I had some mild awareness of Adam Conover before yesterday, though I was hardly a rabid fan. He fronted what truTV classified as a scripted comedy series called ADAM RUINS EVERYTHING for four years during an era where it ran in rotation with a host of clearly unscripted ones, the most successful being IMPRACTICAL JOKERS, and occasionally TBS would “sample” it adjacent to the Snoop Dogg-hosted version of THE JOKER’S WILD which I was in charge of all things data and buzz for Sony (mostly by default). But it was scripted only in the sense that it was Conover’s words that would shape personal video essays that, as Wikipedia explains, aim(ed) to reveal untold truths and to dispel common misconceptions. JOKER’S WILD always delivered more audience in our target demo than ADAM ever did, and his attempts which I snarkily called MIRTHBUSTERS rarely held my attention. Judging by its ratings history, I wasn’t alone with that conclusion.
But he was basically out of sight and out of mind until yesterday, when our friend Rick Ellis of TOO MUCH TELEVISION referenced a video that Conover dropped on YouTube over the weekend entitled HOW STREAMING DESTROYED TV in his nightly newsletter. Suffice to say, Ellis wasn’t giving it a ringing endorsement:
(I)t is a 20-minute rundown of every tired criticism of streaming you have ever heard. Even when he touches on an issue that is a valid complaint, his take is so bombastic and over-the-top that he loses whatever intellectual high ground he has.
True to his even-handed Minnesota roots, Ellis did cut Conover a smattering of slack once he delivered his smackdown, enough to pique my curiosity:
(W)hile I have no inclination to trash talk Conover’s work, a number of things he says in the video are either misleading or flat out wrong…(w)hich is fine, except a lot of people don’t know better…it just feels as if he has this set of beliefs and he has no interest in learning any contrary data points.
And within minutes of reading this, a good friend mentioned the very same video on our weekly online Twitchfest, extolling pretty much the exact kind of impassioned reaction in full support of Conover’s opinions that Ellis feared was a possibility. And when I mentioned what I just read to my friend, he became as dismissive as Conover tends to be. He urged me to judge for yourself. Which I did as soon as our Twitchfest ended. And should you choose, so too can you.
If you haven’t the time or the mindset to spend 20 minutes and change with Conover the way more than 265,000 others already have, the brilliance of Microsoft Copilot provides some cliff notes:
He explores issues such as:
- Content Overload: The sheer volume of content available can be overwhelming, making it difficult for viewers to find quality shows.
- Binge-Watching Culture: Streaming encourages binge-watching, which can affect how stories are told and consumed.
- Impact on Creators: The shift to streaming has changed how creators are compensated and how shows are produced, often leading to less job security and creative freedom.
And I will say, Conover is far more informed than my friend. He draws upon his experiences with Netflix on his most recent series, THE G WORD. He provides some nuanced takes on the “advice” he was given to optimize the show’s chances for success based upon what he was told were their KPIs of consequence. Make them short and make just enough so that a season could be binge-able in a night. A concept that Conover took issue with based upon his predispositions on what he believes had worked for him, and in his mind the industry as well.
And it’s there that Conover’s slant began to break down in my view. Having been through this process with several Sony series, there is no set template that Netflix analysts utilize. Each show has their own proprietary goals and depending upon the time of year and the competitive environment, those KPIs often change without notice. With ONE DAY AT A TIME, for example, in season one Netflix’s goal was making a dent in the U.S. In season three, they thought its lens through Cuban-Americans could help them in Latin American markets where the service needed a boost. It seems folks in Brazil and Colombia didn’t completely relate. Go figure.
Moreover, when Conover attempts to man-splain the history of streaming, and in particular Netflix’s desire to destroy television as we know it, what he failed to acknowledge was exactly how they were able to be in a position to begin that quixotic pursuit in the first place. He correctly notes that Netflix’s iron grip and ability to make good on its promise to offer just about every show ever made for an initial price of $8 month was driven by decades-old series with scale. But while he’s quite quick to castigate legacy studios for trying to compete with Netflix’s first-adopter business model in a manner that has homogenized their content in a manner he finds abhorrent, what he seemed to overlook was the fact that these same companies willingly took the dollars that Netflix’s enablers were throwing around to license these series, many of which were petering out in traditional off-network syndication. They were even willing to allow those shows to continue airing on the branded cable channels he paid homage to, so it was essentially incremental dollars for short-sighted studios. Only after the ratings on those shows declined–ofte ahead of the cord-cutting that resulted in distribution downtrends–did these studios realize they were literally being beaten with their own stick, and hence the onslaught of streamers and the clawing back of many of those tentpole series began, just as a pandemic was giving more people more time to binge-watch away their days.
And as for binge-watching itself–well, I’m surprised he didn’t acknowledge that a huge reason why Netflix offered this unique option was the data they saw that revealed one of the bigger reasons for ratings declines even ahead of its launch–time-shift viewing. As DVR penetration and adoption accelerated during the oughts, people were able to record far more shows with far greater ease than they ever were able with VCRs, and they’d often devote hours at a time to watch whatever they had recorded earlier in the day, and then, much as they do now, whatever else may have caught their eye that was in their queue. The phenomenon was especially apparent when zeitgeist-heavy shows like THE OFFICE and GREY’S ANATOMY would square off head-to-head in the same time period, with one being watched later in the evening. Or pretty much in the time slot where ADAM RUINS EVERYTHING and other nichy originals would air. The end result, as I’ve noted often, was that in the 10 PM ET hour the number one viewing destination was more often than not DVR playback rather than a network. And that would continue deeper into the night when more and more good shows, including even his, would be in said queue. Playback viewing would supercede watching late night talk shows live, which eventually opened up the opportunities that he notes are now the de facto daypart for “late night”–the following morning online.
Yeah, I get that I’m being a lil’ nitpicky and passive-aggressive arrogant in my own right. And no, I’m not gonna follow Ellis and hope to debate Conover myself, as he expressed at the end of his diatribe last night. I’ve begun to get used to the fact that those that are working more regularly and can wear better suits than I do these days have an inherent leg up on credibility, and while 265,000 views in three days isn’t all that big a deal, it’s way more than I get.
But I do hope Ellis might reference a couple of my points for his own purposes, cuz I root for those who are smart enough to know what’s real and what’s B.S. and aren’t afraid to call others out when they observe accidental or intended abuse of it. He can ruin things for Adam if he chooses. For now, I’ll pass.
Until next time…