![]() ![]() I would add you could also pick up a newspaper or magazine, but as I have been told repeatedly, that ship has sailed. Movies, theaters and museums, which love us for more than our eyeballs, are opening once again, as are restaurants, cafes, sports arenas, gyms and all the marvelous venues that require the use of muscles outside our orbital cavities. ![]() There is a wide world out there, and once again many of us are able to inhabit it safely as the pandemic ebbs and restrictions lift. Or better yet, perhaps we should give our eyeballs a rest - at least from our personal screens. I don’t know whether anyone at Amazon has seen “ Miracle on 34th Street” lately (like “The Birds,” it is available to rent on Prime Video and God knows where else), but when Macy’s and Gimbel’s started cross-referencing, it led to stronger brand loyalty, increased sales and official approval from Santa. It would be nice if someone could develop an app that could at least locate the content we’re actively looking for.Īs I recently learned, to my chagrin, Amazon will lead you to believe the only way you can see a Bourne movie is by renting it even though the whole series is available on HBOMax. You know, at least generally, what you’re going to get on, say, BritBox, HBOMax or even Peacock.įaughnder also recently reported on a new app that will aggregate from certain streamers, but as they are services most of us have never heard of (sorry, Cheddar, Indieflix, Filmbox, Cinedigm et al.), this seems to be adding to the problem rather than solving it.Įven in an unbundled world, there is one way to give our eyeballs a little agency in the process. L.A.-based app Struum says it has a solution.Īnd a multitude of platforms offers some form of organization. With hundreds of streaming services out there, consumers face a daunting and expensive market when it comes to finding what to watch and where to watch it. Why is no multibillion-dollar industry competing for knees?Ĭompany Town Confused by all those streaming services? This app is here to help Why are eyeballs doing all of the work all of the time? What happened to, say, the feet? How hard are the lungs working, really? Or the knees (they’re always complaining after all). In that mystifying “how can I be so tired when I have done nothing but sit for 10 hours” feeling of a trans-Atlantic flight or a really long conference. Wonderful, miraculous, a boon during the pandemic, but utterly exhausting. The world unfolds right in front of your face. Through the miracle of digital technology, you can do just about everything using only your eyeballs (and whichever digits you use to type or scroll). Now, however, the term is much more literal. People who used many parts of the human body to engage in a wide variety of experiences. In other words for attention from people, actual people who turned on the television went to movies, plays and museum exhibits picked up and read newspapers, magazines and books. “Eyeballs” stood for viewers, yes, but also for attendees, subscribers and members. Once upon a time the term “competing for eyeballs” was something of a metaphor. We measure where it focuses, how long it lingers, how often it moves where it goes when it rains. Networks are accentuating the positive as they roll out their new businesses.Īs are all the other news, social media and shopping platforms competing for your gaze. Netflix? Amazon? Hulu? Apple TV+? The new HBOMax/Discovery+ combo? (Do a “max” and a “+” mathematically cancel each other out?) Will there be bundles, as with cable TV? There are already commercials on lower cost streamers, and many have begun offering series in weekly installments ,which makes it feel very much like broadcast television, eyeballs-wise.Ĭompany Town Disney+. ![]() I have few bones to pick with any of the streamers - until people start talking about who’s going to get the most eyeballs. I cannot profess to have any brand loyalty (though I do feel we are not talking about Peacock enough, which, among many other things, has all the Bournes). I love streamers for all the obvious reasons, including that they allowed me to survive the lockdown and destigmatized subtitles. OK, I’m not quite ready to go back to the dark ages, or 2010. For all their storage issues, they are mine for eternity (or until they wear out). Untouched by the vagaries of contracts, my DVDs will not be migrating from Netflix to HBOMax or suddenly changing their Amazon Prime status from free to rental.
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