working sea shanty like. I owe Hoist the Colors a couple of different things because the first one that I did that really blew up was with an amazing singer called Melinda.
9:06 David Pierce? That video, Bobby told me, took him from 200,000 followers on TikTok to over a million. Bobby and Melinda ended up making and releasing a full version, which is really cool, but that's not the one we're talking about. Neither are the other experiments and duets that Bobby did of Hoist the Colors, all of which kept doing well. Something about this song that people on TikTok really like. But then...
9:27 Speaker 04 So one morning, as soon as I woke up, I was like, screw it, let's do it. And so I just went over to my computer, started planning it, started a session, started reaching out to some people.
9:38 David Pierce? He ended up with a handful of different bass singers, most of whom he'd either worked with or dueted, or both.
9:44 Speaker 04 There were seven vocalists on the track that we ended up making. It was me, Bobby, it was David A. He was one of the soloists. Eric Holloway, who is one of the lowest voices on the planet. And he has the third very, very, very deep solo. And then for the other background singers, we had Danny Breivik, also known as Big Brev. He had like all the baritone parts. Luke Taylor, who we both know, one of the dudes from The Wellerman, other super low bass. We had Ebox, also named, whose real name is Nelson. And then we had the Snikel, whose real name is Jesse. I kind of just put together this kind of like dream team of singers.
10:20 David Pierce? Bobby spent a couple of weeks arranging the songs, sent out all the individual parts to the singers, and then had them record themselves a bunch of times each.
10:28 Speaker 04 So just made a whole Google folder with documents and folders to put like your audio files and videos. They weren't just recording like one line for one part. I gave each of them like a couple different parts to sing, like bass one and bass two. I gave Danny three or four different baritone parts and had them all record probably two or three takes of each part. Because if we just had seven voices on this and layered it, sound cool, but it wouldn't sound like as grand as like all of them like layered with like a ton of different voices, kind of like a choir. We don't have a choir. We all couldn't sing together because we were all over the world. So we just recorded a ton of different tracks. I put them all together and I produced the rest of the session.
11:12 David Pierce? Bobby also got some help mixing the track and had some friends add violin and cello at the beginning and put this whole thing together. A few weeks later, the song is done. Bobby makes a quick music video for it and he uploads it to one of those sites that distributes your song to basically all the platforms everywhere. The song did well from the beginning, not like massively viral well, but solidly growing fast, good song, people are listening. And that's what it did for most of 2023. Then North Sea TikTok happened.
11:49 David Pierce? I can't prove this because TikTok's search tools are terrible and incredibly underpowered and basically useless. But I think, I think you can trace the beginning of this trend to a video from an account called UK Towns in late November. This account had been around for a while, mostly posting videos about cool, unknown places around the UK. But then kind of out of nowhere, it posted a video about this beautiful, pure water from a glacier, which blew up. It has 14.3 million views on TikTok right now. There's a decent chance you've seen it. And then the next day, November 27th of 2023, that same account, UK Towns, posted a video with the text "The North Sea, the most treacherous sea in the world," written over top of it. It was all the stuff you now see everywhere.
12:34 David Pierce? This huge aircraft carrier-looking ship rolling in the waves, waves crashing up on a dock and almost knocking someone in the water, big storms, big water, you get the idea. That video now has 118 million views, and it had this sound playing underneath.
13:06 David Pierce? North Sea TikTok took off in a huge, huge way from there. I asked TikTok to pull some data for me and the numbers are pretty wild. The North Sea hashtag has 2.9 billion global views on TikTok, 2.2 of them coming just since the beginning of November. That was a 315% increase in views in those two months. The North Sea TikTok hashtag, 109.5 million views, 98.9 of them in the last two months. That's a 920% increase. This just happened, out of nowhere. There were older TikTok videos about the North Sea and scary stuff in general, but they tended to sound like this.
13:49 David Pierce? Or this.
13:54 David Pierce? Oh, or this.
13:59 David Pierce? Different vibes, am I right? But as the North Sea trend took off, the bass singers became the unofficial official soundtrack of North Sea TikTok. TikTok told me there have been more than 130,000 videos using that 60-second clip, and that number was from a couple of weeks ago. It's still going up really fast. For his part, Bobby says he doesn't remember the first time he noticed how hoist the colors was being used, but he definitely didn't see it coming.
14:26 Speaker 04 I had so many friends and family send me these videos where they're like, because the sound starts off with my voice and they're like, it's Bobby. And so they send it to me.
14:34 David Pierce? And it turns out that when you blow up on TikTok, you tend to blow up elsewhere, too.
14:40 Speaker 04 Right now, the video is, and everywhere streaming, is doing like, almost quadruple as it normally does, which is really, really great for all of us.
14:49 David Pierce? The song in particular, and the North Sea TikTok trend in general, actually got so big, it became kind of a parody of itself, which honestly, I love. There were people like Chris Olsen, who were like, enough hoist the colors.
15:01 Speaker 07 Why is TikTok making me feel like the North Sea is something I should be fearing daily in my everyday life? Like, it's a present threat that I'm going to somehow end up in the North Sea.
15:10 David Pierce? And then there were people making fun of the song.
15:12 Speaker 07 Yo ho, all hands.
15:17 Speaker 05 Hoist the colors high.
15:22 David Pierce? That jokey version of Hoist the Colors itself also has gone kind of viral. It's ridiculous. My favorite one of these videos, by the way, is just like a person in the bathtub slowly splashing the water back and forth while playing that nasally version of the song. It kills me every time. But wait, I've come this far and I have not answered the real question here. Why this song, this version, this clip? The honest truth is, it turns out it's a little hard to know. When Bobby added the song to TikTok to be used as a sound, he didn't pick the 60-second clip that everybody now uses and he didn't go in and tag it scary and North Sea and big deep bass that makes you feel feelings every time you see it.
16:03 David Pierce? Somebody just picked that song and made a video and now everybody else does it too. That's just kind of how it happens. But mostly though, I think it's just that it fits. In a funny way, North Sea TikTok is almost a perfect representation of what Bobby says he was originally going for with the song.
16:22 Speaker 04 I wanted this song essentially to sound like you've got a giant ship full of mountains just rowing through like treacherous sea and stuff like that, just essentially like if earthquakes were singing. I just wanted everyone to like feel how much bass you can actually put in something because if you listen to those choruses, it's just so full and the bass just cuts so hard and it's just you feel it right in your chest. So having all these big voices to like envelop like just the vastness of the sea and what's in it because the sea is big and so we have some big voices to add on to that.
17:01 David Pierce? Anecdotally, at least on my For You feed, North Sea TikTok is starting to slow down a tiny bit. But Hoist the Colors is showing up in all kinds of new places.
17:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
17:12 David Pierce? Now I'm seeing it on those videos that try to test whether you have different phobias, which is horrifying. Some have strange natural phenomenons, many, many, many videos of monsters that I used to think were fake, but I don't know, those videos are very convincing. All sorts of things. In every case, the sound does one thing. It increases this feeling of unease, like you're headed towards disaster, but you have no choice but to accept your fate. Your deep, dark, stormy, wave-crashing, bassy fate.
17:46 David Pierce? As for Bobby, he seems to be enjoying the run, but is also cognizant of not wanting to be the Hoist the Colors guy or the Sea Shanty guy forever.
17:55 Speaker 04 There's always that part of me when I see something is blowing up or if it's around a holiday time and I have a holiday tune that I'm like, I just feel like I need to put as much stuff out about this as possible. Like every time it would like reach a new milestone, I would share it, add the sound. And then sometimes we create old videos that we've done to try and like boost it, for lack of a better term, or maybe it's the best term, milking it for what it is or what we got. But essentially, the next thing that is the big question for us, and we don't have control over how long a trend will last on TikTok, because many people have tried to continue trends, but it's one person cannot do that. It's the mass of people subconsciously decide whether a trend is over or not.
18:39 Speaker 04 So this North Sea trend, much like many before it, will die down at some point, but I'm really glad that a lot of people are, because they're fun videos too, just watching.
18:49 David Pierce? There will always be a next trend and a next dance craze, and Bobby's gonna go find something else entirely to sing about. He's busy right now, actually, both with The Wellerman's next album and some other projects he's working on. But if you wanna post something that scares the heck out of everyone who swipes to it in their feed, you're just not beating this one. I don't think it's going anywhere.
19:10 Speaker 05 Yo. Oh. And. Hoist the colors high.
19:23 David Pierce? All right, we gotta take a break. But when we come back, we're gonna talk about the life and death of streaming services in 2024. We'll be right back.
19:30 Speaker 05 Never shall we die.
19:41 Speaker 01 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 light 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.
20:10 Speaker 02 Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great, till the CFO sees them? That's bullspend. And marketers are calling it out, in. Dashboard, confessions.
20:20 Speaker 03 I remember telling my boss, "It'll be good for the brand", when leads were slow. Yeah, it, it wasn't.
20:27 Speaker 02 Cut the bullspend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.
20:42 David Pierce? Welcome back. Last year was a huge and messy one for the streaming industry. There were strikes, there were huge mergers, there was a lot of CEO bickering, there were layoffs, everybody was selling everything to everybody, and it just all got very complicated. And it just seems like this whole industry is trying to figure out what it is. And I think 2024 is going to be a lot more of the same. So, to preview all of it with me, I brought in Alex Krantz, who knows all this stuff, and also holds the title of, I think, the world's last Paramount Plus subscriber. Hi, Alex. Hello! Okay, so here's what we're gonna do. Okay. We're gonna talk about streaming. We talk about streaming a lot. I feel like we need more ways to be loudly wrong about the streaming industry. So that's what we're gonna do here. Basically, I've set this up,
21:26 David Pierce? I went through and came up with, I think, it's either eight or nine of like, the streaming services people care about. And you can quibble whether there should be ones, I don't care. This is the list I came up with. Here we are. Which is sort of fun. It's like I went through and just wrote down all the ones I could think of, and then went and looked at a list, and all the other ones were ones that I was like, "I don't really care about that." So it worked out well. And we're just gonna go through and basically... Try to figure out if this is going to be a good year or a bad year for that streaming service. So we're just, we're just gonna go up and down. No nuance, no scores out of 10. It's just good year, bad year. That's all we're doing. Does that sound good?
22:00 Alex Cranz? I love it.
22:01 David Pierce? Okay, so we should probably start with Netflix, just because Netflix is Netflix.
22:06 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
22:06 David Pierce? Uh, and my guess is this is going to be one of the least complicated ones for the two of us to figure out here. What's your sense on what's coming for Netflix in 2024?
22:15 Alex Cranz? As far as new stuff goes, I think the big one is Three Body Problem. There's a lot of weirdness there. I'm both excited about it and terrified of it. This is like the second and a half adaptation of this story. It's already been adapted once for TV, and it was made into a film by the same people making the Netflix show.
22:33 David Pierce? It feels like a bad sign that I didn't know that.
22:35 Alex Cranz? The movie never came out.
22:37 David Pierce? Oh, okay.
22:37 Alex Cranz? They shot it in 2015, and we're like, never mind.
22:40 David Pierce? Oh, boy.
22:40 Alex Cranz? But we need to make something, so they, that's why the whole Netflix deal happened. And like, they, they split characters up. Like, if you're a big loyalist and love the books, there's a lot of confusion going on. But I feel like, like, we've got that, but then you've got returning stuff like Bridgerton, which I personally am very excited about Bridgerton. I don't know how much of our audience at The Vergecast is, but I'm pumped for it. And it's got that, the chick from Dairy Girls, like, that's her big moment. It's gonna be great.
23:04 David Pierce? Love her.
23:05 Alex Cranz? There's newer stuff like the, the new Michelle Yeoh show that's on TV. A lot of the reality shows are returning. We're gonna, like, have this final season of Queer Eye.
23:15 David Pierce? Oh, yeah.
23:16 Alex Cranz? That's gonna be, just have all of the weird Barbie drama lingering behind it. The drama's probably more interesting than the show itself.
23:23 David Pierce? Agreed.
23:24 Alex Cranz? I feel like Netflix has got some returning shows that are gonna be really big this year. Stranger Things, I don't think is one of them. I think that's 2025. Um, I think they're shooting it this year.
23:32 David Pierce? Okay.
23:33 Alex Cranz? And so we're gonna have to wait for Stranger Things, but they've got some other returning shows. And this is gonna be the year, like, we find out if, if Netflix is learning anything about how to program their channel and not just throw everything at the wall and sees what, see what sticks.
23:47 David Pierce? But it also seems like, I don't know, I just, I keep thinking about these, uh, like, award shows where the guys from Suits come up to present awards. And everybody's like, oh, my God, Suits is my favorite show. And it's like, Suits is like an old show.
23:58 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
23:58 David Pierce? This is not a new thing, but it had this new life on Netflix. To me, it feels like Netflix is like the most slam dunk winner of 2024, unless it does something monumentally stupid. It's like, the password thing seems to be working. They can just license shows from everybody now because they're the only ones with money. It just seems like it's gonna work.
24:18 Alex Cranz? I'm hesitant to call it the winner because I think this is going to be the year where we start to see a lot of its strategy like solidify and we start to see if audiences actually like that strategy because they did a lot of, they made a lot of moves last year and this year they kind of like, they, they have a very different programming slate than they've had from years past. And this is the year where we see if that programming slate works because it's a lot of reality TV which is doing well for Max and has done really well for Netflix. And then it's a lot of like these prestige shows like Three Body Problem. And I could very easily see Three Body Problem like cratering, doing really, really badly.
