Roger Ebert's Anecdotal Streaming Evidence
Every day, Roger Ebert picks a film that is available streaming online to share with his readers on social media. Tonight, he posted this message to his Facebook page:
So let me get something straight. A while ago I asked you about my Daily Streamers. Almost all of them are found on Netflix Instant. I asked how many of you would be OK with titles on Hulu. A lot of you said that would be fine. But I've noticed the Hulu links don't get nearly as many hits. And when I link something from Fandor, I'm disappointed by the response--even though watching on Fandor is free with their introductory sub, which is not binding. For me, the fact that Fandor shares its revenues with the indie filmmakers is rather noble. But I'm getting the idea that the great majority of you are on Netflix, period. That's fine with me. I love it. I'm also on Fandor and Hulu. I like Fandor's bonus materials. So give me some feedback.
I never even think about whether or not someone I know has a Netflix account, I just assume that they do. If a film I know is streaming on Netflix Watch Instantly comes up in conversation, I will immediately suggest, “Watch it on Netflix.”
The other services? Not so much.
I had a Hulu Plus account for awhile but I got rid of it, mostly due to what I see as the company’s lack of respect for me as a customer.
Fandor, however, is a site I feel guilty for not having an account on. They have a great selection and an excellent blog, Keyframe Daily, but I just haven’t gotten around to it…yet.
Ebert’s link tracking looks about in line with what I’d expect. Just about everyone who regularly uses the Internet (namely Facebook and Twitter, where Ebert shares these links) has a Netflix account. It’s less likely they have a Hulu account and, for now, it’s a safe bet that almost none of them have a Fandor account.
The comments on the post suggest that most people haven’t heard of Fandor. Scratch that, hadn’t heard of it. With any luck, the site will get a boost from Ebert’s 90,000+ fans.
The Master Teaser Trailer ⇒
First teaser trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master:
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{:/nomarkdown}I don’t normally post every trailer that comes along, but what can I say? I’m excited for this one.
What Dan Benjamin Said
The following is a transcript of Dan Benjamin’s 5by5 Specials Episode #6, “Regarding The Talk Show.” It is his response to the speculation about why John Gruber took The Talk Show to Mule Radio Syndicate this past Friday. I recommend you listen to the original, but if you can’t, here is the text:
Hey Everybody. I’m Dan Benjamin, the founder of 5by5 broadcasting. Since a lot of people have been asking about it, I wanted to take a minute to talk to you about a recent change here at 5by5. The Talk Show has come to an end. My goal here isn’t to make a fuss about what happened. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to say anything about it and I’ve even been advised not to say anything. But after thinking things through I feel like talking about it could help everyone who cares including me move on and get back to making and enjoying the things we love.
I think the best way to start is by sharing a little history about The Talk Show. Back in late 2006 I was doing my first podcast the Hivelogic Radio Show. It was pretty bad. But there were a few good episodes, diamonds in the rough. Like the time my friend John Gruber joined me to talk about something Apple had jsut announced. Something called the iPhone.
In June of 2007, John and I created a new podcast called The Talk Show. It was almost five years ago and a full three years before I even started 5by5. John and I put out 30 episodes of The Talk Show in its original incarnation as a free standing show and you can still hear them over at thetalkshow.net.
About 7 months after I’d been running 5by5 full time, in the summer of 2010, John and I rebooted our show, brought it to 5by5, and together went on to release 90 more episodes. If you started playing all of those 120 episodes of The Talk Show in a row you would hear well over a week of John and me talking to each other. Talking about Apple products and Apple strategy and talking about baseball and kids. And to a lot of people’s annoyance we talked a lot about every single James Bond movie, except one, John and I spared you Casino Royale.
You’d also hear John eating apples on the air, receiving random electric shocks from his Mac and putting up with my weekly complaint that he was screwing up the sound by trying to use Skype over Wifi.
Our show got pretty popular over the years. And a lot of people have told us that The Talk Show was their favorite podcast ever. Like my opportunity to do the show with John in the first place, it’s been a great honor to make The Talk Show for you guys. I have a lot of respect for John. He’s one of the best writers I’ve ever met. And together we got to be one half of something that I think was very special.
Now in the week following our 120th episode, John expressed to me that it was time for him to move on and to try something new. People keep speculating about this, looking for answers, but it really doesn’t matter why John wanted to move on. If he wasn’t happy for any reason, then it was time. And I have total respect and understanding for him. The arrangement wasn’t working…it wasn’t a fit anymore…all right then, let’s move on. However, I’d always thought that if we weren’t going to do the show anymore we’d retire it together. So I was a little surprised and disappointed when I learned that John had decided to do the show on his own and call it The Talk Show.
