In Occasional Defense of Piracy: Streaming services getting it wrong.

When piracy of entertainment properties is the only way to improve its own domestic market.  But in no way does this apply to international licenses.  That is a very different set of metrics.

Yar har har!  Hardee harrr har har har harrrr!

Those who fail to learn from the past are... baby boomers.   Only from the boomer mind that thinks it's just too cool to keep up with new developments would a notion of a TV studio acting like a record label make sense. In 1995 having a Blackberry made sense too.  Since these people have insulated themselves in positions of power which no one would dare offer up an incongruous or critical counterpoint, their clunky outdated ideas will drop on top of the existing market only to smash into it like a rusted 1970 Mercury Zephyr into an electric car show. Theirs is the idea of owning a show from top to bottom and forcing an environment where an interested consumer would have to join a paid service just to watch the one good show that's on it.  The days of consumers buying an "album" to get one or two hit songs from it are gone, and it seems as if TV executives don't think that is going to mean anything to them as they try the exact same failed strategy with streaming services.

Nobody... just no one wants this.  Seriously.

If anyone who sees this has seen other stuff written here previously, it would be apparent that I usually take a very negative view of piracy, as it de-values any property and makes it less likely that more of that property will be made.  But in this context, "be made" does not only mean produced, but also be made available to potential consumers/audiences/whateveryouwannacallit.  By not doing so, a vacuum is created which will collapse in on itself, and never is that seen as a profitable venture. Even though these properties lack tangibility in the literal sense, the rules of logistics are going to apply just as they would to any commodity.  Ignore those rules at your own peril, guys.

There is a reason that Nike.com was never the #1 seller of Nike shoes online.  It's because no one goes to a store that sells only one brand of one item.  No one wants to register or any nonsense at a different website for every different product they want to buy.  Amazon made it possible to look "across the shopping isle" to other brands, other items, and alternative products while never abandoning a shopping cart.  Similar thinking in the strategies of TV streaming, forcing potential customers to sign up for an entire service just to get the one thing they want, will similarly kill these studio attempts.  We had Hulu, Netflix, or even (shudder) cable providers, which offered all the programming with little barriers of going in between them as a consumer, push a few buttons, and bam you're watching the other thing you want to watch.  Throw properties behind a paywall of a completely exclusive service with its own user registration and billing cycle?  Yeah, the RVR (reverse value ratio) there is far too big to make it worth it to the point of continuing.

RVR is this but with way more math and specified variables based on regression analysis.  I'd mansplain it to you but your brain would melt.

So why is this even happening if it's so crazy universe ass-plodingly obvious doing so is a terrible idea?  Because baby boomers.  I am serious, baby boomers are desperate to keep other baby boomers running the show rather than allow opportunities to become available to other generations, will literally do anything to stop younger people from ascending to any type of positions where they would have executive authority.  Baby boomers will invent new positions which sound great but don't do anything and put younger people in them, they will abandon entire projects/divisions to get rid of them there youngins, or they will just keep hiring their own generation even if they are way past their expiration date.  The generation that says "there's no such thing as a free lunch" but wants to pay you in "experiences" is gonna keep on truckin' and just say "what the fuck are you gonna do about it?"

The boomer-block.  Why you haven't gotten promoted in over a decade.

They may end up changing the strategy, but boomers won't "learn" anything, they never do.  The reason is actually because the boomer mentality is so conceited that despite having ample opportunity to learn new things when they were new (the internet, corp. strategy, environmental responsibility, logging on to wifi, how to rotate a fucking .pdf), they feel they shouldn't have to learn such things.  They are just too cool for that stuff.  The generation that has such ignorance that finds not until it feels, is not going to avoid a problem in advance.  So like many things boomer, this is another one where the solution is going to have to wait until they run out of other reasons to blame it on until they finally end up having to look into a mirror. 