24:54 David Pierce? Yeah, that's an interesting point. I think I was going through, so Variety did this list of like the shows people are most excited about this year and Netflix had more of them than any other service, which is not really surprising. But you're right, I hadn't really thought about it until you said it, but Netflix is doing like ultra-cheap reality stuff and then like ultra-expensive prestige-y culture shaping kinds of shows and then nothing in the middle anymore, which used to be where Netflix lived was in the middle.
25:19 Alex Cranz? Right.
25:20 David Pierce? Where they're just like, here's a hundred shows. Do you like any of them? And they're not doing that at all anymore.
25:24 Alex Cranz? They're not doing it. They're, they're relying on suits. They're relying on-
25:26 David Pierce? They think they can buy those shows now.
25:28 Alex Cranz? Yeah, they can buy those shows and I'll be curious to see if that actually works. I would say they're not the winner as much as like the most consistent probably. Like, I think they're going to do well. They're not going to bomb where we're all being like, oh, man, Netflix really screwed the pooch this year. But they're not going to be, but we're not going to be like, man, Netflix had episode for episode, hour for hour, the best streaming service out there. I don't think that's true.
25:50 David Pierce? Okay, but we're still thumbs up on Netflix for 2024.
25:52 Alex Cranz? Thumbs up, thumbs up.
25:53 David Pierce? All right, I like it. Next one, Disney Plus. This one I think might be the most complicated.
25:58 Alex Cranz? I'm gonna be horrible person to say thumbs down.
26:01 David Pierce? Oh, maybe not complicated. I'm also thumbs down on Disney Plus. I think this might be a terrible year for Disney Plus.
26:06 Alex Cranz? Yeah, like Echo just came out. They've released all five episodes at once. It was a great show. I really enjoyed it. Like, best time I've had at Marvel in a while because I didn't have to care about the rest of the Marvel Universe to enjoy it. And then they've got Agatha, which is like a spinoff of-
26:22 David Pierce? Wandavision, right?
26:23 Alex Cranz? Yeah, right? It was a spinoff of Wandavision. That's coming way at the end of the year. And then they've got a Star Wars show. I think they've only got one Star Wars show this year, which is The Acolyte, which is set before all the Star Wars stuff we know. It's basically like, we're just going to tell a cool story about Jedi. And that could be really, really cool. But there is a lot of fatigue with Disney and it is holding fast and they've held a bunch of shows. There's a bunch of shows like Ironheart that are just getting punted to 2025 because they realized they were making bad TV. Daredevil is another one. It was supposed to, I think, come out this year, got punted to 2025. So Disney is not in a great place, but there's big asterisks because Hulu, which we're also going to talk about.
27:03 David Pierce? Yep.
27:04 Alex Cranz? Is coming into like, gonna be a great year for Hulu. And at some point, it's probably gonna merge with Disney and all of that content will be in one place. So it's like Disney+ bad year asterisk until Hulu gets merged into it.
27:17 David Pierce? Okay, that's fair. So let's just jump to Hulu because I agree on Disney Plus. I think going through the list of stuff people are excited about, Disney Plus was kind of alarmingly low and you're right, it's all Marvel and it's all Star Wars. And then it's like random cool documentaries that Disney Plus has more of than people think, but is still not how you get a thumbs up on this podcast.
27:36 Alex Cranz? They're doing, under the National Geographic brand, they're doing like an adaptation of the story of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And cool cast in that. That could be really, really cool. The National Geographic shows are neat, but they're also not winning awards, not starting conversations.
27:53 David Pierce? Yeah, you don't win the streaming award, the streaming awards with that, I'm sorry to say. But to your point, the asterisk is a big one because the next one on my list is Hulu, which is kind of a funny thing. Hulu is now like the most reliable dumping ground for stuff on linear television. And it seems like that's just where a lot of that stuff lives now. We're going to get to Peacock in a minute, but other than the stuff that's on Peacock, Hulu is just gobbling up these shows on broadcast television and on FX and on some of these other channels that people really like. Hulu is eventually going to be Disney Plus. Do we think that's this year? Like, does Hulu just get wiped off the board because it's not even going to be a thing at the end of 2024?
28:32 Alex Cranz? I see it happening unless there's like weird contract stuff because it's like the exclusive streamer for I believe ABC and FX because they're both owned by Disney. So I could see contractual stuff, meaning it it happens another year, but I think it's probably going to happen this year. And the stuff is really good. Like, we've got a new season of Feud, which is just going to be a whole bunch of women in their 50-somethings being absolutely horrible to this guy playing Truman Capote. And I personally, like, I've wanted nothing more than Calista Flockhart and Demi Moore, like, being mean to someone on TV together while wearing, like, 70s couture. That sounds great to me personally. But you've got old stuff like Grey's Anatomy, which is coming into season 20, 20? I think it's going into season 20 or season 19. It's insane.
29:16 David Pierce? I gave up after season two, but I'm I'm told people still watch Grey's Anatomy.
29:20 Alex Cranz? You gotta watch, like, season six had a really good episode. Just, you just gotta watch that one episode from that one season. You're fine. You're fine. You'll be all cut up.
29:28 David Pierce? All right, cool. I'm into it.
29:30 Alex Cranz? And it's still an old standby. It's still, you're seeing a lot of young people watch it. Like, I'm seeing it increasingly on my TikTok and, like, teens watching it and getting into it because they grew up kind of it with it in the background and now they want to pay attention. And they're like, oh, damn, mom, watch this. And like, I was five. Was I allowed to watch this? Shouldn't have been.
29:46 David Pierce? Yeah, definitely not, no.
29:47 Alex Cranz? And then you've got like 911, which is another of those kind of shows where, like, I can just put that on and do my laundry and have a good time. And that's personally the kind of stuff I want.
29:56 David Pierce? Yeah.
29:56 Alex Cranz? I feel like there's a bunch of stuff coming to Hulu this year that's going to be really, really good.
30:00 David Pierce? Yeah, I think that's right. Hulu doesn't seem to have the one kind of giant thing everybody is hoping for. Like, maybe season two of Feud is that that kind of penetrates into this is the show everybody is talking about. But that's never really been Hulu's thing, right? Hulu's thing is, is it's the place you go to watch the shows you kind of like
30:20 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
30:21 David Pierce? guiltily and don't really tell anybody about. Like, that's Hulu's thing, and it's a very good thing.
30:25 Alex Cranz? And it is, and it's benefiting from the fact that it's got all of the FX content. And FX is still like making TV in a way that a lot of other of those like basic cable channels stopped doing. FX is still doing it, which is why you're getting Feud, which is why you're getting Shogun, which is a remake of a Richard Chamberlain like mini series from the eighties that they're doing. And I keep seeing it everywhere and I like the cast in it. So I'm like, all right, I'll watch this even though the original was boring as hell. But like FX is really thoughtful about programming and I think we're going to see that in Hulu and they're going to benefit from that in a way that Netflix just doesn't have that, those chops.
