Managed to get onto Disney+ this weekend, and I've been poking around for a couple of days, looking at what they have. I may be atypical in that I'm not too bothered by what original content is on a streaming service - I want to have access to stuff that I like and stuff that I might like.
Although, that said, an interesting-looking series that isn't available anywhere else will make me take notice. The Mandalorian is this service's standout at launch, and I'm looking forward to starting on it with my girlfriend for the Thanksgiving weekend.
(As an aside, I'd like to thank any deities or higher powers out there listening for connecting me with a girlfriend who loves Star Wars - it's an especially nice thing to have in common with someone)
They've done a nice job of organizing the main channels of content that they think people will want, such as Star Wars, Marvel and so forth. And once you're in there, you can find everything organized by type of content (movies, TV, extras) and in some cases in chronological order.
What's a little annoying is looking through a channel like the main Disney one and searching for classic Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck shorts - like on Netflix you have to know what you're looking for because it's not going to serve it up for you in a logical fashion.
The other thing I like is that it really does have a lot of content, especially stuff you can't find elsewhere. I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to devote a lot of time to rewatching old shows like DuckTales, Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers or Darkwing Duck (hopefully TaleSpin is there too), but it's impressive that you can find them somewhere, given that a lot of these shows aren't available elsewhere, or even really on DVD.
On the other hand, is $6.99 per month a reasonable amount to pay for knowing that you have access to all this stuff? I suppose it is on its own, since it's a lot lower than what Netflix or any of the other streaming services charge at the moment. But not necessarily if it'll be one of several streaming services that people own.
This gets to my discomfort with the whole premise of what analysts are calling the streaming wars - Disney's jumped in, AT&T is going to bring out HBO Max next year and eventually NBC will launch Peacock. In contrast to something like CBS All Access or DC Universe, which have positioned themselves either as their own company's repositories or as niche services, these three new ones look to be aiming explicitly at stealing subscribers from Netflix, by getting big-name shows that Netflix won't have.
Should NBC, AT&T and Disney really be aiming for supremacy, or is it better to hope that they can coexist? Speaking for myself I don't see myself cancelling Netflix until it ends the physical DVD service (which I still get) and its backlog gets completely gutted with only original content left. But even then, I'd probably just jump to the service that has the most stuff I want to watch.
Another issue for me, but which is probably not coming into the calculations of AT&T or NBC, is international viewing. Those two services in particular are probably not going to target viewers in other countries, so Netflix will likely continue to have a dominant position abroad because it'll remain the primary place to watch a lot of American shows - even if local rights holders in each individual country pull their own shows and movies off the service. That presence internationally will give it a sizable war chest to commission new shows or buy rights to stuff that no one else has.
The other thing that concerns me is the maintenance of shows that are only owned by one streaming service, or that belong to services that go out of business. John August has already highlighted on his podcast Scriptnotes the fact that a lot of movies aren't available anywhere anymore, because the DVDs aren't widely available and no one has (or can get) the streaming rights.
If every service moves to hosting only its own content, something will inevitably fall through the cracks, and I'm curious what's going to happen to it. For example, a key reason I'm not signing up for DC Universe is because I'm expecting it to go out of business soon - I don't know how much content is on it beyond the (admittedly cool-looking) original shows it has, which are Titans, Doom Patrol and Swamp Thing. Should Netflix completely succumb to its new competitors, I'd hate to see all its content disappear never to be seen again.
But this is all a long way off, I think. The oft-quoted (but possibly not accurate) figure is that Disney+ had 10 million subscribers by Day 1, but this still isn't catching up to Netflix for a while. Its back catalog is good, but not particularly diverse, and given that focus on Disney-branded movies and shows, it likely won't be very attractive to viewers who want to see more edgy or grownup content. And Netflix will still have the edge in interesting foreign shows or movies, to say nothing of its finely tuned recommendation engine.
That may be enough, at least in the short term, to let it fight off its competitors, even when they're as big as Disney.
Sunday 24 November 2019
Sunday 17 November 2019
Thoughts on Labour's Broadband Plan: Still Not Sure It Adds Up
Every once in a while something comes up that riles up the telecoms-analyst fibers of my being, and the Labour Party's announcement of universal free broadband this past week is one of them.