The show Picard itself isn't actually very good.  This is going to cause a lot of buyer's remorse and trigger a kind of resentment that people on the receiving end of a bait and switch inevitably feel.  It promised so much and delivered a pile of nonsense antithetical to the entire identity of the entertainment entity that is the character Picard and the brand of Star Trek.  This should be no surprise as it's coming from Alex Kurtzman.  They guy who ran the SpiderMan franchise into the ground, who screwed up Universal Monsters so bad it couldn't even get off the ground at all, the mind behind the box-office juggernaut that was The Mummy with Tom Cruise.  Alex "I want a franchise NOW and I don't care what it is" Kurtzman was a bad choice for this.  Also, they've given creative input to Patric Stewart... and he's an awesome guy but he's not a Star Trek Writer.  He's an MCU actor and has been in a rich-person bubble for a long time.  He has so much money he hasn't had to wash his own dishes since before I was even alive, and he's on half-his-age hot trophy wife #3, so, what are we really get from that?  Nothing relatable.

You didn't need me to tell you Star Trek: Picard was gonna suck, it was pretty obvious.

Same has been true with the Harley Quinn series available only through DC Universe.  You see it?  It's not as good as you were thinking it was gonna be was it...?   Sure you're still excited because because of the novelty "ooo animation where they say fuck and tits!  ha! Take THAT people who say cartoons are just for kids... like SPAWN, remember AEON-SPAWN & STIMPY?"  but that will ware off soon enough.  Now imagine you paid for that up front and there's nothing you can do about it.  The warning signs were there.  The delays, and the character design change to full on suicide-squad Harley and away from the original Paul Dini version (which should always be a red flag that someone involved doesn't know what they're doing).  But I am biased in favor of the original version of Harley Quinn and not the Suicide Squad anorexic with a face tattoo played by someone who speaks in a condescending Mary Poppins accent IRL.

Girl you know it's true.

It's a Trap! Philips 4K TVs allure but disappoint. In brief: Avoid

Why the Philips 4K TV is a Ford Pinto in Ferrari Clothing.

The modern TV.  It's that and a whole lot more... well it should be.  When people hear "Smart TV" they associate it with a generally understood number of set features, but in reality, there is no such set list.  I could add a quad-core to a set and give it some random OS that I made which basically does nothing but provide you access to pornhub and vine, and call it "smart" with no problem.  What the Philips series does is call a dumb TV smart with the Google Chromcast series.  This is a result of their lack of any on-screen menu/interface for streaming apps. Looking through commonly used apps like Netflix, Crunchyroll, or even something like iHeartRadio, is impossible to do on the TV itself.  It requires a separate wireless device which you then use to "cast" the individual program you selected to the TV itself which will simply begin playing it.  Your expensive tablet is now a glorified TV remote.  They also don't even work with Amazon Prime.  I am sure it's because Google TV or Youtube Red or whatever they are gonna call it, sees Amazon as a direct competitor.

This is like if Chevy only made their cars derivable if you were also wearing Chevy-brand shoes with the RFID pedal activator embedded in the shoe-sole as well.  It is an extra unnecessary step that no one wants to deal with.   Every other "smart" TV can have something "cast" to it, but the other option is to use the on-screen menu, which everyone is not only accustomed to, but also expects.  This is like Chevy selling a car with no steering wheel and simply telling drivers to use their new Chevy pedal activation shoes to steer with by pointing your toes in the direction they want to go in.  Customers bought a car, they are expecting a steering wheel.  Philips has decided you don't, and you're not going to get one.

The technical specs next to the price tag are the siren song they sing.  With more than your standard HDMI ports and some great resolution they are indeed utilitarian and impressive, but even these are not as impressive as they could be.  No localized-dimming, speakers that could be better, and a remote that like it was designed by Jackson Pollock Jr, son of Roy Lichtenstein.  All in all, if you don't know what you're in for, you'll see the price tag (which makes a Vizio look like Bentley next to a Kia), ad think something like:

 

Jackpot!

