Product1 publisher3 min readPublished
Streamers rebuild the cable guide to spare viewers the episode-picking screen
The Verge's Charles Pulliam-Moore argues that streamers are re-creating cable from first principles. The evidence he offers is interface design, and that is what decides how a product team should read it.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- FAST services including Tubi, Roku and Pluto TV present their libraries as long channel lists that, according to The Verge, look intentionally designed to mimic old cable interfaces.
- Paid streamers have raised prices repeatedly since launch and added ad-supported tiers to their subscriptions in hopes of holding on to price-sensitive customers.
- Verizon and T-Mobile hand streaming bundles to their own phone subscribers as perks.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- decision Any team building a discovery surface now has to pick the default state: a channel that is already playing, or a grid that asks the user to choose an episode before anything happens.
- constraint A team that wants to copy the channel-list pattern has no published retention or watch-depth figure to size the bet against, so the internal case has to be built on its own instrumentation.
- exposure When the subscription arrives as a carrier perk, the cancellation and price-change conversations happen inside the carrier's billing relationship, and the streamer learns about the cancellation after it happens.
- precedent If always-on channels spread inside paid apps, scheduling becomes a staffed product job again, with someone answering for what plays at nine in the evening.
Pick a channel on Tubi and something is already playing. Open a paid streamer and the first screen is a grid of icons waiting to be evaluated. Charles Pulliam-Moore, who writes The Verge's Stepback column, put it this way: "In their fight to win the war for our attention, streamers are re-creating cable from first principles." [1]
Inside a product org, an always-on channel gets pitched as discovery, or as a way to give the back catalogue a second life. What it does is take the episode picker off the screen. Pulliam-Moore expects more platforms to launch channels built so people can watch a series without choosing a particular episode [15]. FAST services already work that way: a few commercials in exchange for a library you browse, or a channel devoted to one show [10]. The lists are long and vertical, and the column calls them deliberate copies of old cable interfaces [11].
The column offers two explanations. Executives may be deciding that icon-dense carousels are a poor way to show a catalogue, and viewers may have tired of the algorithms that pick for them [12]. It does not include retention, watch time or churn numbers for FAST services [17], so the case rests on what the interfaces look like. Removing a decision lifts watch minutes on its own. I would not accept that as evidence the product got better. The figures that would settle it are time from cold open to first frame, and 30-day retention for people who entered through a channel against people who entered through the grid.
The cycle can be dated. Before it committed to streaming, Netflix worked on a box that would download high-resolution films to subscribers in the evening for viewing the next day, and changed course around 2006 after watching audiences flock to grainy viral videos on YouTube [2][3]. Originals arrived in 2012, six years later, and the binge model drove sign-ups [4][16]. Cable subscriber numbers have fallen across the decade since [6], and streaming is now the most common way people watch film and television [7]. Prices then rose repeatedly, and ad-supported tiers followed as a way to hold price-sensitive customers [9].
The bundle is the other cable feature back in service. Almost every major streaming company has offered a deal that includes at least one competitor's service [13], and Verizon and T-Mobile give streaming bundles to their own subscribers as perks [14]. For an operator, that moves the renewal moment into someone else's billing screen.
Two questions, in order, for a team weighing a channel list. First, whether the user arrives with a title in mind. Search and a resume button serve that person; a channel already playing serves the one who arrives with nothing and would otherwise scroll. Second, what gets counted at 30 days. Watch minutes will clear the bar whatever the channel does for the user, so the honest comparison is retention of channel-first users, plus the tap count from launch to playback in your app measured against Pluto TV's.
What to watch
- Whether any FAST operator publishes retention or watch-depth figures for channel entry against grid entry.
- Whether paid streamers move always-on channels into the default home screen instead of a side tab.
- Whether carrier perks start setting the price of the streaming tier customers actually sign up for.