31:03 David Pierce? Yeah, I mean, funny enough, I think Hulu is probably a thumbs up for this year. And I think the extent to which it is a thumbs up, I think you're right, will probably determine whether Disney Plus is a thumbs up or not. Like Hulu feels very important to Disney this year because Disney otherwise is in kind of a weird place where it's so reliant on just a couple of things like we've been talking about. But Hulu is the one where they're just like, we just have this sort of giant slate of cool stuff that a lot of people like. And Disney is like, dear God, we need that because if we keep making Marvel stuff, people will leave.
31:34 Alex Cranz? Yes. I mean, I'll watch Marvel too, but I want to mix it up.
31:37 David Pierce? Yeah, 100%. All right. So we're thumbs up for Hulu, but it is, I would say possible that we will not get to give Hulu a score at the end of the year because it will just be part of Disney Plus.
31:46 Alex Cranz? Yeah, asterix.
31:47 David Pierce? Yeah, exactly. All right. Next up, Max, which to me, Max is the most split between there's a content story and there's a corporate story and they are complete opposites of each other, which has made me very torn on how to rule on this company this year. What do you think?
32:04 Alex Cranz? The content story is good, right? Like the content story is good. You've got all of this stuff. I personally don't watch a lot of reality TV, but everybody knows David loves it.
32:12 David Pierce? I do. Just HGTV forever. I'm fine with it. There's a new kids baking championship on Max right now. It's very exciting.
32:17 Alex Cranz? Yeah. My sister in law loves the naked dating show. Like we had to watch so much of it. But
32:23 David Pierce? cool, family friendly show. It seems like, yeah.
32:25 Alex Cranz? It's great. It's great. Love watching that with the mom. But really, they've got good stuff. Max, the content wise, they've got something that's hitting every one of those markets, right? It's hitting the people who just want to go, you know, you can watch Friends and do your laundry. You can watch reality TV shows and you've got your big prestige stuff. And it's got a lot of prestige stuff coming this year. A new season of House of Dragons. I think The Last of Us isn't until 2025. I think that's another one. They're just casting it now. So I think that's getting punted, but but there's a bunch of stuff that's going to be coming from by benefit of having HBO.
32:58 David Pierce? Yeah, there's like a Dune show coming this year.
33:00 Alex Cranz? That's right.
33:01 David Pierce? There's a True Detective already started. Have you watched the first of the new True Detectives?
33:05 Alex Cranz? True Detective is one of my favorite shows of the year so far. Like I've watched all of it. I think I'm only allowed to say it's really good. I really like it. I think people are going to really like it. It's a fun time.
33:14 David Pierce? I have not watched it yet, but I promise I will catch up by the time we do this again, so we can talk about it.
33:18 Alex Cranz? Yeah, you've just got the rest of the year.
33:19 David Pierce? Exactly. It'll be fun.
33:20 Alex Cranz? But yeah, I think I think they've got really, really good taunted there. I think they're still struggling with their their user interface. And I think honestly, for me, that's going to be the big story of the year is if people get their user interfaces like in a place that's usable consistently. They are one of the worst at it right now. They're slowly improving, but we'll see. They're doing a lot more sports this year. I know. And we're curious to see how that goes for them. You know, the sports side better than I do.
33:44 David Pierce? Well, they've been kind of delaying this in a weird way, like Bleacher Report is part of Max. It's its own, you know, tab in the app, which makes you think it's a big deal. It's right there on the road with HBO. And it was supposed to be kind of an add on with a lot of stuff and they've kind of delayed that and delayed it. And it's not super clear what that's going to look like yet, or whether it's going to really work. But obviously Warner Brothers Discovery has rights to lots of NBA games and lots of other sports. So it'll, I would assume it'll start to happen because that is the plan. But, and this is the corporate story, Warner Brothers Discovery, the company that owns Max, seems to be less and less invested in the idea of Max as like the future of the company. David Zadzlaw has been talking about this all the time. They're back to, they're big on theaters. They're back to selling content to other streamers.
34:29 David Pierce? Like, I'm not confident that this company cares a lot about Max anymore.
34:34 Alex Cranz? The other side of the content story is we're seeing a lot of stuff that's going to come that was made for HBO, not for Max. There's only about like, there's only a couple of shows that are exclusively Max that are still around. Harley Quinn, Hacks, and I think The Secret, Sex, Lies of College Girls. That show is, if not ending, is going to be in a bad place. It's big star Renee Rapp is leaving. Hacks, this is its third season, and I think it's pretty, probably done. Harley Quinn is probably going to be the only one of those like Max originals that survives a very long time. It's doing well. Everybody likes it. Critically acclaimed, and it's going to just keep going.
35:10 David Pierce? You can always gritty reboot Batman. That's what we've always learned. Any gritty reboot of a Batman show is going to do just fine. You're going to be all right. Yeah.
35:17 Alex Cranz? Just redo it and you're good to go. But as far as like its other big stuff, all the other programming is really dependent on, on its linear channels and, and pulling it from there. So like The Regime and House of the Dragons, those are all HBO first shows. So I'm curious to see what happens with Max. I don't think it goes away entirely. I think it sticks around. But I think like, that moment we had where Max was the best streaming service, I think that's done.
35:42 David Pierce? Yeah, it's going to be so interesting to see. If we get to the end of this year, Warner Brothers Discovery still has a ton of debt, is still kind of hemorrhaging money trying to make all of this work. And it's going to get to a point where either David Zaslove and the rest of the executives there are going to have to just like hold their nose and say, we believe Max is the future. We are all in, even if it gets us fired and runs us out of business. Or they're going to say, you know, never mind, let's have this be a nice thing on the side, but not worry too much about it. And we're going to go back to mostly being a place that makes things and sells it to other people. And if you do that, you're not going to beat Netflix. It's just, I just don't see it happening. Like, I'm a very light thumbs down on Max for that reason, because I just don't believe it's, they have not burned the boats on streaming. You know what I mean?
36:26 Alex Cranz? Well, they put all their films, all their films are on Netflix now, right? Like, that's who they sold all their films to.
36:30 David Pierce? And that's a fine and good thing, and more companies should do that. But That's not how you make Max win.
36:36 Alex Cranz? Yeah, Max, I think I'm a little thumbs up just because it does have so much content and it is it's gonna stick around, but I see like I can see 2025 being thumbs down on it.
36:48 David Pierce? Okay.
36:48 Alex Cranz? But 2024, I'm still like, ah, shaky thumbs up.
36:51 David Pierce? All right, that's good. This is the we disagree. This is good.
36:54 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
36:54 David Pierce? And next up, this is I just switched the order around because this actually matters a lot, both to its own story and to the Max story is Paramount Plus, which there are rumors flying that Paramount Plus may someday not be a thing and be a part of Max. There's rumors that Warner Brothers Discovery or someone else is very interested in buying Paramount Global or National Amusements. The corporate intrigue is confusing and strange, but none of it seems to end in Paramount Plus being a going concern for much longer.