Is this really a big deal? It’s just a show right? Just a podcast. One of many. And there are more important things to care about like world peace, Game of Thrones and iOs updates. Well, way back when, I used to have a 45 minute commute to a crappy IT job. Every morning on the way to work and every night on the way home I’d listen to my favorite talk show hosts doing their thing. And over time, as weird as this might sound, they became my pals, in my head, anyway. I’m sure they didn’t know me, but, I knew them very well. And I loved hanging out with them. So when things changed, when a show came to an end or a host left, it affected me. I felt like I’d lost something. Maybe just something small, but something. Because these were the people I hung out with everyday, while traversing a long stretch of road. And they had a place in my life, just like my real life friends. You know change is hard, especially if you feel like you’ve lost something that you care about.
John and I were friends for years before we created The Talk Show, and I hope we will be friends for years to come. I’d never begrudge John any desire to do anything that suits him. John is the best. And my respect for his intelligence, talent and fierce independence will travel along to wherever he goes and whatever he does and whomever he does it with. I wish that John and I could have found some way to do one more episode of our Talk Show together. To laugh about things coming to an end, to say goodbye to each other as friends do, and really, most importantly, to offer the proper and respectful thank you that you guys are each owed for having been there with us each week for 120 episodes. I really wish we could have done that for you.
And I do really want to wish John all the best with anything he does, including his new show. And I encourage you to give it a try too. You can check it out at its new home on muleradio.net.
So thanks again to all of you for making 5by5 possible, for supporting our programs, and for caring so much about the people who make them. You guys are the best and I look forward to continue to talk to you for many more years to come. You guys matter a great deal to me. And without you to listen there wouldn’t be any shows in the first place. There is a lot of great stuff ahead for all of us.
Thanks for listening.
The UK's Owl Problem ⇒
Hundreds of owls are being abandoned across the country after being bought as pets by Harry Potter fans.
Awful, but this is nothing new. As noted later in the story:
The Harry Potter owl craze echoes that of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle film in the early 1990s, when thousands of unwanted pet terrapins were dumped in Britain’s rivers, canals and lakes.
Cahal Milmo at The Independent filed a story in 2010 about the long-term effects of the terrapin abandonment:
Conservationists have issued a warning that hundreds of boating lakes, canals and waterways in towns and cities are infested with terrapins and small turtles which were bought as pets while brightly-coloured babies barely bigger than a 50p coin but dumped by owners unable to cope as they grew to mature carnivorous adults the size of a dinner plate.
The trend began in the early 1990s when thousands of red-eared terrapins, each capable of living up to 30 years, were bought by young fans of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoon.
Children’s entertaiment and animals are a dangerous combination.
They Write About Podcasts, Don't They?
On Friday, John Gruber introduced a new version of his popular Talk Show podcast on the Mule Radio Syndicate network, effectively ending his partnership with Dan Benjamin and the 5by5 network. No explanation was offered by Gruber or Dan Benjamin, his co-host and 5by5 founder. So I wrote a blog post speculating about the split, and a lot of people read it. A whole lot.
I’ve been trying to figure out why so many people are interested in this story.
Here’s Macdrifter, yesterday:
I’ve looked over some of the speculation and personal attacks circulating about Gruber’s switch of networks and have one conclusion: There are a number of self-important dickheads with nothing important to do. I think that describes what’s wrong with many people on the Internet. People take their opinion too seriously and like to inflate their own value. How can anyone without personal connections to and personal knowledge of the network switch have any opinion? Further, who gives a shit. [sic] It’s a podcast that isn’t ending, just switching networks.
I think Macdrifter has this wrong, but offers a nice way to explore why so many people do give a shit.
There is a lot of irony in the phrase “self-important dickheads with nothing important to do” because, if we’re honest, it aptly describes Gruber’s persona on Daring Fireball, and that’s not a put down at all. Gruber has built an incredible brand by sneaking bits of his big, churlish personality into his writing, and we love him for it. As many fans as he has, he has loads of enemies who complain that he’s just some blogger with nothing important to do.
But we all know better. We all know that he provides a unique perspective on Apple and the tech industry as a whole. And that he serves an important journalistic service by broadcasting the overarching story of the technology industry as it stands right now.