I've been chewing at it ever since, and I might be influenced slightly by the comments of various telecoms and tech analysts I already follow on Twitter (or with whom I've previously worked at Informa/Ovum), but I find it notable that very few of my old colleagues are able to say a good thing about this proposal.
That could be because they're all right-wing Tories, of course, and I have seen a few of my more excitable former colleagues throw around words like "socialism" in regard to this deal.
(Incidentally, living here in the US makes me bristle when right-wingers refer to things as socialism, but in this case I do have to concede that nationalizing the broadband industry is, in fact, socialism. But I digress)
I suppose my main objection to this idea is that it feels (not for the first time) like Jeremy Corbyn promising unicorns and free ice cream to everybody, when there are more important issues to slay in this election cycle. I'm obviously not voting in this election, but I want to read a coherent position from Labour on whether we need a new referendum on Brexit, what an actual Labour Brexit would look like, and what kind of immigration regime they'd institute on leaving the EU (they have talked about these things, but I'm kind of used to vagueness from Corbyn on this topic).
I'd also like to hear what Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell aim to do about kickstarting the workforces in areas, particularly in the north, that still haven't quite recovered from the Thatcher years. The problem, as I see it, is that the UK's government, finance and media are so centralized on London that there aren't any opportunities elsewhere in the country, which is also leading to the demand on housing in the capital. Most importantly, I'd like to hear how Labour intends to shore up the NHS, after decades of under-investment.
This is not to minimize the importance of bridging the digital divide between urban and rural residents, a problem that plagues basically every country. From the point of view of ensuring equal opportunities for everyone, making sure every community has access to the same quality and speed of broadband is a noble ideal. The argument Labour is making is that a single, centralized provider, run by the UK government, is better able to plan and implement the work to ensure that universal access, while also cross-investing from more profitable areas to enable spending in less profitable areas (i.e. everywhere outside the cities).
That post by Assembly Research misses the point that the cut-throat competition to offer faster speeds at lower prices hasn't resulted in access for those who live outside of those areas. I'm more persuaded by Dean Bubley's take that the costing is suspect - especially once all the companies affected by the decision (from the wholesalers piggybacking off BT's fiber network to the mobile operators that rely on it for their own backhaul) take the government to court.
The best takes, in my opinion, are these two articles from Wired, which present McDonnell's proposal, the implications thereof, and the feasibility based on research the current UK government has already undertaken, which also examined the possibility of a single monopoly provider.
The latter, in particular, ends with the best quote I've seen:
The other option might be to break OpenReach up completely, and allow cities, counties and local councils to design their broadband provision plans according to their own needs, with perhaps a minimum reach and speed goal that the UK government could impose.
Although that idea suffers from two flaws. For one, it feels a little too close to what we did in the US when breaking up the telecoms monopolies; for another, it feels a little too free market for Corbyn's comfort, as well as decentralizing power. Who knows?
All I know is that a nationalized, free broadband service sounds great but feels a little too pie in the sky. If they want to sell it, Labour needs to provide more actual information on how much it will cost, and guarantee that it won't become a political appointment.
Or they can forget about it and fix the railways, the NHS, joblessness outside the capital, income inequality...
I've been chewing at it ever since, and I might be influenced slightly by the comments of various telecoms and tech analysts I already follow on Twitter (or with whom I've previously worked at Informa/Ovum), but I find it notable that very few of my old colleagues are able to say a good thing about this proposal.
That could be because they're all right-wing Tories, of course, and I have seen a few of my more excitable former colleagues throw around words like "socialism" in regard to this deal.
(Incidentally, living here in the US makes me bristle when right-wingers refer to things as socialism, but in this case I do have to concede that nationalizing the broadband industry is, in fact, socialism. But I digress)
I suppose my main objection to this idea is that it feels (not for the first time) like Jeremy Corbyn promising unicorns and free ice cream to everybody, when there are more important issues to slay in this election cycle. I'm obviously not voting in this election, but I want to read a coherent position from Labour on whether we need a new referendum on Brexit, what an actual Labour Brexit would look like, and what kind of immigration regime they'd institute on leaving the EU (they have talked about these things, but I'm kind of used to vagueness from Corbyn on this topic).