Well don't be fooled, I am here to let you know that after you get this home and start it up, you are going to start regretting buying it and thinking; "Should I haul out my old PS3 so I can at least get an onscreen menu so it's easier to watch The Orville on Hulu while I am lying on my couch and my tablet is way over on the other side of the room?"   The answer will be yes and you will be annoyed.  Google seems to not have learned from the mistakes of Apple, and it's probably because they think they are so much better than they are.  The proprietary technology and software Apple has famously alienated itself with, will be the proprietary consumer behaviors and end-user activities will eventually create a significant reverse-value-ratio to make Samsung or even SONY products look attractive again.

 This was not good news.

This review is mostly based on the Philips PFL5922 series, but looking at others in the showroom were pretty much the same.  Don't you hate it when you get "gifts" of things you want but the exact type of said thing is something you'd never want... like when you were growing up and you wanted an NES so you could play it and talk about it with your friends and then one day there's a wrapped up box at home, you get all excited, and it's a ColecoVision.  You know you can't be mad, but at the same time you know you're gonna use it once and then just ...not anymore.

Then like with the flat-lining of Google Plus (no small part in the straight up resentment it caused with it's unexpected anal-fisting into Youtube), this will likely make these Philips turds so unattractive that the office of whoever thought making Google Cast the only way to go is going to be in there thinking long and hard...

The just won't know what went wrong...

So to summarize, don't buy this.

Busybody time

Yep I've been inactive on this for a while, but that doesn't mean I am outta here.  There is a bunch of stuff that is the happenings.


Stuff that has to do with me:
LSATS;  I scored slightly higher than the national average on the LSATs in June.  I might have done better if I had remembered I was signed up to take them... or was sober (I drank 2 bottles of wine before realizing I had to go to the thing, but at least I got in, I can't tell you how many test takers were crying on the sides or in the hallway because they brought their cellphone with them or didn't have a #2 pencil... The were all Asian looking actually...they were, what do you want me do to about it? Lie?) .  But it's good enough to get me to where I wanna go.  This means that in a while I'll be able to win internet arguments by saying "fuck you, I'm a lawyer" and it won't be a lie.  That is not the only reason I am going to law school, but it is the most fun one.

 

Suck my habeas corpus bitches!

Speaking of legal things, I am also currently suing the crap out of a certain City Agency for sucking at their job.  After that, I will then be suing the private company that was involved.  If that works out I will not have to worry about law-school tuition now that I think about it.  Although I am still gonna go get a bottle of Jonnie Walker Blue Label.

I have been taking on new clients so I am actually a bit busy.  But we will try to bring you plenty more of this nonsense.

Go Fuck Yourself Awards:
Apparently Hulu has decided they hate their customers and no longer wants to be in business, because that new interface/menu they came up with is complete garbage.  I was lucky in that I used the PSN to access it, and they didn't get around to ruining that until September of 2017.  Much as I love some of their original programming and the fact that I could rely on HD quality of programs I wanted to watch (no, Time Warner, I am never signing up for cable TV ever ever again), that menu is just so atrocious that the reverse value ratio it creates is just way too high and I'll just go back to pirating the shows I want to see.   Seriously, was this designed by the nephew of the CEO or something?  Because that shit pile seems exactly like the crap you get when nepotism and cronyism is involved (remember that Obamacare website disaster that happened because they no-bid farmed it out to one of their friends?  Yeah, this is that).  Dear Hulu, fuck you so much for doing that.

Guys that only works when Apple does it.

 
Also the target of many a "fuck you" from their users in recent memory is Photobucket.  Yes the photo hosting service with the unsustainable business model has decided to change their game in the most Martin Shkreli-esque way they possibly can and charge exorbitant fees to anyone who wants their photos back.  Now this should tell you something about Photobucket; the company (formerly owned by Fox News, so you know the kind of people there are just going to be absolute gems... oh no wait, germs) has absolutely no plans to exist past 2018.  They're outta here.  They know they're outta here, and they are gonna loot as much out of whatever they can before it happens.  The MBA types (I already have one of those so ha), are doing some down and dirty ratios and have figured out that there is a significant percentage of users who will pay that fee. Either they have businesses that absolutely need to have images hosted and can't function of they go down even for one day, or they have more money than smarts and who gives a fuck.  They are going to get as much money as they can, and then fold, because someone there is not gonna have this end without a golden parachute.

