The Wet Squish

The Wet Squish
Number	256
Broadcast Date	February 25, 2019
Episode Length	1:03:28
Hosts	Brian Brushwood, Tom Merritt
Guests	Nicole Lee

Cord-cutting wins some hardware, The Twilight Zone is back with a trailer, and Amazon wants to buy A LOT of movies. All this and more on Cordkillers! With special guest Nicole Lee.

Guests

• Nicole Lee

Intro Video

• All the "ma'ams" in Bodyguard - Netflix

Primary Target

• Cord Cutting Hits a Record High Level In Fourth Quarter

MoffettNathanson Research reports the number of US Pay TV subscribers dropped by 985,000 in Q4 that's down 4.1% over 2017, and the highest rate of decline in at least 8 years.

Of note, multichannel Internet TV packages rose about 740,000 in Q4 2018, down from being a rise of 900,000 in Q4 2017. (Total is 7.6 million)

• Sling TV closes year with 2.4 million subscribers, but growth slowed significantly

For example - Sling TV finished 2018 with 2.42 million subs, first place ahead of DirecTV Now's 1.6 million. YouTube TV and Hulu Live are right behind at around 1 million each.

However Dish Satellite lost 1.125 million subscribers (995,00 2017) and added 205,000 Sling TV subscribers (711,000 2017)

• CBS reached its streaming subscription target two years early

CBS All Access and Showtime now have 8 million streaming subscribers split evenly between the two platforms, up 60% from last year. That's two years ahead of schedule.

CBS now expects the two to combine for 25 million by 2022.

CBS is considering taking CBS All Access shows like the Good Fight and airing them on the broadcast network.

How to Watch

• Netflix’s ‘Roma’ wins Best Director and two more Oscars (but not Best Picture)
• 2019 Oscars: the complete list of winners
• Black Panther Oscar Winner: Best Costume Design for Marvel Film
• 2019 Oscars: Into the Spider Verse Wins Best Animated Film

Netflix's Roma won Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Cinematography.

Netflix's Period. End of Sentence won Best Short Documentary

Ballad of Buster Scruggs got three nominations but did not win.

Hulu's Minding the Gap lost out Best Feature Documentary to Free Solo.

Black Panther was the first superhero movie nominated for Best Picture and won awards for Best Costume Design, Best Production Design and Best Original Score. First Oscars for a Marvel movie

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse won for Best Animated Feature.

Netflix 2014 - Got nominated!

Netflix 2017 - Won an Oscar!

Netflix 2019 - Sure they took home 4 Oscars but should they have had Best Picture?

What to Watch

• The second half (eps. 9-16) of season 5 of Arrested Development arrives on Netflix March 15. (Episode 10-8 came out May 29 last year)
• A new full trailer is out for CBS All Access's Twilight Zone which arrives April 1.
• The 6-episode series, Good Omens, based on the book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett will arrive on Prime Video May 31.
• Netflix has an all-star cast for 'Green Eggs and Ham' animated series

A series telling new stories based on the book Green Eggs and Ham from executive producer Ellen DeGeneres will star Adam Devine as Sam, Michael Douglas as Guy along with voices from Diane Keaton, Ilana Glazer, Eddie Izzard, Jeffrey Wright, Jillian Bell, John Turturro, Tracy Morgan, Daveed Diggs, Keegan-Michael Key. It arrives this autumn.

• The BBC released a trailer for the series His Dark Materials based on the books by Philip Pullman. The series will come to HBO in the US.
• Amazon Chief Jennifer Salke Unveils Film Plan to Battle Netflix: 30 Movies a Year (Q&A)

Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke wants to debut 30 movies a year. She also told Deadline that the Lord of the Rings writers room has the windows taped closed and requires special security clearance to get to including a fingerprint scan.

• Amazon has greenlit a TV series based on Naomi Alderman’s The Power

Amazon has approved a 10-episode series based on Naomi Alderman's novel The Power in which women on Earth suddenly get the ability to electrocute people by touch.

• Netflix has ordered a new animated Transformers series called War for Cybertron that explores the Autobots home world expected to arrive in 2020.
• China’s blockbuster The Wandering Earth is coming to Netflix

The Wandering Earth is the second biggest Chinese film release earning $600 million since it came out at the beginning of the month. In it, Earth must be moved away from the sun before it expands, but almost falls into Jupiter as transport engines fail. Before you scoff at this, it's based on a novelette by Cixin Liu who wrote the Hugo-award winning Three-Body Problem. Netflix has obtained the rights for North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Korea.

• CBS All Access has cast Lucy Liu to star in a dramedy from the creators of Desperate Housewives, called Why Women Kill. It will revolve around three stories of three women dealing with infidelity across three decades.
• ‘The Haunting’ Renewed For Season 2 As Mike Flanagan & Trevor Macy Partner In Intrepid Pictures & Ink Netflix Overall Deal

The Haunting of Hill House will get a second season with an anthology approach. Season 2 will be called The Haunting of Bly Manor. It will be based on Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. It may feature some Hill House cast members.

• Amazon released a trailer for season 4 of The Man in The High Castle which will also be its final season according to the trailer.
• Netflix officially cancels 'Jessica Jones' and 'The Punisher'

Netflix let the last two shoes drop in its Marvel partnership announcing The Punisher and Jessica Jones will not get any more seasons on Netflix. Jessica Jones will be the last series to come to Netflix when it arrives later this year.

