There are constant fights among powerful digital companies
over what streaming video apps appear on our living room TV sets. It shows how
the overlords of new TV are falling into the same bad habits as old TV.
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Let me explain why fights over money, power, and our
personal information are popping up all over streaming entertainment, and how
we’re caught in the middle.
One root of the problem is that the streaming TV app systems
such as
Amazon’s Fire TV and Roku work almost exactly like cable television and
not like smartphone apps. (Wasn’t streaming supposed to free us from the
annoyances of cable TV?)
I want us to remember one thing: Streaming entertainment is
great in so many ways, but the standard business practices that are developing
around it are rotten. It’s turning what should be the simple pleasure of
watching TV into an ugly mess.
For exhibit A, I point you to the recent squabbling between
Google’s YouTube and Roku, which makes gadgets to connect TV sets to online
video apps. Their beef is complicated, but the result was that Roku threatened
to block one of YouTube’s apps, and Google threatened to send free alternative
streaming gadgets to Roku customers. Each side said the other was a bully.
A version of this fight keeps happening. When Amazon and the
owner of HBO bickered over money and control of data on people’s watching
habits, people for months couldn’t watch
HBO Max on Amazon’s Fire TV streaming
video device or through Amazon’s Prime Video app. The same thing almost
happened in a dispute between NBC’s Peacock video service and Roku.
The wild thing is just how familiar this feels. The beefs
and temporary blackouts of programming are exactly how old TV has worked for
decades. Cable TV, and now the new TV app stores, have no standard terms, so
everything is a hard-fought negotiation.
Think about it: ESPN is in a cable lineup because of a
complicated contract hammered out every few years between the channel’s owner,
Walt Disney, and Comcast or another provider. If the two sides reach a contract
impasse, college football might disappear from TV for a while. Repeat that for
every single channel on the dial.
As with cable TV, Amazon, Roku, and their peers often reach
individual contracts with streaming services after negotiations over fees the
streaming app might pay, whether Amazon or Roku gets to show commercials in
another company’s video app or minute aspects of how an app functions.
It’s hand-to-hand combat with each TV app. Just like with
cable TV, the company with the toughest lawyers or the most power often wins.
This isn’t how smartphone app stores work. Apple and Google
set terms that (usually) apply equally to all apps, rather than one-by-one
agreements. App makers comply with those terms and rules or get out.
Yes, there are serious downsides to that system. App makers
and regulators complain that it gives Apple and Google near total control over
our digital lives. But the benefit of making the same rules for every app is it
reduces the constant fighting.
We don’t need more capricious dictators, but maybe streaming
services and TV apps could take a lesson from the one-size-fits-all rules of
smartphone app stores.
Another idea: Maybe we should make our TVs dumber by
ditching apps entirely. Would we be better off if TVs didn’t have app stores at
all, but were just web browsers on our TV sets?
Or what if they all used technology like Apple’s AirPlay to
mirror our smartphones on a bigger TV screen? Instead of firing up the Netflix
or Peacock app on our TV or set top box, we’d use the app on our phone and the
image would automatically appear on our TV. This might be clunky. And when I’ve
spoken to experts in streaming video tech, some have said this would reduce the
video quality that people expect.
But you can see what I’m struggling with. I don’t want to
fossilize the bad old ways of cable TV in what should be our brand-new world of
entertainment.
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