But if you didn't have locally stored copies of your photos and only had them on Photobucket then you're an idiot. 


Boxing the office
So box office revenues are down and this year has apparently been abysmal.  As for reasons, I tend to subscribe to the perfect storm scenario. The ingredients for this perfect storm are three main ones I think; 
#1; stagnant wages.  Let's face it, the generation that is supposed to be going to these movies has been screwed hard and nothing is going to get better.  years ago, someone with a minimum wage job would only have to work 2 hours to afford to go to the movies (to say nothing about the baby boomers who didn't even need to work more than one to afford a movie ticket).  Today, that is a laughable fantasy.  When a movie ticket costs close to your entire shift at your shit-job, you are not going to purchase one lightly.  Jacking up prices and charging extortion rates for flavored wax and carbonated sugar water is going to really bite into the whole willingness to pay part of consumer behavior.
#2; There is something better out there now.  If you are already paying for Netflix, you are going to maybe say "fuck going to that 5th reeboot of whatever the crap it is" and just binge-watch Stranger Things or get caught up on episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia or Dragon Maid or something.  Online content, streaming whatever, that youtube show you like, all that stuff is the "something better to do" part of the decision to not go to the movies. 
#3; No one wants your shit.  Seriously, blaming Rotten Tomatoes for falling movie revenue is like Hillary blaming Bernie Sanders for losing the election to Trump.  Not only does everyone realize that is complete horse shit, but you come off looking like a out of touch artard who simply thinks so highly of themselves, they can't accept reality.  No one is going, because the movies are crap, mostly made that way in a transparent cash-grab attempt at the Chinese market.  Adding fuel to that fire, is the fact that marketing movies seems to be the only industry where it is permissible for the advertising to straight-out lie to consumers about the product.  We have all seen trailers which basically show a completely different idea of what the final film is about, or even use scenes that are not delivered in the film itself.  No other industry is allowed to lie to consumers with such impunity like that.  So it has fostered a heavy skepticism regarding making the decision about whether it's worth spending money on.

Those three things all at once are a perfect mix of factors that are going to keep people from buying movie tickets. And like any industry dominated by head-up-ass CEOs, Hollywood will absolutely not figure it out until more studios go the way of Blockbuster Video.


The New York Post; Still stupid as hell.
In a September 8th article the NY Post proved that once again the lights are on but nobody's home, by using a photo of the helmet from Skyrim in a story about an actual Viking era burial site.

Come by next week when images from The Fast and the Furious will be used in a story about the New York Department of Transportation.

Whoop Whoop that's the sound of a cash-cow:
Long-running manga and excellent anime series Kochi-Kame (full name; Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kōen-mae Hashutsujo) which ended its 40 year run last year will be back as a manga again.  In terms of animation there are no plans announced so far as I know.  While based on police officers, they're Japanese police which are not as horrible as our American badged thugs so it makes it easier to like.  Plus the cast of the anime is superb.

This is a fun one and one of those perennial titles that are more popular in Japan than the rest of the world.  However if you are learning Japanese, it is a good one to read to improve your abilities and/or stay sharp.  Lots of every-day type conversations in there but with some decent jokes as well.  There is also some frequent nudity.  Because butts are funny.


That's it for now.  See you in the funny papers.
TAO

Viacom Viacan't: Regressive corporate strategies in entertainment media

This just in, Viacom invents time-machine, gets stuck in 2005. 