37:23 Alex Cranz? See, I am probably the most bullish on Paramount Plus.
37:26 David Pierce? I 100% believe that. You might be the only person left. I said in the intro, you might be the only person left on Paramount Plus at the end of this.
37:33 Alex Cranz? I think that of all of the big streaming companies, it is the most thoughtful. It's been doing it as long as anybody, right? Like it originally started as CBS All Access. It was doing it before Max and a lot of these other companies thought about doing this, this strategy. And it's been a slow and steady like winner and they they already knew the advertising business. They were they were serving ads before anybody else and and doing well with it. They're they're doing sports before anybody else and doing well with it. They were live streaming before like Max still struggles with live streaming and Paramount Plus has been doing it for a while. Tech stack wise, they're in a really good position. Content wise, they have like solid content that's that's makes them money, right? You've got the Star Trek stuff that nobody talks about, but you've got Star Trek.
38:14 David Pierce? People do seem to watch. I will say I have heard I have heard enough people say, I love the Star Trek shows. Why does nobody talk about it? That it has kind of entered the actually people do talk about it category. It's kind of a little bit of a thing.
38:26 Alex Cranz? You've got all the Taylor Sheridan stuff that's also happening.
38:29 David Pierce? Sure.
38:29 Alex Cranz? You've got, this is probably just for me and the three other people that have been subscribing to Paramount Plus since it was CBS All Access, but Elspeth, which is going to be the second spinoff of The Good Wife. So we've got that coming, a new season of Evil, which is from the same like team.
38:45 David Pierce? I will say Evil is great. I make a lot of fun of Paramount Plus. Evil is great.
38:48 Alex Cranz? Legit such a good show.
38:50 David Pierce? It's so weird in the best possible way.
38:52 Alex Cranz? And then I assume there's another NCIS, just because every year there's another NCIS.
38:57 David Pierce? Yeah.
38:58 Alex Cranz? And people watch that. I don't watch it. So many people watch it though. So I like, I'm kind of bullish on it because they didn't stop yet. So why would they suddenly stop now? And just to be acquired, like this is a company that's owned by primarily a single person. It's got one big stockholder and it's been owned by this family for a fairly decent amount of time. And yeah, she might want to say, okay, I'm going to check out, but I can't see her just wanting to go and be part of like the maxim alchemation, right? Like, like.
39:27 David Pierce? That's fair.
39:28 Alex Cranz? And a lot of that stuff we heard where Warner Brothers Discovery was thinking about buying it and kicking the tires. That has since disappeared. We've heard quiet there. Could still happen. I'm not going to say it's not going to happen. I'll just be really, really surprised. But I think it's just kind of like, these are, it's still the whole same crew that had the number one network on television for like a bajillion years.
39:49 David Pierce? Yeah.
39:50 Alex Cranz? They know how to do that once, and I think they're starting to figure streaming out better. And I don't think they're ever going to be Netflix. But I think they're going to still persist. I could see them being very comfortable with being in fourth place, if they can get there.
40:02 David Pierce? Yeah, no, I, I, I totally buy that logic. I'm still thumbs down on Paramount Plus. I think.
40:07 Alex Cranz? It's fair.
40:07 David Pierce? As a bundle of content, I think Paramount Plus is going to make for a giant thumbs up on Peacock or HBO or Max or wherever it ends up. I just don't think this company is going to stay interested in having its own streaming service. Like I just don't know what fourth place gets you at this point anymore.
40:26 Alex Cranz? No, it, that's, that's the thing is they're comfortable with it because it gets them monthly. It just gets them additional revenue.
40:32 David Pierce? Well, sure. It makes Sherri Redstone rich, which is something. That's, that's fair.
40:36 Alex Cranz? Yeah, like, like they're still making money off of it. They weren't as kind of a victim of zero interest rates as a lot of other people. A lot of people put a lot of money into that. And they certainly did too. There was the, the grease. Prequel, which me and one other person watched and we had a great time. But that was a dumb move to ever make that show. Why did you do that? And they they have fewer of those misses. Like, they they generally are much more bullish on the shows they do have in those shows. And they're much more thoughtful about how they spend money on stuff. They're not throwing money around.
41:08 David Pierce? That is true. Paramount Plus, there's a good case to be made, and you're making me rethink my thumbs down, that Paramount Plus is like the cockroach of the streaming industry. It's like, it's never gonna win, but it's also never gonna die.
41:18 Alex Cranz? Yes.
41:18 David Pierce? They're not doing the big swings that make you Netflix, but they're also not doing the dumb things that kill your streaming service. So I think that I think that's fair. I still think they're more likely to get bought this year than not. So I'm sticking with my thumbs down. But you you make a convincing case, and I I sort of hope I'm wrong, for your sake.
41:36 Alex Cranz? See, I would have, until last week, I would have said it's not gonna be them. It's gonna be Peacock. And then Peacock, if you want to move on to Peacock.
41:45 David Pierce? Let's do it.
41:45 Alex Cranz? Peacock just absolutely crushed it with sports, right? Like, they kept one of the biggest streaming moments ever in the history of the world. And so it's like, oh, damn.
41:53 David Pierce? And it worked. They had, like, what was it? 23 million people watched the playoff game on on Peacock?
41:59 Alex Cranz? Still less than who watched MASH season finale, but.
42:03 David Pierce? But still, the fact that that many people watched it and it worked and people were happy is like, that's a big win for streaming in general, I think.
42:10 Alex Cranz? And can Peacock parlay that into long term success? Is anybody's guess?
42:16 David Pierce? Agreed.
42:17 Alex Cranz? I would generally say no, because otherwise, when you think about their their their scripted programming, it's not very good. When you think about their scripted programming, that's not sports. It's not very good. It's all.
42:30 David Pierce? First of all, that's that is Twisted Metal Erasure, and I will not stand for it.
42:33 Alex Cranz? Sorry.
42:34 David Pierce? Twisted Metal is the best terrible show I watched in 2023.
42:38 Alex Cranz? More people watch that than Paramount Plus.
42:43 Alex Cranz? They've got sports going for them and maybe, maybe that's, that has been enough for many channels, including ESPN for pretty years. So I don't want to knock it for that, but I, I was kind of blown away by that. And I'm still processing the fact that Peacock had a win because I, I was ready. It was, it was, it was at a 90 on my go 90. I was like, the fact that it isn't getting snapped up by Max right now shocked me and I still think it could happen.
43:06 David Pierce? Yeah. It, I mean, there, there is an interesting thing of you have, you have Max, you have Paramount Plus and you have Peacock. And I would be absolutely shocked if all three of those are three separate companies at the end of 2024.
43:21 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
43:22 David Pierce? Who buys, like it's, there, there have been lots of rumors that Comcast, which owns NBC Universal, and I guess disclosure is NBC Universal is a, an investor in Vox Media. We make a Netflix show. It's pretty good. Um, Alex loves Paramount Plus. There's all of those.