I'd also like to hear what Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell aim to do about kickstarting the workforces in areas, particularly in the north, that still haven't quite recovered from the Thatcher years. The problem, as I see it, is that the UK's government, finance and media are so centralized on London that there aren't any opportunities elsewhere in the country, which is also leading to the demand on housing in the capital. Most importantly, I'd like to hear how Labour intends to shore up the NHS, after decades of under-investment.
This is not to minimize the importance of bridging the digital divide between urban and rural residents, a problem that plagues basically every country. From the point of view of ensuring equal opportunities for everyone, making sure every community has access to the same quality and speed of broadband is a noble ideal. The argument Labour is making is that a single, centralized provider, run by the UK government, is better able to plan and implement the work to ensure that universal access, while also cross-investing from more profitable areas to enable spending in less profitable areas (i.e. everywhere outside the cities).
That post by Assembly Research misses the point that the cut-throat competition to offer faster speeds at lower prices hasn't resulted in access for those who live outside of those areas. I'm more persuaded by Dean Bubley's take that the costing is suspect - especially once all the companies affected by the decision (from the wholesalers piggybacking off BT's fiber network to the mobile operators that rely on it for their own backhaul) take the government to court.
The best takes, in my opinion, are these two articles from Wired, which present McDonnell's proposal, the implications thereof, and the feasibility based on research the current UK government has already undertaken, which also examined the possibility of a single monopoly provider.
The latter, in particular, ends with the best quote I've seen:
The true danger is that this new plan will put a spanner in the works of current fibre broadband plans, and make any future progress more sluggish, rather than speeding it up. It is private investment from the likes of BT, Virgin and Cityfibre that has driven connectivity across the UK, and they could give up or wind down their activity if they believe the government will dominate the space.
This scenario was also outlined in the advice to the government, which would be a “significant departure” from the current approach. The report claims it will “reduce network competition, both now and in the future which is likely to have a negative impact on quality, choice and innovation.”
“They have a strong vision. But the idea of going back to a monopoly would require redesigning the institutional framework of the market, which won’t help if the goal is to get fast broadband for all in a short period of time,” says Paolo Gerli of Northumbria University. “It might be good to leverage what is in the market rather than try to implement a completely new system.”As the final quote says, there's a discussion to be had about the trade-off between speed and completion. If Labour does proceed with the plan, it'd do better incentivizing existing ISPs to cover more of the UK's landmass, rather than population, as a way to achieve its goal quickly.
The other option might be to break OpenReach up completely, and allow cities, counties and local councils to design their broadband provision plans according to their own needs, with perhaps a minimum reach and speed goal that the UK government could impose.
Although that idea suffers from two flaws. For one, it feels a little too close to what we did in the US when breaking up the telecoms monopolies; for another, it feels a little too free market for Corbyn's comfort, as well as decentralizing power. Who knows?
All I know is that a nationalized, free broadband service sounds great but feels a little too pie in the sky. If they want to sell it, Labour needs to provide more actual information on how much it will cost, and guarantee that it won't become a political appointment.
Or they can forget about it and fix the railways, the NHS, joblessness outside the capital, income inequality...
Monday 4 November 2019
Hollywood Might Kill Comics After All
Amid all the critical buzz about Joker, I caught this piece on The Verge the other week, and it crystallized some of my thinking about the differences between Marvel and DC, and about the effects on the source material of all this success for comic book movies just at the moment.
Between the furore about whether or not to make a movie about Miles Morales, whether or not to have Peter Parker be black, and so on, it occurred to me at some point that the people pushing for those more inclusive types of casting are fighting an uphill battle. Because the wider movie-going public (as distinct from the comic-buying public) knows that Bruce Wayne is Batman, Clark Kent is Superman and Peter Parker is Spider-Man, you'll have trouble attracting them to a movie featuring someone else in one of those roles, at least at first.
Even Into the Spider-Verse, which as I've said before was a damn delight, had to spend a lot of its running time explaining why Miles became Spider-Man, and even then it required a big starring role from Peter Parker (plus a minor role from another Peter Parker). On the other hand, witness the Spider-Man origin fatigue that greeted Andrew Garfield's Amazing Spider-Man movies, and the fact that Marvel/Sony felt that the Tom Holland entries could dispense with the origin story totally - not only do we all know the characters, we all know their origins too.