Viacom CEO Bob Bakish has announced that some Viacom programming, most notably so far The Daily Show and @Midnight, along with The Colbert Report and Tosh.suck, will no longer be available on streaming services such as Hulu.  Now, to someone who reached the zenith of their professional career in 1998, this kind of strategy makes sense because they never bothered to learn how cord cutters worked or what kind of market they will inevitably create.  The reason is that there was no such thing as a cord-cutter in 1998, and people still had subscriptions to AOL dialup internet service.  If 1998 were a person, they'd be old enough to drink in most countries, and could have voted in the last election.  It seems obvious that  applying the same corporate strategy from that era, or even from something like 2005 is a bad idea since they would be woefully outdated, but that doesn't usually occur to the entity that is the CEO (they're not people).  Enter the long suffering baby boomer executive who knows exactly how to market and design pull-strategies for other baby boomers sitting on folding chairs in Boca Raton just waiting around for their prostates to swell up to the size of a soccer ball and complain about how the waitress at Applebee's (who is working her way through medical school) is part of a super self-centered generation that "fails to adapt" while making their grand-kids check their email on their phone for them because they're "too old" to learn that new-fangled technology ...technology that's been around since 1971   Yet for some reason this same baby boomer executive is somehow surprised that the same strategies that work on boomers, somehow don't work on this product of society they've invented which they call "Millennials."

No, old TV guy, I am not going to go sign up at Time Warner or Comcast (two companies that have about the same approval rate as the Nazi Party, or worse, Electronic Arts), just so I can watch one show or another which I could easily pirate, and mostly pirate out of spite at this point.  Not only is this another confirmation of the downright uselessness of "The CEO" as a concept, but how they are now a downright malignancy to otherwise healthy and sustainable companies, dragging them down like the world's most expensive boat anchor.

Makes decisions based on emotions and a 4th grade understanding of how technology works.But looks damn good doing it in a suit that cost more than you'll make in 6 months.

Some could argue that the only function of a CEO is to make sure investors stay comfortable paying the corporation's allowance, which would only be a salient argument if their ability to run the place into the ground through complete ignoramical idiocy wasn't so palpable. When police make some little kid with cancer a member of the SWAT team for the day, it makes for great PR, but even they are smart enough to know he's just a mascot and shouldn't be given an AR-15. CEOs surround them with environments they feel comfortable in.  In modern America, your environment is a commodity to be purchased.  Don't have a lot of money?  Enjoy the one that comes with life in a trailer-park and a job that probably involved a blue vest, khaki pants, a time-clock, and the need to look at your odometer to see if your car needs an oil change, or make a decision between paying your phone bill and getting a haircut.  Have a shitload of money?  Congratulations, you will never ever have to know what it's like to wash your own dishes or wait for something to go on sale before you can buy it.  But if you are a CEO there is definitely one specific type of environment you are going to buy.  One where you will never be exposed to the word "no."  You'll love it in there.  Surrounded by people getting paid barely enough to make their rent who are going to be so terrified of putting you in a negative emotional state, that they'd skip their own funeral to make sure you have enough of that stationary you like.  Wearing even the most luxurious blinders still means you have every chance of getting t-boned when your confidence is a product of an echo chamber.  Don't believe me?  Do you think Jar Jar Binks would exist at all if The Phantom Menace was George Lucas's first or second movie?  Yeah, someone would have told him "no George, that's not a good idea," but now he bought himself an ecosystem where that will never ever happen.

The end result is that people in these outdated power positions end up having an outdated idea of how things work, and do not stay current with changes that effect their own industry.  This problem sustains itself because they live in a world where absolutely no one is going to make them address those shortcomings either.  They just stop knowing how stuff works because said "stuff" has significantly changed.  Stuff like TV viewing.  TV doesn't work the way it used to, even as recently as 5-10 years ago.  I don't need Animal Planet, the Home Shopping Network, or a whole bunch of other channels that air too much fake reality house hunting shows or make me watch even one second of any Guy Fieri or Rachel Ray (yuck).  If History Channel is going to make a show about alligator murder then I really don't need to pay for that, because it's not a product I really want to buy (although alligator tastes good by the way, if you want some I got a guy.  You want alligator meat I can get you alligator meat by 3oclock). 