43:35 Alex Cranz? I subscribe to Paramount Plus.
43:38 David Pierce? There's been some rumors that Comcast is interested in buying Paramount Plus, which I think is directly to solve what you're talking about, which is that Peacock has rights to really cool things and just doesn't seem to be able to make a show that breaks through to save its life. Like Poker Face was the closest it got, but when was the last time you talked about Poker Face? You know what I mean?
43:55 Alex Cranz? It went on Emmy.
43:56 David Pierce? It did. And it's a great show. People should watch it, but it's, Peacock has not broken through yet. It has, it has lots of like singles and doubles, but it has not had sort of the giant win that you need.
44:06 Alex Cranz? Paramount Plus had Emmys like five years ago.
44:09 David Pierce? Yeah, right. Like I'm sure CBS All Access was out here winning awards. Like that's not how you get here.
44:13 Alex Cranz? The good fight, baby. The good fight.
44:15 David Pierce? But yeah. And then, so there's been rumors that, you know, Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns Max might be in acquisition mode. Paramount Plus might be selling to everybody. So I think there's some mix of stuff there that just seems like it's gonna get sorted out over the next 12 months. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna thumbs up on Peacock just because personally, it's very important to me as the place where I watch The Office and Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. But also because Comcast just seems to have gone all in on this. Like in the way that I don't see Warner's, Warner Brothers Discovery saying, we need streaming to work. Comcast is saying, we need streaming to work. And it might kill it in the long run, but I don't think it kills it this year. I think Comcast is more likely to be a buyer than a seller this year, as far as I can tell.
44:59 Alex Cranz? Yeah, that's that's right. Comcast is facing an existential crisis because everybody's stopping. And it's the same thing with Paramount. A lot of these people who are highly dependent on broadcast TV and basic cable are facing an existential crisis of what do we do next? We need a good streaming service.
45:14 David Pierce? Yeah.
45:14 Alex Cranz? And so they're going to be very, very motivated in a way that Max and Netflix and some of these other, like the tech focused, more tech oriented streaming services don't have to be.
45:24 David Pierce? Totally. All right. So Peacock, thumbs up or thumbs down?
45:26 Alex Cranz? Uh, thumbs up, but it's like, I'm shocked to do that.
45:32 David Pierce? Okay.
45:33 Alex Cranz? It's all, it's all the sports. It's all the.
45:35 David Pierce? It's a begrudging thumbs up for Peacock.
45:37 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
45:37 David Pierce? I like it. All right. Two more to go. Apple TV plus.
45:40 Alex Cranz? Ooh, thumbs up. But that's just because I've been watching a bunch of the shows that are coming. Palm Royale, incredible. I don't know what else I'm allowed to say about that. It's great.
45:48 David Pierce? Awesome.
45:48 Alex Cranz? Yeah. If you like feud, you'll probably have a great time with it. Manhunt, which is about the hunt for John Wilkes Booth after the assassination of Lincoln, is certainly a show and, and it's coming and people are going, some people are going to watch it. Some people are not. It's still got stuff like For All Mankind just finished, wrapped its fourth season. A fifth season is coming. Foundation is still doing really strongly for them. They continue to be like the best place to watch science fiction. Another season of Severance should be coming in 2024. It's, it's shooting as we speak. So I'm, I'm really bullish on it. It exists entirely at like the permission of Tim Cook. I think it is one of those things where if Tim Cook leaves and we get another CEO in and
46:31 Alex Cranz? he doesn't care, or she doesn't care as strongly about science fiction and weird like catty shows. It could be in dire straits, but for now it's, it's doing really strongly. It's got some of the best programming out there.
46:44 David Pierce? I agree. I actually think other than Netflix, Apple TV plus would be my bet to be kind of the big winner of the streaming wars of 2024. Apple has all the money in the universe. Its hit rate is, I would say, the best of anyone in the streaming game right now.
46:59 Alex Cranz? It's gotten really good.
47:00 David Pierce? Yeah. So it's gotten to the point where like I will watch the first episode of almost anything that comes out on Apple TV plus, just because the odds of it being good seem to be higher than almost. Any other service. So I think you're right that I would, it wouldn't be shocking if all of a sudden they just canceled the whole thing because it's sort of immaterial to Apple. But at the same time, Apple is relying on Apple TV plus to sell Vision Pros and give you stuff to do in your Vision Pro. It's a way to sell iPhones. It's a way to get people into the service business. Like, I, I just don't, I don't see that being a problem. So I'm, I'm with you. I'm a heart of thumbs up. I believe the almost exact opposite about the last one on our list, which is Amazon Prime Video. This is, I would say my hardest thumbs down of the year.
47:37 Alex Cranz? Really?
47:38 David Pierce? Because Amazon is in a place of trying to be more thoughtful about where it invests. It has invested an enormous amount of money in a lot of things that don't work on Prime Video. And I think this service is going to look more and more like Amazon Sports streaming and less and less like Netflix over time.
47:59 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
47:59 David Pierce? I think this is not going to be a good year for Prime Video.
48:02 Alex Cranz? Yeah, they haven't had, like, Amazon Prime has turned up not had a lot of hits. You've had, you have The Voice, you have Reacher, which I just started watching yesterday. It's fine. You've got Jack Ryan. You've got a lot of like manly shows.
48:15 David Pierce? Football dudes, like that's the dynamic here.
48:17 Alex Cranz? Right? And then you've got Wheel of Time, which I'm told I really need to watch season two. It's a delight, but I'm being told that. I haven't felt the urge to watch it.
48:25 David Pierce? Same with Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, like.
48:27 Alex Cranz? Lord of the Rings is an absolute boondoggle, the most expensive TV show ever made, and how many people watched it? And how many people, it certainly isn't driving subscriptions, like.
48:35 David Pierce? And you know what's wild is the second biggest boondoggle I can think of is probably Citadel, the other massively high budget flop on Prime Video.
48:42 Alex Cranz? Yeah, they have spent money stupidly. They are probably the, after Netflix, the most guilty of, of embracing 0% interest rates to make garbage.
48:51 David Pierce? Yes.
48:52 Alex Cranz? They've got a leadership crisis as far as the streaming service goes. They can print money, though. That's, that's the one thing they can do because they just, they've, they're forcing ads on every single subscriber, which means they're going to be able to print money anytime you, you decide to say, check out that Reacher show because everybody keeps talking about the large man. You're gonna be stuck watching, like, you're gonna make them money. So it is definitely one of those things where I think it is going to rapidly become something that Amazon forgets they own. And the sports will do well and those those couple of shows that rise to the top will do well. And that's all we're gonna see. They they they're really good at buying movies that are already out in the marketplace. They've gotten really smart about that. Saltburn is an example of that. So I suspect we're gonna see more of that and then just going and buying other people's
49:36 Alex Cranz? stuff and putting it on rather than trying to program it themselves, which is probably for the best because they haven't been very good at programming it.