The Verge article suggests that this is a peculiar drawback of Marvel, as its characters and stories have essentially been designed to run forever with relatively little change in the status quo. And indeed, other than Peter Parker graduating from high school and then getting married (something that was eventually walked back in Marvel's first big, egregious retcon), Spider-Man remains the same character as he was back in 1962.
It's the same for Captain America, Iron Man and to perhaps a lesser extent the X-Men. I say a lesser extent for the X-Men, because the general idea of mutants fighting against bigotry is the same as when they launched in 1963, but being a team book has meant they could change the cast of characters around a whole lot more, including on more than one occasion jettisoning every character and just building a completely new team.
Even there, though, Marvel hasn't really ever experimented with its books as much as DC. Sure, the Punisher may have been rebooted as an occult demon-hunter at one point, which is generally remembered (if at all) as an embarrassment, but DC used to reboot its characters every few years, as the continuity grew too complex or as new creators decided they wanted to look at the books from different angles.
One good case in point is the Flash. The protagonist of the current CW show is, of course, Barry Allen, who's been "the" Flash for the longest time (1956-1985, and again more recently). When I first encountered the character, he was Barry Allen, and it was only years later that I learned that there'd been Jay Garrick before him, and that he'd died and been replaced by Wally West after the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
By the time I started reading Flash comics, Wally West was the guy in the suit, and so technically I consider him "my" Flash, even more than Barry (few of whose adventures I ever read). But ironically Wally was the star of the comics when the original Flash TV show came out in 1990, which had Barry Allen as the character. This meant that TV viewers who wanted to check out the comics were stuck with some other guy who was always feeling inadequate compared to Barry Allen.
That show disappeared fairly quickly, without troubling the ratings overly much, so the comic was able to continue on its own path unmolested by TV or movie considerations for a couple of decades. Indeed, the Flash was a prominent character in the Bruce Timm Justice League cartoon, and while he physically resembled Wally West, they never delved very far into his backstory or the relationship to Barry.
But of course now that there's a TV show on the CW and a movie in the works (bizarrely not connected to the show), Barry Allen appears to be the main character once again, and Wally's been consigned to some sort of limbo.
The Verge piece also mentions the reboots and retcons that authors like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman made to characters like Swamp Thing and Sandman, and how they related (or didn't) to previous versions of the characters. One of my favorite runs of any comic ever is Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man, where he retconned the main character's origin, then turned him into an environmental crusader and ended his run with a long metafictional storyline that culminated in Animal Man meeting Grant Morrison.
Of course, the reason that DC could do this stuff with its characters, or turn its flagship super-team, the Justice League, into a slapstick comedy, is because nobody was really reading the books at the time. If you can rely on your readership not changing, then you can reward them by letting the characters progress - much like Keith Giffen did when he rebooted the Legion of Superheroes in 1989.
But now that the comics are hot property, you have to keep them in a sort of stasis, so that you can then also sell the comics to the potential fans who've been attracted by the movie or TV show. The Verge article suggests that there's wiggle room there, as you can make a movie like Joker as a standalone, without worrying about continuity; I'd argue that's mostly true, but only because Warner/DC needed a Hail Mary pass after Zach Snyder's Superman and Justice League movies sucked so badly.
On the other hand, being able to reinvent the characters and approach them from different angles might be the best option for the movies, just as it was for the comics 20-30 years ago. Fun as the MCU movies have been, you're now basically working with 22 movies' worth of continuity, and at some point it might become too confusing for folks who just want to watch a movie with explosions and other fun stuff.
Unlikely as it sounds, maybe in a few years Marvel will be revisiting its characters in quirkier, more standalone settings too.
Between the furore about whether or not to make a movie about Miles Morales, whether or not to have Peter Parker be black, and so on, it occurred to me at some point that the people pushing for those more inclusive types of casting are fighting an uphill battle. Because the wider movie-going public (as distinct from the comic-buying public) knows that Bruce Wayne is Batman, Clark Kent is Superman and Peter Parker is Spider-Man, you'll have trouble attracting them to a movie featuring someone else in one of those roles, at least at first.
