Stream and Stream Again: Special May Day Edition

Spring is here. There’s a better than even chance that the sun is shining where you are; nature is blooming (time to stock up on the allergy meds); and at least for a brief moment, hope and renewal (along with pollen) waft on warm breezes.

We don’t really do May Day here in the States, what with its commie-hippie-fertility-tree-worshipping vibe that’s so at odds with our dog-eat-dog capitalism. Elsewhere, the old Soviet military parades are gone, but much of the world still recognizes it as International Workers Day, where workers of the world unite to binge on Game of Thrones and the latest Marvel blockbusters. There are even a few odd Europeans and Brits left who celebrate by dressing up and dancing around the maypole.

"Okay kids, enough of this fresh air, let's go binge on
episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch!"

We’ve dispensed with the old Pagan maypole streamers in favor of net streams, but the dance is still the same -- we frolic around the great megalithic entertainment monolith, tied to it by our multiple streams, forever chasing after that elusive content that’s just one more subscription away.

Many of us have cut the cable and satellite TV cords, only to become entangled in a new Gordian knot of subscription streaming services. The cost of each by itself is reasonable, but put all of them together to get your Star Trek Discovery here, Game of Thrones there, and the Marvel Comics Universe behind the Disney paywall, and suddenly you’ve become nostalgic for the old cable bill.

Of course it all makes sense from the corporate monolith’s perspective. Why sell or rent your precious commodity one at a time when you can rope your customers into ongoing, monthly payments? Corporate suits are burning the midnight oil thinking of new recurring ways to separate us from our money: razors, clothes, food, you name it. “I’m sorry sir, that apple is not for individual sale, but I’d be happy to sign you up for our Apple of the Month Club.”

While the Fruit of the Month Club may be an easy pass, they really have us by the short hairs when it comes to our pop culture addictions. Disney is the new 800 pound gorilla in the streaming wars, pulling their content from other platforms to offer exclusively on their own service. The announced $6.99 per month cost is low compared to Netflix and other services, but it will be interesting to see if that price holds once they corral all their hottest properties -- Star Wars, the MCU, Pixar, etc. -- behind their paywall.

Even with its attractive entry price, I won’t be signing up for Disney’s streaming channel anytime soon. Because I’m a cheap old coot, I’m trying to hold the line at my outrageously expensive internet plan and the two streaming behemoths I’ve had for years now, Netflix (which just raised its rates again, daggummit!) and Amazon Prime.

The CEOs of Disney, Netflix, Amazon and Comcast wave approvingly
as their weapons of mass distraction parade by the reviewing stand.

Of course, Netflix has been moving in recent years from an emphasis on theatrical movies to original content and TV. I’ve sampled some of their original stuff, and overall it’s pretty mediocre. Every time they hike their rates I think about dropping it, but it has some shows my wife and I like, so I grin and bear it (yeah Netflix, you’re smiling now, but one more price hike, and you’ll be sorry!)

Amazon Prime is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates -- you never know what you’re going to get. B movie fans like myself can have quite a bit fun browsing through its catalog. Right now my watchlist is teeming with titles that are good candidates for the blog: Attack of the Mushroom People, Blood of the Vampire, Cry of the Banshee, Fire Maidens of Outer Space, Frankenstein’s Daughter, Invisible Invaders, Pharaoh’s Curse… it’s an embarrassment of B riches (or for some, just an embarrassment). Some of those licenses will expire, and other vintage Bs will take their place. The biggest downside is the queasy feeling I sometimes get paying dues to the online empire of the world’s richest, greediest man.

At least I summoned up the fortitude some time ago to cut the cable TV cord. We’d been bouncing between cable and satellite for years, shelling out for frequent rate hikes, tolerating poor signals and even poorer customer service, and marvelling, like millions before us, that there could be so many channels and so little to watch.

When we moved to a larger metro area, we finally cut and ran. I invested in an indoor digital antenna and a DVR for over-the-air broadcasts. In our location, the setup brings in not only the usual network channels and local news, but dozens of other channels as well. Fortunately for my interests, many of these are retro channels, including MeTV (with the beloved Svengoolie on Saturday nights), the Movies! channel, Comet, Decades, This-TV and many more. (A small downside is that occasionally the antenna needs to be adjusted to optimize the signal for certain channels. I have it hanging from a curtain rod, where it’s easy to move it back and forth to clear up the signal.)

Public libraries are a beacon of hope for all
those oppressed by high entertainment bills.

Another huge free resource is the local public library system. Again, living in a large city helps tremendously. Among all the branches, they get almost every title that anyone would want to watch on DVD, including blockbusters, foreign and independent films, and TV. If your local branch doesn’t carry it, you just put a hold on the title and it usually shows up within a couple days. We recently caught up with Game of Thrones by binging on library copies.

A big “secret” that people are finally discovering is that many libraries offer robust, free streaming services. Hoopla, a big player in the public library market, offers popular feature films and documentaries to stream, along with online courses and ebooks. Typically, each library card holder gets a limited number of views per month (but hey, it’s free!).