49:43 David Pierce? Yeah, Amazon, going back to being essentially a a subscription like movie rental thing, fine, right? Like when I rent movies, I rent it mostly through Amazon because it's easy and the application works pretty well and like that's all fine and good. But as a cultural powerhouse streaming service, I just don't see it. And I think if if I'm an Amazon executive looking for ways to pull back, like, oh, all of that money we spent on these shows that no one likes and watches, uh, maybe that's a good place.
50:09 Alex Cranz? And and they've they've started doing that, right? Like, they canceled a ton of stuff last year. They they renewed stuff and then went back and they canceled it. They they pulled a couple. I believe they pulled some stuff from their services. Well, like, like, they themselves know that nobody's really watching it and and they need to just kind of like, that's why they added the ads. It's it's a win-win for them.
50:30 David Pierce? Yeah.
50:30 Alex Cranz? The few people who are watching, they can make some extra money off of them.
50:33 David Pierce? Yeah. And if you want to pay three more dollars a month to watch their bad shows to not see ads, Amazon wins again.
50:38 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
50:39 David Pierce? All right. So just to recap, before we wrap up here, we're both thumbs up on Netflix. You can change your mind now. This is your last chance.
50:46 Alex Cranz? I'm still tentatively thumbs up on Netflix, yes.
50:50 David Pierce? Disney Plus, we're two thumbs down with a Hulu-sized asterisk. Uh, Hulu, we are two thumbs up with a Disney Plus-sized asterisk. Max, you're thumbs up, I'm thumbs down. Paramount Plus, you're thumbs up, I'm thumbs down. You're very optimistic about streaming this year. I like this for you.
51:05 Alex Cranz? This is gonna be a fun year for streaming, business-wise.
51:08 David Pierce? Well, what's interesting is I I think the thing that might make me most wrong is that because of the strike last year, there's just going to be a glut of good stuff this year and next year that so like, I think all of my potential doomsday predictions, I might just be a year or two too early on, which is the thing I'm most nervous about. But I'm I'm holding fast to my beliefs here. Peacock, we're both thumbs up. I would say me slightly more aggressively than you.
51:32 Alex Cranz? Yes.
51:33 David Pierce? Mine is just a Michael Scott-sized thumbs up at all times. Uh, Apple TV Plus, we're both thumbs up. And Prime Video, it sounds like we're both thumbs down.
51:41 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
51:42 David Pierce? Okay.
51:42 Alex Cranz? That's right.
51:43 David Pierce? All right, I like it. All right. Rapid fire, and then we're gonna get out of here. Give me two other predictions you have. Anything at all about the streaming world this year that I can hold you against at the end of the year?
51:53 Alex Cranz? I think Hulu is gonna be merged into Disney Plus this year. I don't know what the name of that that service is gonna be. Presumably Disney Plus, maybe it'll be Star, who can say? But I think that's gonna happen this year.
52:04 David Pierce? Okay.
52:04 Alex Cranz? And the other one is we're gonna not be talking about ads as much this year.
52:10 David Pierce? Oh, interesting. Okay.
52:11 Alex Cranz? I think ads is a huge part of this deal, and I think you and I will probably be talking about it much a lot. But I think the general public is not gonna be thinking about ads on their streaming services this year. It's rolled out, it's happening, everybody's, everybody's got it. They're all gonna be making a lot of money off of it. And they're all gonna start behaving more like broadcast TV in order to make those advertising dollars sing. But I think you and I, like, the general public is not gonna notice much of that this year. We'll notice it in a couple of years.
52:38 David Pierce? I think that's probably right, and that's actually kind of related to my first prediction, which is that the fast, the ad-supported channels like Tubi and Freevee and Pluto and that stuff that's out there now. I think that's gonna have another huge year. That's been growing a lot. We've talked about it a bunch. But I think now that ads are gonna be everywhere, you're gonna see advertisers say, oh, well, we're advertising all over streaming. Let's put even more into some of these fast channels that are growing really fast. And also, viewers are going to say, oh, well, I'm looking at ads everywhere. What difference does it make? I'm gonna go find these other services that are free and don't make me log in. And all of a sudden, that ease of user experience, if there's ads anyway, it's a big win. So I think that stuff is gonna continue to grow.
53:19 David Pierce? It's a mess right now, like, there's tons of channels, there's actually a lot of good stuff out there, but trying to find it is bad. And so what I think might happen is one of these big services might, as a way to get into the ad business even more, adopt a lot of these fast channels and actually make a good interface out of it. So I'm hopeful that that's what happens this year, and I think it's gonna be big.
53:39 Alex Cranz? I think it's gonna be Paramount Plus. I'm just saying that they own Pluto. They've already got a bunch of kind of fast channels already on their service. I can see them being really smart about that in a way everybody else isn't.
53:51 David Pierce? That's a good take.
53:52 Alex Cranz? And the guy who founded Pluto is now running Paramount Plus as well.
53:55 David Pierce? Oh, yeah.
53:56 Alex Cranz? He's running both now. So, so, like I said, I'm still very bullish on that one. Otherwise, I think it would be Max, and Max would be dumb not to.
54:04 David Pierce? Well, I'm excited for all of that to become a Peacock feature in 2024. It's gonna be sick. And then my other prediction is that someone, I don't know who, but someone is going to actually build a universal streaming guide that is useful and good and will probably cost money, but will be absolutely worth every penny. I don't know. Maybe it'll be the Apple TV app. Maybe it'll be one of the like just watches are real goods of the world, but like this is such a big problem. And as all these companies go to ads, they want you to find their stuff better. So like Netflix now has an actual incentive for me to be finding Netflix shows more easily. And so I think somebody is going to figure out how to put all this stuff together in a way that I can actually find the stuff I want to watch more easily. That might be a pipe dream, but boy, am I hoping that's right.
54:48 Alex Cranz? Yeah, I love this for you. I think if it happens, it's not happening this year. I think it's going to take Netflix a little time to realize they need everybody else. So like 25, 26, I can see them finally being like, oh yeah, we should play nice with everybody else. But until then Netflix is going to be like, nah, screw you guys. We got Stranger Things. It's coming back. Don't worry about it.
55:08 David Pierce? I get 11 months to believe in this before it becomes very obvious how wrong I was. Let me have this.
55:13 Alex Cranz? Everybody root for David. I'm rooting for you. I want this, so I'm rooting for you.
55:16 David Pierce? I appreciate that. I appreciate that. All right. We got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to do a hotline question. Actually, Alex, will you stick around for a minute? This hotline question is kind of exactly for you.
55:24 Alex Cranz? I love it. Let's do it.
55:25 David Pierce? All right. We'll be right back.
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56:36 David Pierce? All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the Vergecast hotline. As a reminder, new year, new hotline. You can always email [email protected] and ask us your questions, or call 866-VERGE11 to reach us. We try and answer at least one question on the show every week. We got a ton of good ones over the holidays, actually, so I think we're gonna have to do like an all hotline episode here in the very near future. But for this week, we have a question that, Alex, this could not be more you-centric. So, uh, let's hear it.
