A sumptuous orgy of TV comedy on Netflix, Hulu & Crackle

So, what do you like? Wanna bathe in a glorious pool of comedy ooze? Let in run over and through you? Give yourself over to the funny without reservation?

Got your comedy boner yet? Well stick it in these shows you can binge on right now on just about any screen you've got. Big, small, in between ... there's no prejudice here, just get your comedy on.

That Mitchell & Webb Look, from BBC Two

BBC America decided after series two that we didn't need to see three or four.

They were VERY wrong. I love these guys (pictured above), they're sketch writing is top notch and they have great chemistry as they always have since starting together with the Footlights at Cambridge and moving through clubs and onto TV in three sketch shows, as the stars of Peep Show from Channel 4 and as the Mac guy and PC guy in the British version of those Apple commercials that starred Justin Long and John Hodgman here in the US.

Watch all of the second season premiere here thanks to some copyright infringer at YouTube, as most of you don't have Hulu Plus:


The third and fourth seasons lose a couple of fan favorite sketches. Sir Digby Chicken Caesar ends with the second series as does Numberwang, but you get a great game show parody that takes place after a horrific armageddon only referred to as "the event." Hilarious. You can't lose with these guys, I'm also rewatching a bunch of episodes of Peep Show on Hulu Plus too.

"I believe that children are our future." They're NOT signing up for cable.

A little Whitney in the morning, at least this song, is good for the self-esteem. Also good for the self-esteem? More money in your pocket, and not having big cable bills is a way to get that done.

Wanna watch the video? Click this. 

MarketingCharts.com has lots of info on how 18 to 24s as they move into their own places are ordering the big broadband pipe from the cable company but NOT the TV package that usually comes with it. This confirms info posted previously here on the blog:

Perhaps even more disturbingly for pay-TV providers, a significant 24.9% of 18-24-year-old broadband subscribers surveyed by TDG said they were highly disinclined (bottom-2 box score on a 7-point scale) to subscribe to a pay-TV service once they move into their own space. The remaining 43.8% are neutral.

It’s a different story for online subscription video services such as Netflix. 48.7% of the respondents said they’d be highly inclined to sign up to such a service when they left home, making them 56% more likely to subscribe to an over-the-top (OTT) service than pay-TV. Only 14.4% said they were highly disinclined to sign up for an OTT service.

BOOM! The death knell for high priced cable packages.

Angry Time Warner Cable subscribers on Twitter for August 18

The Twitter bird looks pretty mad! I think there's trouble in paradise for Time Warner Cable. If this goes past the beginning of football season all hell is gonna break loose.

Here's a selection of Tweet heat from the interwebs:

@MegTowe @TWC @CBS I was just wondering the same thing? Time for FioS?
— arianash (@arianash) August 18, 2013

@TWC is to blame NOT @cbs for your blocked channels. You pay the cable company your hard earned dollars. #CANCELTWC and move on to @Uverse
— Joe The Music Man (@IKNOWMUSIC_2012) August 18, 2013

@tvdotcom @TimAtTVDotCom Here in Kansas City, the @CBS @TWC mess is just a win for @googlefiber
— Ben Knight (@camulus) August 18, 2013

Saw the trailer for Season 3 of #Homeland just now. Pumped! Just hope @CBS and @TWC work out their dumb argument so I can actually watch it!
— Constant Complainer (@ComplaintMan) August 18, 2013

What nice gesture to fuck over LA during a great #dodgers season...@TWC & @cbs. Disconnecting my cable ASAP.
— Vizzy (@ShaunVizzy) August 18, 2013

Cut the cord links include Sony's streaming deal, pay TV losing market share ... but, where's the news?

Here's some, uh ... stuff. I was interested, maybe you will be too.

Forbes has more to say in the aftermath of the news of Sony/Intel signing on Viacom cable channels for their new Internet streaming service, which will come with PlayStation4 and their branded TVs:

But for those hoping they’ll be able to pick and choose which channels, note that word “bundle.” There is no chance Sony will offer a la carte channel selection, at least not in any way that offers substantial discounting. In a future post, I’ll go through the ugly math of why you are unlikely to see this from anyone anytime soon, but right now Sony’s problem is that it simply can’t negotiate those kind of deals even if it wanted to. In fact, it will end up paying more for programming than a Comcast or DirecTV because it will not be able to promise the kind of volume those companies offer to programmers. The good news is that programming typically represents about 40% of your cable bill so even if Sony pays a bit more, it can charge less.

Well that sucks. I'm not really interested in a channel situation, though. I'd rather have a service that works like Hulu & Netflix where you punch up the show you want to see and have at it. That's too much like cable is currently. I'm still not gonna watch a Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta marathon capped off by a reunion show, it's just not my thing.

(You know what's great over the internet via my Roku box btw, speaking of Viacom? Music videos, a business Viacom used to be in. Vevo on Roku is excellent!)

Two stories at Quartz.com in two days on cutting the cord and the options to fill the void. They say Netflix and Amazon Prime are not enough to replace cable. I agree, for reasons that I think are responded to nicely by adding Hulu. They do make the case however for having news coverage at your fingertips:

Pay television providers are unchallenged by OTT TV in three live TV categories: news, sports, and reality TV. Very few households would choose to drop live TV. This explains why Nielsen’s ZeroTV households, or cord cutters that are not pay TV, subscribers amount to less than 5% of all households.