• Syfy has canceled Nightflyers after a single season

SyFy canceled the series Nightflyers. Nightflyers showrunner Jeff Buhler told The Verge last year that he wanted to tackle other stories in the Thousand Worlds universe.

What We're Watching

• Brian: How to Train your Dragon (x2), Larry Charles's Dangerous World of Comedy, 3x True Detective, Counterpart, Dirk Gently
• Tom: Haunting of Hill House
• Nicole: Spider Man: Into The Spider-Verse, Weird City
• On the Lookout: Little Big Awesome

Front Lines

• Roku Aims to Top $1 Billion in Revenue in 2019, Beats Holiday Quarter Earnings Expectations

Roku says it expects to have more than $1 billion in revenue this year. Roku raised its revenue and earnings in Q4 over the same period last year and beat analyst's expectations. CEO Anthony Wood says the company wants to power every TV in the world. Roku added close to 8 million accounts in 2018 and has devices in more than 27 million households.

• Spectrum has a streaming service that’s basically its cable package for $15 a month

Spectrum is selling an internet-only TV package called Spectrum TV Essentials to its internet customers. It has more than 60 channels and costs $15 a month. It works with the Spectrum app on Roku, Apple TV, Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV, and Samsung Smart TV, and on desktop.

• Sports streaming service fuboTV expands its lineup with Viacom’s entertainment channels

Sports-oriented streaming service Fubo TV has added Viacom channels to its lineup alongside CBS, AMC, NBC, FX and more. The base package will add BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Paramount Network, TV Land and VH1 with other Vicaom channels arriving on extra packages.

• Samsung stops releasing Blu-ray players in the US

Here's a story that is significant but likely to be misunderstood. Samsung is no longer bringing new models of its Blu-ray players to the US. This does mean that the market for Blu-ray players just got a little smaller in the US. It does not mean that you can't buy Blu-ray players in the US or that Samsung has stopped making Blu-ray players at all.

• Movie Torrents Shown To Actually Boost Box Office Sales For Post-Release Movies

Researchers from the University of Houston and Western University used the period of time in 2014 when The Pirate Bay went offline to study what affect this had on movie ticket sales. The research found that unauthorized copies of movies released before the theater premiere had a negative affect on ticket sales. While unauthorized copies released after the premiere had a positive effect on ticket sales.

• Apple is targeting April to launch its new video service, but Netflix won't be a part of it and HBO is in doubt

Sources tell CNBC that Apple is aiming to launch its TV service in April or early May. Starz, CBS including Showtime and Viacom are expected to offer subscriptions through Apple's TV app. HBO is in talks but isn't on board yet and Netflix and Hulu are not expected to join.

Dispatches From The Front

Hey Guys,

I have a two year old and with my wife who is a native Spanish speaking mother, we make sure content we watch is always in Spanish. As I am "muy gringo" and want nothing more than for our daughter to know the language like mom, this also helps in my study of the Spanish language too.

My question is, of all the OTT services out there, do ANY support the SAP function for Spanish language audio? We're a big Disney Jr. family right now and would love to find the service that supports this OTT. Really looking to cut the cord and this is really the only thing holding me back.

Love the show, and thanks for all that you do.

- Will

Greetings Killers!

We have been seeing a trend of channels delivering their content through apps, and not just from cable channels, but various content delivery services. This is obviously nice that I can just install an app to my device for a specific channel if I want to catch a certain show (for example I recently downloaded the ScienceGO app just to watch Mythbusters Jr.). While it does get a little annoying that I have to download multiple apps, each with a different, and sometimes frustrating interface, to watch a handful of shows, one of the things I have never heard anyone talk about is the state of the ads on these platforms.

As an avid cordkiller for years now I have been used to it, but I am amazed at how things have not gotten any better. Anyone who uses these apps knows how frustrating the user experience can be. You often have to break in the video multiple times to watch ads, but the experience is often downright miserable. Often the ads are very poor quality, both streaming wise and from a production value. I often get ads that are a single individual using a front facing camera on a phone advertising a business. Sometimes the video quality is horrible, often times the audio volume is multitudes higher than the show you are watching. Also, you are often watching the same ad multiple times in a row, and multiple times in a single show. This doesn't even include any of the frustrating technical issues with streaming commercials and how the shows often never save your place if you need to get out of the app and will often force you to watch every commercial break over again to catch back up to where you were, and every time you guess at a spot in the stream you are immediately punished with the same ad you've already seen a dozen times if you did not pick the right spot the first time.

All this to say that while I enjoy my cordcutting experience, I believe the ad experience is often overlooked and not mentioned by many, even though these are problems that are going to have to be solved before it goes mainstream.

One of your many bosses,

- Kyle

Links

• http://www.cordkillers.com/blog/2019/2/26/cordkillers-256-the-wet-squish-w-nicole-lee
• patreon.com/cordkillers
• Summer Movie Draft 2019 Info Masterpost

Preceded by: "I Like Big Buttes"

The Wet Squish

Followed by: "I'm Sure Your Movies Are Fine, Mr. Spielberg"