Our system also offers Kanopy, which has also been big in the higher education streaming market. Kanopy has a rich catalog of independent, foreign, classic and documentary films. For a relatively high-brow service, it also carries a surprising number of classic and B horror and sci-fi films. For example, my current Kanopy watchlist includes I Married a Monster from Outer Space, The Blood Beast Terror (with Peter Cushing), the Eurohorror classic Night of the Devils, and Sudden Fear (with Joan Crawford and Jack Palance). Like Hoopla, it’s a certain-number-of-views per month deal.

So, there are alternatives to selling your first born and your right arm for access to the movies and shows you love. Check out the local OTA broadcast situation and your local library. You may be able to stream and stream again without your wallet screaming “Uncle!”

Streaming Scream Queens for Halloween: Special 13 Day Countdown Edition

“Poor” Netflix! With all the service changes and pricing miscues, apologies from the CEO, withering criticism of its streaming catalog, and persistent predictions of its imminent demise in the face of rising competition, it still singlehandedly accounts for nearly 37% of all U.S. bandwidth usage at peak hours.  Netflix was just in the news again, with its feckless CEO blaming credit card companies issuing new chip-based cards for the slump in their subscriber base growth. Yep, you got that right — in this industry, you don’t actually have to lose customers to get unwanted attention. All it takes is an unanticipated dip in the growth of new subscribers to get you scrambling for some excuse, any excuse, to appease critics and shareholders.

My purpose here is not to beat up on Netflix alone. I don’t think I have to polish my credentials as an implacable, remorseless media industry critic. If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you may have run across some of my finer moments in taking the suits who run these media empires to task, for instance, here, here and here.

The fact is, I’m just your run-of-the-mill, patriotic American consumer. I want what I want. And my wants are simple. I want access to a video/film catalog complete with all the obscure, old B movies that I have taken a shine to and that are the staples of this blog. I want to be able to rent or purchase copies, stream or download, and I want them playable on all my devices — HD TV, desktop computer, tablet, phone and in the near future, that chip in my head that plays HD movies in the back of my eyeballs. I never, ever want to see that a title is no longer in my streaming queue because the license expired. And, I want to be able to freely and legally rip small portions, not more than 2 or 3 minutes (hey, I’m not greedy!), from any digital video to store in my YouTube account and embed in these here posts, just like I have the right to quote from passages of any friggin’ book that I might be reviewing!

So, you humorless media industry suits, step back from all your feuding over licenses and copyright and intellectual property and patents and whatever, and get busy making me and others just like me happy! We’ll even pay you — a reasonable, but not exorbitant, amount.

I won’t hold my breath. Even with the recent profusion of streaming channels, platforms and assorted options, it seems like the train is headed in the wrong direction. I admit that I have a collector’s (and reviewer’s) mentality. I get bored with the 2015 equivalent of channel surfing — firing up Netflix or Hulu or the streaming service of the moment and browsing through the endless lists of “trending” or “recently added” movies and shows, trying to find something even mildly interesting. No, I’m much more oriented to that specific title that I ran across in a book, or an article, or through word of mouth, or even that thing that ran on TCM months ago. I want to check it out, give it a spin, see if its something I want to cover for the blog… whatever. And I don’t want to spend a fortune in time or $ hunting it down. Amazon Instant Watch is the closest thing to that online union catalog of video, for rent or purchase in the cloud, that I covet. It has its holes, and some of the pricing is inscrutable, but kudos to them nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the industry trend is away from the online title by title smorgasbord to the locked down subscription package deal. You want titles X, Y and Z? Sure, Netflix has ‘em for a measly $7.99 month and so many more! Wanna binge on that show everyone’s watching? Great, just add another $11.99 to pick up your Hulu subscription for that and a million other shows. Add another $9.99 for the other service that has the content that the first two don’t carry, and maybe yet another, and suddenly you’re looking at your credit card bill and wondering where you’re going to get the bucks for gas and groceries. This is obviously where the suits want us. Feeding off us, month after month. So much better than the hit or miss, occasional purchases of downloaded titles and doing with them as we see fit. iTunes is dead. Long live Apple Music.

We are like living batteries that the suits have hooked up to their enormous greed engines, draining us minute by minute, month by month. We’re so entranced by the streaming spectacles that we don’t wake up until it’s too late, until we’re nothing but dried, lifeless, penniless husks. What movie does that remind you of?

On the other hand, we might as well enjoy the trip to lifeless huskdom (huskdomness? huskiness?). In the best spirit of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” I want to a.) promote some lurid B titles that have wormed their way into otherwise respectable streaming services; and b.) emulate those evil but savvy industry suits by doing a little bit of my own synergizing and building up of the Films From Beyond media empire.

Part of that empire is the Films From Beyond Facebook page. If you haven’t already, get over there and like it. As an added incentive, for the next 13 days through to Halloween, I’m going to be Facebook posting on Streaming Scream Queens available now at an online service near you. We’ll see you back here on the blog after Halloween!