I can watch BBC News videos via an icon on my Samsung Smart Blu-Ray player but it's not live, one really needs live streaming news coverage for certain inevitabilities. Roku does have some live channels so it's possible, but I'm not paying for the news channel I want (I prefer BBC World) as part of a suite of news services that includes, for example less than credible news sources like the Juggalo Action Report or Fox News Channel or The Blaze. That's one of the reasons I'm leaving cable and satellite, I don't want to pay for what I don't want.

Finally, Digital Trends has a piece looking to the future of cord cutting given recent trends:

A closer look at the numbers show what’s really going on. Despite losing customers in Q2 last year, the top 13 cable providers (which represent 94% of the market) gained some in Q3 and Q4 to cushion the blow. But 2012 was big because it marked the first time the cable industry lost a net number of subscribers. All told, 80,000 were gone over the course of the year. Some of that was made up in Q1 2013 with 195,000 added, but as mentioned above, 320,000 left over the three months from April to June. Can such a topsy-turvy trend really indicate that cord-cutting is a serious threat?

Maybe not “serious” yet, but nonetheless potentially irreversible. Leichtmann Research Group found that the 195,000 number paled in comparison to the 445,000 who jumped on board with cable providers in the same time period in 2012.

I think we're picking up steam, we'll see real movement in 2014.

CBS Sports Network remains on Time Warner Cable. Did they forget?

It's the only CBS cable television property left on my Time Warner Cable connected TV. Why? My theory is that Time Warner forgot they carry the channel.

Why? Maybe it's their programming mix, which obviously includes Major League Lacrosse (image above). Yes, there's professional lacrosse. No, I don't watch it. They wear masks, you can't see their faces like in Aussie Rules Football, which also has sleeveless uniform shirts. WIN!

Also today on CBS Sports Net? Bull riding, arena football and motorcycle racing.

Blah.

Couldn't have left Showtime, huh?

FREE 2-MONTH HULU TRIAL? The Hulu blog should be more active, should tell you the deals.

The last post on the Hulu blog was on August 5. They need to hire someone to work that blog. No links on any of the show pages, no referring links anywhere else on the site, you actually need to know the URL to find it (which btw is http://blog.hulu.com/).

I'd like to know what's upcoming from them, not the individual episodes that get added but the shows they're planning on bringing in.

If you click around the web you find so much more Hulu info, like this post at CNET (see image above) that offers you a 2-month free trial!!! My trial (in day 5 currently) was only 2 weeks through the Comedy Bang Bang website.Get yourself a better deal, even if you don't wanna watch their original series The Awesomes.

Speaking of which ... The Awesomes isn't bad, it has a fine pedigree coming from Mike Shoemaker & Seth Meyers who bring a bunch of their SNL pals along as character voices. The problem with it I think is it's a cartoon developed by comedy people (with an assist from cartoonist Judd Winick, former Real World participant. Even Winick isn't really the right kind of creative to handle this job in my opinion. Should have grabbed some former TV toon people who really know how to exploit the medium. 

I checked out the four episodes that are up on the site last night. It's a sitcom that's been animated. It should be a cartoon. There's a difference. The only time they did sufficiently exploit the medium was during a scene where they're auditioning new "heroes" to be part of the team. Guy with the rhino head cracked me up.

Otherwise, meh.

HUGE Viacom "cut the cord" news: Its networks' content poised to go online, consumers to benefit

SpongeBob just got so damned tired of crying (see above) that he decided to do something about it, and if you don't think the current distress suffered by CBS didn't have something to do with it I have not just the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you but every span into and out of every major city to boot!

The deal they're striking, and they are first among the big players, will put the content from their many networks on an online service from Sony and Intel that I imagine will look and operate somewhat like Hulu or Netflix Instant.

Joe Flint in the LA Times:

Sony and Intel, which is launching its own over-the-top service, have been meeting with programmers for several months hoping to persuade them to take the plunge.

Programmers have been wary of committing to an over-the-top provider because it could alienate their biggest business partners — the satellite and cable companies that reach most American homes. This is why a Sony or Intel would likely have to pay a premium to get access to content for their services.

This is how Viacom and CBS work. They are both wholly owned subsidiaries of National Amusements, a company that started its history as Northeast Theatre Corporation, a company your intrepid blogger once worked for back in the day.

Redstone, Moonves, Dauman

(My job for National Amusements, believe it or not, was a weekend gig at the Sunrise Drive-In Theatre in Valley Stream, NY. They had a flea market (swap meet for you West Coasters) on the weekends and I sold these big greasy hot dogs and sodas. My paycheck was signed -- actually I think it was a rubber stamp -- by Sumner Redstone.)

Redstone and his daughter own all the stock and control both companies, and traditionally he has pitted the CBS and Viacom chiefs (Les Moonves and Philipp Dauman in a fight to the death to be more profitable. It's a huge rivalry between the two.

Dauman, seeing the trouble Moonves is in right now and having this trouble for his own just recently with Time Warner Cable, is poised now to piss off a lot of cable companies but also take the bull by the horns.The next time there's a carriage war with Viacom stations I'm sure negotiations will highlight this impending method of getting some of television's most popular content online.

It will be very interesting to see how other content providers and cable's major system operators Time Warner, Comcast, Cox, etc. react to this news as the deal is signed and in the days ahead. It's a solid win for consumers, though, and for those of you without CBS it might even motivate those players to hurry up and settle.

In the meantime there are plenty of Viacom shows on Hulu and on Amazon Prime. I imagine those deals would be pulled in should this deal get finalized.

This is nothing but good news for consumers. There needs to be more avenues by which programming comes into our homes for prices to come down. We're on our way.