Daring Fireball’s format, short links with opinionated commentary, has proven to be an enduring one and an inspiration for a number of writers, myself included. Macdrifter asserts that “people take their opinion too seriously,” but I don’t see that as a necessarily bad thing. Surely, Daring Fireball would be nothing without Gruber’s own opinions treated with the seriousness they deserve.
The move to Mule Radio Syndicate is more than “just switching networks.” By moving, Gruber left half the show, namely Dan Benjamin, behind. It’s as if David Letterman were suddenly on cable without Paul Schaffer one day, with no explanation.
But that’s a bad analogy because there would be an explanation. It would be printed in every newspaper, it would be scrutinized in every corner of the Internet, maybe even on Daring Fireball. It would be news, and people would demand coverage of it.
This should be no different.
John Gruber and Dan Benjamin are in the media business. The large and loyal audiences both have fostered allow them to continue their work. Unfortunately, the other edge of that sword means that their output is open to public scrutiny. For the large community of listeners and readers, this is news. It’s a juicy, salacious media story.
As it should be.
People do write about podcasts. I link to them when something relevant to this site’s audience pops up. Macdrifter has done a great job of publicizing how large the community has become and explaining why listeners are lucky for it. The above quote is perhaps the most charged in an excellent post that spells out why Gruber’s move is actually a boon for the industry. So, I would argue, is the backlash against the sudden and unexplained split.
People care about these shows. They listen to them regularly and discuss them among friends the way a bygone generation would talk about Uncle Miltie. Listeners are personally connected to these shows. We welcome these hosts into our lives every week to be entertained and inspired. There is absolutely a relationship between host and listener and it is a very personal, intimate one. Otherwise what’s the point?
People care about this story because they care about these people. I’m not naïve; there’s a layer of schadenfreude to this story too. Mostly I think people are interested because they like listening to these shows. If things had gone down differently, if listeners were at least kept informed of the move and the show’s changing format, maybe there wouldn’t be a story.
But we weren’t. And it is.
Anonymous Quora Post Offers Insight into Talk Show Split ⇒
This anonymous Quora commenter offers remarkable insight into what could have led to The Talk Show moving from 5by5 to Mule Radio Syndicate. It’s a bit long, with a 10 point breakdown of what could have led to John Gruber’s silent departure. Here’s one I hadn’t considered:
Gruber posts a list of the talk show sponsors on Daring Fireball each week. This is worth almost as much as the daring fireball sponsorship which he currently sells for $7500 a week. I bet this played a major part in the negotiations.
Sounds feasible.
Dan Harmon on Getting Fired from Community ⇒
I’m 39, now. The friends my Mom warned me about are bigger now, and older, bloodying my nose with old world numbers, and old world tactics, like, oh, I don’t know, sending out press releases to TV Guide at 7pm on a Friday. But my Commodore 64 is mobile now, like yours, and the modems are invisible, and the internet is the air all around us. And the good friends, the real friends, are finding each other, and connecting with each other, and my Mom is turning out to be more right than ever.
Dan Harmon got fired from the fourth season of his show, Community. NBC has managed to screw its talent again, not realizing that writers are usually very good at articulating how, exactly, they got fired. This bit towards the end sounds like an admission that network television itself is outmoded. A final “fuck you” to the network.
Even if you don’t like the show, this is a great little piece of writing about what it’s like to be a creative person working in the entertainment industry.
Avengers and On the Set of Ender's Game ⇒
Orson Scott Card discussing the forthcoming film adaptation of his book, Ender’s Game:
My book was already alive in the mind of every reader. This is writer-director Gavin Hood’s movie, so they were his words, and it was his scene.
His post is long but worth reading. He first offers a cogent explanation for why The Avengers works even though it doesn’t make any sense. Then Card lyrically recounts his experience on the set of the film of his book. His outlook on the project is inspiring.
Neil Gaiman Commencement Speech ⇒
When you start out on a career in the arts, you have no idea what you're doing. This is great. People who know what they're doing know the rules and they know what is possible and what is impossible. You do not and you should not. The rules on what is possible and what is impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can. If you don't know it's impossible, it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that particular thing again.
This is great.
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{:/nomarkdown}Please Learn to Write ⇒
Michael Lopp on learning how to write:
Writing is the connective tissue that creates understanding. We, as social creatures, often better perform rituals to form understanding one on one, but good writing enables us to understand each other at scale.
This piece is worth bookmarking and revisiting every few months.