Even Into the Spider-Verse, which as I've said before was a damn delight, had to spend a lot of its running time explaining why Miles became Spider-Man, and even then it required a big starring role from Peter Parker (plus a minor role from another Peter Parker). On the other hand, witness the Spider-Man origin fatigue that greeted Andrew Garfield's Amazing Spider-Man movies, and the fact that Marvel/Sony felt that the Tom Holland entries could dispense with the origin story totally - not only do we all know the characters, we all know their origins too.
The Verge article suggests that this is a peculiar drawback of Marvel, as its characters and stories have essentially been designed to run forever with relatively little change in the status quo. And indeed, other than Peter Parker graduating from high school and then getting married (something that was eventually walked back in Marvel's first big, egregious retcon), Spider-Man remains the same character as he was back in 1962.
It's the same for Captain America, Iron Man and to perhaps a lesser extent the X-Men. I say a lesser extent for the X-Men, because the general idea of mutants fighting against bigotry is the same as when they launched in 1963, but being a team book has meant they could change the cast of characters around a whole lot more, including on more than one occasion jettisoning every character and just building a completely new team.
Even there, though, Marvel hasn't really ever experimented with its books as much as DC. Sure, the Punisher may have been rebooted as an occult demon-hunter at one point, which is generally remembered (if at all) as an embarrassment, but DC used to reboot its characters every few years, as the continuity grew too complex or as new creators decided they wanted to look at the books from different angles.
One good case in point is the Flash. The protagonist of the current CW show is, of course, Barry Allen, who's been "the" Flash for the longest time (1956-1985, and again more recently). When I first encountered the character, he was Barry Allen, and it was only years later that I learned that there'd been Jay Garrick before him, and that he'd died and been replaced by Wally West after the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
By the time I started reading Flash comics, Wally West was the guy in the suit, and so technically I consider him "my" Flash, even more than Barry (few of whose adventures I ever read). But ironically Wally was the star of the comics when the original Flash TV show came out in 1990, which had Barry Allen as the character. This meant that TV viewers who wanted to check out the comics were stuck with some other guy who was always feeling inadequate compared to Barry Allen.
That show disappeared fairly quickly, without troubling the ratings overly much, so the comic was able to continue on its own path unmolested by TV or movie considerations for a couple of decades. Indeed, the Flash was a prominent character in the Bruce Timm Justice League cartoon, and while he physically resembled Wally West, they never delved very far into his backstory or the relationship to Barry.
But of course now that there's a TV show on the CW and a movie in the works (bizarrely not connected to the show), Barry Allen appears to be the main character once again, and Wally's been consigned to some sort of limbo.
The Verge piece also mentions the reboots and retcons that authors like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman made to characters like Swamp Thing and Sandman, and how they related (or didn't) to previous versions of the characters. One of my favorite runs of any comic ever is Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man, where he retconned the main character's origin, then turned him into an environmental crusader and ended his run with a long metafictional storyline that culminated in Animal Man meeting Grant Morrison.
Of course, the reason that DC could do this stuff with its characters, or turn its flagship super-team, the Justice League, into a slapstick comedy, is because nobody was really reading the books at the time. If you can rely on your readership not changing, then you can reward them by letting the characters progress - much like Keith Giffen did when he rebooted the Legion of Superheroes in 1989.
But now that the comics are hot property, you have to keep them in a sort of stasis, so that you can then also sell the comics to the potential fans who've been attracted by the movie or TV show. The Verge article suggests that there's wiggle room there, as you can make a movie like Joker as a standalone, without worrying about continuity; I'd argue that's mostly true, but only because Warner/DC needed a Hail Mary pass after Zach Snyder's Superman and Justice League movies sucked so badly.
On the other hand, being able to reinvent the characters and approach them from different angles might be the best option for the movies, just as it was for the comics 20-30 years ago. Fun as the MCU movies have been, you're now basically working with 22 movies' worth of continuity, and at some point it might become too confusing for folks who just want to watch a movie with explosions and other fun stuff.
Unlikely as it sounds, maybe in a few years Marvel will be revisiting its characters in quirkier, more standalone settings too.
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