57:03 Speaker 09 Hey, Verge team, this is Wes from Texas. I'm calling to see if Krantz found any cool e-ink tech at CES. Would love to get the rundown. Thanks.
57:13 Alex Cranz? Ooh, I did see some, some e-ink tech while I was at CES.
57:19 David Pierce? Tell us more.
57:20 Alex Cranz? So, some of it, it was a lot of concept stuff. There was obviously the e-ink toilet that we all saw from Kohler, which I think was a surprise to everyone, including e-ink.
57:30 David Pierce? Including potentially Kohler. Like, you get the sense some one person made that, and they were just like, is this something? And they're like, CES, let's do it.
57:37 Alex Cranz? Just bolted it on right when they got there, like, this is fine, nobody will notice. Yeah, so I got, I got to go to the e-ink booth. They, they don't actually have, like, a show floor presence anymore. They're mainly just taking meetings. But I went into their meeting room and got to see all of their stuff. And they had, like, all of the new, all of their different displays there. It's a lot of signage stuff. They're still very, very focused on the signage in a way the rest of us aren't. But there was some phones from, I believe it's like, the fifth largest smartphone maker in the world. Have you heard of Infinix?
58:06 David Pierce? No.
58:07 Alex Cranz? With an X?
58:08 David Pierce? Fifth largest? Jesus.
58:10 Alex Cranz? Not in America, but in other places. They had, the back of their, one of their phones has the Prism e-ink technology on it, which is what we saw from BMW a couple of years back. And what we also saw, Lenovo had a cool laptop with the same tech on the front of it this year.
58:25 David Pierce? Like, once every four years, somebody tries the, what if we put an e-ink screen on a smartphone thing? And I'm here for it every single time.
58:31 Alex Cranz? And in both cases, instead of being like, what if you could read a book on the back of your phone? Both companies are like, what if you could just make the back of your laptop or the back of your phone look really cool?
58:40 David Pierce? Oh, interesting. It's like a wallpaper thing more than anything.
58:43 Alex Cranz? Yeah, 100% because it does like three to four colors, but it does them really, really well, including white. It makes like a really vibrant white, which you usually don't get from e-ink. And then you get like, you can choose a couple of other colors. You have to pre-program it. It's not going to just let you read a book and scroll or anything like that. It's really signage technology and it looked cool and you'd be able to charge your phone with wireless charging and just have the back look however you want it. Instead of being like, oh, I need a green phone. You'd be like, oh, I can have a stupid person on the back of my phone. I don't know. Homer Simpson. I was like, what's a cartoon character I want on the back of my phone? Homer? So that that was really cool. I was really excited about that. The Lenovo was obviously really, really cool. Other than that, there was a lot of, a lot of the smart home people are tossing e-ink in as like
59:28 Alex Cranz? kind of little displays for sensors and things like that. We saw a couple of those from smaller brands. That's not a new thing. Eve's been doing that for a while, but it's nice to see other people adopt it. And as much as I begged V to suddenly have seen a really cool e-ink watch, she didn't to my knowledge. So I blame V entirely for that. Not the smartwatch makers. It's all Victoria's fault. Please tell her to, to fix that. But, uh, but yeah, the phone was really cool. And then the way that they, these companies were just like, wait, e-ink doesn't need to be about reading. It doesn't have to be a display. It can just be really cool wallpaper and give you customization on a device where you traditionally haven't had it. And I want that.
1:00:09 David Pierce? That's kind of less ambitious than what we've heard from e-ink over the years, but is also probably more practical. They're like, this isn't going to be the year e-ink becomes a television. Like it's, it's, it's not. This isn't going to be that year either. But they're like, this is a thing it's actually useful for, and this is something you can do now. And that actually, that tracks for me.
1:00:26 Alex Cranz? Yeah, and you know, I spoke with the E Ink folks and they're still very focused on signage. That's where they make the most of their money. That's what's doing really, really well for them. That's what they're bullish on. And they're like, we get really excited when people experiment and put it in other things. Toilets and tablets and phones, but this is our focus. And so watching these companies be like, oh, maybe we should also lean into that signage part of it is nice. Hopefully next year we get something with really cool refresh rate. That's what I really want.
1:00:53 David Pierce? Finally, give us full color and fast refresh rate and I will, I will buy all ink, all E Ink, everything. That's the life I want to live.
1:01:00 Alex Cranz? I will note Onyx Books, who makes a lot of the E Ink tablets that I really like. I love that company. They weren't at CES, so they'll probably announce, and I would expect in the next couple of weeks, probably ahead of Mobile World Congress is where we'll see their announcements. And so we'll probably get some really cool stuff then.
1:01:18 David Pierce? I like it. So thumbs up, thumbs down, E Ink 2024. How do we feel?
1:01:22 Alex Cranz? I mean, I always thumbs up. I wish I could be thumbs down. Like, that's just, that's just biased. Like, it's totally biased on my part. We saw a lot of cool technology announced last year that's getting a little more mature and companies have had a year to figure out what to do with it. So we're going to see some of that in the marketplace, particularly around Color E Ink and Color E Ink readers. I saw a really cool one that was using Color E Ink in that E Ink booth. I can't remember the name of it right now. I think it was the Big Me one. Onyx Books also had one and it looked really, really cool. But I want to see it not in a booth. I want to like spend more than a minute with it to say how cool it is. But the Color E Ink is getting a lot less goofy.
1:01:59 David Pierce? Yeah, like the amount of time I have spent waiting for just this one little thing that's like, just give me a Color Kindle.
1:02:06 Alex Cranz? We're so close to like Amazon or I'm really hoping Amazon noticed. Like, we've got Panos now. Panos, get out there. You better have taken like 40,000 meetings with E Ink at CES. I want to see some Color Kindles. Let's do it.
1:02:20 David Pierce? Man, if Panos fixes the Kindle after making the whole Surface Line a thing, he'll be a legend forever.
1:02:25 Alex Cranz? A legend.
1:02:25 David Pierce? Panos, I know you're listening. Do it for us. Do it for the Vergecast.
1:02:29 Alex Cranz? Please.
1:02:30 David Pierce? All right, Alex, we got to get out of here. Thank you as always.
1:02:32 Alex Cranz? You're welcome.
1:02:34 David Pierce? As always, there is tons more on everything we talked about. TikTok, streaming, the works at theverge.com. And we'll put lots of links in the show notes, so look out for that. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Will Poore, and Liam James. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, favorite TikTok sounds, or just eating gadgets you want us to know about, you can always email [email protected] . Alex, Neelai, and I will be back on Friday to talk about AI, elections, the Apple Watch, the Vision Pro, and a whole bunch more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.
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Previous Rabbit, Ballie, and the other gadgets of CES 2024 Next Vision Pro, Galaxy S24: it’s gadget season again Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
