Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024:

A FEW WORDS ABOUT 'ROAD DIARY: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E-STREET BAND'
I have been a fan of Bruce Springsteen my entire adult life. When I was an unhappy high schooler living in Southern Indiana in the early 1970s, I ran away from home. For reasons which are too long to explain here, I headed to Chicago and in an effort to get warm talked my way into a club called The Quiet Knight. I knew the music of the headliners, an acapella group called The Persuasions. But I had never heard of the opener, a young rocker named Bruce Springsteen. 

I instantly felt a connection to his music and have seen him live a number of times over the years. Sometimes at some very iconic and pivotal moments in his career. I don't always love his music (I could be happy never hearing his Woody Guthrie-inspired stuff ever again), but I've always been fascinated by his music and approach to life.

This Friday Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band premieres on Hulu and Disney+. And while on the face of it the documentary is a look behind-the-scenes of his latest world tour, longtime Springsteen documentarian Thom Zimny has put together a nuanced and often surprising rumination of lost friends and the undefinable something that happens when this specific group of musicians gets together.

I had the opportunity to speak with Zimny a few weeks ago about the documentary and the experience of having worked with Springsteen for over twenty years and it was a fascinating conversation. I'll be posting the entire interview tomorrow on AllYourScreens and I'll link to it in tomorrow's newsletter. But I wanted to highlight this part, in which he discusses the moment of the film that has received the most attention: Patti Scialfa's decision to reveal she has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare form of blood cancer, in 2018:

One of the highlights of the film is the little segment with Patti, and her talking about her diagnosis. What was that conversation like? She certainly could have not talked about it at all, and no one would have known one way or the other what they didn't see.

I'm assuming that she and Bruce decided this is what we want to do, this is the way we want to do it. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

I don't know of anything pre-planned in the way you're describing, because my experience with it was that I interviewed Patti for a long time, and we talked about a range of subjects. And in that, I got to the place of conversing about the tour, and also some of the recent shows that I saw her participate in.

And in that was the exchange about the details of why she wasn't touring. For me, that was just a really important moment, because it came from a place of being in and around the band for this amount of time, and that level of trust. So it wasn't something that was ever discussed as an idea to reveal, and it came out of long hours of conversations.

And also, I think a relationship of working with Patti as an artist, and on her solo material, knowing her for a long time. And also just hearing her new music, which is just fantastic. She's got a fantastic record that she's making, and I'm helping with some of the visuals on that.

So the dialogue and the revelation came from that place of trust.

NETFLIX ISN'T A STUDIO, IT'S THE STREAMING INDUSTRY'S COSTCO
In my spare time (laughs hysterically), I've been working on a book about the current state of television and the streaming industry. It's a series of essays that focus on various hot topics, with some of them being extended versions of pieces I've written in this newsletter over the past three years as well as opinion pieces I've written for my web site.

One goal has been to try and frame an argument that cleanly explains the business model of Netflix. The company itself does a terrible job explaining the core aspects of its business, from content valuation to subscriber retention and its corporate stance against full theatrical releases for its originals. And that silence only makes the critics more likely to jump in with half-baked theories based on the traditional model they know. Which misses the point. 

Working on this today, it occurred to me that the cleanest way to think about the business model of Netflix is to see them as the streaming industry's Costco. It's a membership (or in the case of Netflix, subscription) based business model and as a result, every decision they make is in the service of that goal. Which is diametrically opposed to how a traditional studio does business.

Traditionally, studios focused their efforts on making sure each individual movie or TV series was a success. They set the budget, spend money advertising and marketing it and worked to maximize the revenue in each window. And at the end of the day, the financial success or failure of that project is fairly easy to determine. And except in very rare cases, the efforts put towards each individual title don't bleed over into other projects. No one is out there making sure they see every film made by Universal or Paramount. Any more than breakfast lovers are out there sampling every cereal made by General Mills. For traditional media, the projects are the product.

But a pure-play subscription-based business such as Netflix more closely resembles Costco. Each decision it makes is based on increasing revenue from subscribers, lowering new customer acquisition costs and preventing subscriber churn. Costco cares less about the profitability of individual products. It's more than willing to lose money on $4.99 Rotisserie Chickens and cheap gasoline if the money is lost in the service of maximizing membership revenue. Sure, Costco could make more money on chicken if it raised the price. But the company's calculation is that it helps drive membership satisfaction and that lost money can be retrieved by selling higher-margin products once customers are in the door.

And in a similar way, Netflix's often inexplicable decisions and priorities make perfect sense if you see the company's strategy framed through the lens of Costco. Netflix executives look at current subscriber numbers and set upcoming targets. They're tracking where growth might come from and what things increase subscriber engagement. The decision about what Netflix orders, cancels and renews is almost always driven by that subscriber based-calculation. 

Netflix sets an overall content spend budget each year and that is what they are going to spend. So a new $150 million live sports deal means that $150 million less is being spent on original content. It's a Moneyball-driven zero-sum game in which executives try and find the best mix they can of originals and licensed programs that will help them achieve subscriber goals. A TV show might have a rabid fan base. But if that base isn't big enough or if the fans live in a territory that Netflix's isn't currently emphasizing, then the show has less value than one whose viewers better fit corporate strategy.

That is why Netflix executives continue to resist full theatrical releases for some of its originals films. Could those releases bring in extra money to the streamer? Maybe. But the theatrical business is notoriously difficult to predict and either Netflix would have to build a theatrical release division or contract with someone else. And either option brings additional costs with the potential for a strong financial downside.

And streaming only releases fit into Netflix's corporate mandate to maximize subscriber growth and engagement? Could Netflix make some money releasing some movies into movie theaters first? Yes, in the same way that Costco could make more money by raising the price of its Rotisserie Chickens. But neither move serves the core corporate goals of the respective companies. So it's unlikely that we'll see $6.99 Costco Rotisserie Chickens or Netflix theatrical films anytime soon.

If you are going to judge whether or not a pure streaming company is making the best decisions, you first have to understand the rules of the game. And entirely too many Hollywood creatives and industry journalists are still judging streaming by the familiar set of rules that have guided Hollywood for generations.

TWEET OF THE DAY


ODDS AND SODS
* CBS has renewed the Kathy Bates-led Matlock reboot after airing just two episodes.

* Speaking of second season renewals, Netflix is picking up another season of Beef, with a cast that includes Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, and Cailee Spaeny.

* CNN is premiering Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports: Is Ozempic Right For You? on Sunday, November 17th. 

* Malcolm in the Middle's Frankie Muniz announces he's becoming a full-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver. He's been racing professionally since 2006.

* Baywatch star Michael Newman died Sunday at age 68 after an 18-year battle with Parkinson's disease. He appeared on more episodes of the show other than David Hasselhoff and after the show ended he returned to firefighting where he worked until his retirement after 25 years.

WHAT'S NEW TONIGHT AND TOMORROW

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22ND:
* Game 7 Series Premiere (Prime Video)
* Hasan Minhaj: Off With His Head (Netflix)
* 1000-lb Best Friends Season Premiere (TLC)
* Uncharted (Paramount+)

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23RD:
* Breath Of Fire (HBO)
* Car Masters: Rust To Riches Season Premiere (Netflix)
* Family Pack (Netflix)
* Fear Thy Neighbor Season Premiere (Investigation Discovery)
* Ink Master Season Premiere (Paramount+)
* The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox (Netflix) - [first look video]
* This Is The Zodiac Speaking (Netflix)

SEE YOU ON WEDNESDAY!