Om nom nom

This isn't going to cost Viacom much money at all.  Remember this is the company that invented the concept of deliberately not paying freelancers being counted as a viable revenue stream.  On paper, from an accounting perspective, pulling programming is mostly innocuous.  Entertainment media isn't really a tangible commodity, so limiting it's availability isn't really going to drive the price up, that only works with Game of Thrones and Disney movies (come on home where your video's waiting).  But those same intangible assets are what are going to take the hit.  Goodwill (let's be clear, Viacom has no goodwill and doesn't need it, but the shows themselves, as individual brands have tons and more importantly their success depends on having it).  Properties like that are going to take a straight kick in the nards once people who pay for streaming services all of a sudden can't get what they previously could get.  It's not that something just isn't coming to streaming services, it's that something is being taken away (huge difference).  That kind of thing makes people angry, and angry people won't give a shit if pirating something hurts Summer Redstone's ability to buy another yacht to get to his bigger yacht on his private island which is made of even bigger yachts all tied together.

I couldn't find an image of a yacht going to an island made of bigger yachts tied together so...

There's a light, over at the Amazon place.
Thankfully Amazon seems to be doing the opposite of this.  Bolstered by the popularity of the New Top Gear I mean The Grand Tour, they have announced they really want to be the big fish when it comes to entertainment media streaming.  And you know what?  That's fine, that's great, you go for it.  I remember in the days of VHS you paid money to rent the things, so paying a small amount to watch something you want to watch (but now you don't even have to leave the house) isn't such a weird concept.  Jeez I have a premium Crunchyroll subscription and I'm only following 3 shows.  Don't be a friggin idiot you people, Crunchyroll Premium is a great value.  ...Hey Crunchyroll, open an NYC office and hire me, I'll make your dreams come true.  I filmed you guys for a!Pon in Tokyo and you don't owe me anything but, BUT, you can pretend that you do.  See how easy that was?  Yeah.  Just re-imagine that in the Rick Sanchez voice and it sounds way better.

Anyway, Amazon's streaming service is mostly cool.  But the downsidessesseses be that they rarely have things that Netflix doesn't have (High Man in the Castle isn't really that great) and their user interface could use a lot of work.  But those two things are fixable.  There's nothing that's fundamentally wrong in the DNA of Amazon's streaming that would make it impossible to like for the majority of consumers. If they have done anything it's that it has proven that perseverance and sticking to your guns can still be a viable business strategy even if every finance major from here to Bangalore is only capable of thinking a maximum of 5 quarters into the future.  Oh, and they use wage-slaves.  Lots and lots of wage-slaves.  But, that's not gonna stop you from logging in and ordering the next time you need new underpants or whatever Danganronpa figure you happen to really really like.

My new waifu!

Did... did I have a point?  Oh yea, cord-cutters are not going to jump ship and sign up for Direct TV or Satan-Serve or whatever  just because any show or even every show is no longer available on streaming services.  No Optimum, I don't care if I can still remember every word from your TV ads from 10 years ago, it's not gonna happen).  Things like Network Decay/Channel Drift have become so prevalent and intense in their ability to devalue content providers, that the required willingness to pay among media consumers has withered and become a most fragile thing.

I mentioned it really recently that cord-cutters are heavy on certain demographic metrics, more-so than telecom/cable/satellite customers as a whole.  Than which means that certain types of properties are going to be more of a draw than others, certain advertisers are going to have more success, and they are mostly what old people would call "tech-savvy," you know, like your Aunt when she found out you knew enough html to change the font on your eBay listings and then thought you could repair her printer.  That means that finding the show online is going to happen one way or another, and you, Mr. Entertainment Company Executive gotta deal with it.  Mimeograph manufacturers got fucked by Xerox, that pesky horseless carriage put farriers out of business, and RCA isn't making many record players anymore, so if you want to succeed, put your ego in check, realize that the massive amounts of knowledge you've built is going to lose its value at the same rate as bananas go bad, and get your shit together and keep up with "the now" as they used to say. 

Of course not.

I think that much like Verizon lately realizing that not offering "unlimited" data is a bad idea, Viacom is going to look around in a few months and be all like "oops" and then you will be able to see The Daily Show on Hulu again.