Too Much TV: Podcasts, Netflix And The Challenges Of Content Discovery

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Friday, November 14th, 2025:

WHY PODCASTERS ARE ATTRACTED BY A NETFLIX DEAL
You've likely read a lot of reporting in recent days about Netflix's move into video podcasting. While the terms the streamer is offering isn't entirely clear, it apparently involves a one-year exclusive deal which would prevent the full podcasts from being shared on the podcast's normal YouTube and social media channels. So aside from the obvious financial incentives, why would a podcaster partner up with Netflix?

The answer is that in one way, the world of podcasting isn't all that different than the world of streaming television. Content discovery is everything and it is extremely difficult to make happen in a seamless way. Does a Netflix partnership make deal for one of the top ten podcasts? No. And Netflix likely isn't interested in most of those podcasts anyway, given that the streamer is apparently trying to stay away from controversial topics like politics.

But for most mid-level podcasts, content discovery is a constant struggle. Especially if you aren't partnered with a media company. That is one thing that made podcasting deals with Spotify so attractive to many shows. For all of its faults, it has the ability to push your podcast in front of a lot of new people. And at no cost to the podcast.

So if you are a podcast with several years of shows that is hoping to build a larger platform, a Netflix deal is a godsend. Yes, you can't post complete shows to your existing channels for the length of the deal. But not only can you post brief updates - especially updates promoting your Netflix shows - the increased visibility that comes from being on Netflix will increase the audience for your older shows. And if you are a wise podcaster, you use that increased visibility as a way to capture new emails and other contact info you can draw upon once that Netflix deal expires.

An exclusive Netflix deal isn't ideal for every podcaster. But it can be life-changing if you approach it wide-eyed and willing to capitalize on the marketing and content discovery opportunities it provides.



THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
In yesterday's newsletter, I highlighted Frederic's wonderful US Streaming Viewership Data Report covering 580 films released on streaming in the US since 2019. I mentioned that you had to subscribe to his newsletter to receive the report. But he reached out to let me know that in fact, you can receive it for a $3 fee, which is more than worth it:

My newsletter is free and doesn't have a paid tier. Each report is available to anyone, subbed or not, who are willing to pay a one-time $3 fee to get it on Patreon as a single pdf file download. No paid subs, just a regular one-time transaction for the whole report.

So head over there now.

JOY REID HAS NO REGRETS....WELL, MOSTLY NO REGRETS
Joy Reid hosted the 7pm hour on MSNBC for nearly five years before being forced out in February. The Guardian has an extended interview with her and she talks about her exit from the network. And her observation that unlike other situations when anchors were let go by the network, MSNBC executives didn't just fire her - the fired her entire staff:

Where did you draw the line when you felt it was worth calling out your network on air and potentially risk your job?

Specifically on the Gaza issue, I felt like: “What was the point of having the platform if I couldn’t speak out against a genocide?” On that one, I knew that it was risky, and I had people constantly telling me: “Please stop talking about Gaza. You’re going to get fired.” I had people, even including my own family, who were worried about me, but to be honest with you, I never dreamed in a million years that they would lay off my whole staff. Normally they just lay off the host or cancel the show, and then they make the host a contributor.

I think what pushed Rachel [Maddow, who called the cancellation a “bad mistake”] to speak out in an incredibly valiant way, and I love and adore her, by the way – I think she is so brave and such a great journalist – but I think what pushed her was what enraged all of us, which is that they didn’t just cancel my show. You can cancel my show. I don’t own Comcast. I don’t own MSNBC. They laid off our whole staffs. Like, that is not normal. And I think if you go back and listen to her rant, it wasn’t just about me, it was about these incredible journalists, including on her own staff, on all of our staffs. That is not the way MSNBC has ever operated. … These are not people who are making millions of dollars a year. These are people with mortgages and rent to pay and families and children. And I was shocked that that happened to my team. Would I have felt differently if I thought my staff was in jeopardy? Yeah, I would have been more circumspect, but I still feel like I would have covered Gaza the way I did, honestly. I don’t regret that at all, because I think that is our obligation as journalists. I felt like I had to do it, but I would have had in the back of my mind my staff was in jeopardy. I never thought that. [The vast majority of Reid’s staffers were ultimately able to get other jobs at the network.]


MAYBE THE BEST CHRISTMAS AD YOU'LL SEE THIS YEAR
Holiday ads in the UK continue to be in a world by themselves and this year's commercial from Waitrose is a four-minute omcom, starring Keira Knightley and Joe Wilkinson in a story that is a bit of a riff on Love, Actually.

Wilkinson plays a man named Phil who is trying to move on from his ex-girlfriend, Shel, who told him the only person he could move on with was Keira Knightley. He then meets Knightley at a grocery store deli and then there is the expected moments of falling in love, misunderstandings and every other expected romcom trope. It's just a great cinematic experience and a reminder that Knightley is absolutely perfect in projects like this. 

You can watch the entire short film here and it is worth your time to check it out.

YOUTUBE IS DYING
There is something magnificently ironic about the fact that at the same time the media industry is gripped in a existential fear of YouTube, the most chronically online people on TikTok have been posting complaints about the service, using hashtags such as #YouTubeIsDying. The complaints seem to be similar to this take from Kenyatta Victoria, who argues that the golden age of YouTube is over:

Somewhere along the way, the internet decided everything needed to be prettier, shorter, cleaner, and way more brand friendly. The chaos of early YouTube, including shaky camera angles and long storytimes, got smoothed out into beige minimalism and perfectly color-graded day-in-the-life videos.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good aesthetic moment, but it feels like creators are pressured to package themselves like lifestyle products instead of people just trying to connect. The rawness that once made YouTube feel like a digital diary slowly turned into apartment tours and clinical morning routines.

Now I understand you have to evolve and with TikTok being at the forefront, I’m sure creators feel split: do you invest in an hour-length video or pour your energy into a 35-second TikTok that could easily go viral? The stakes feel different now. That slow-burn connection YouTube created is harder to replicate when everyone is trying to get the same formula of aesthetic content.

Now from a major media point of view, a more brand-friendly aesthetic for YouTube is probably a positive development. But it also likely makes it a lot less fun for the average user.

PATTON OSWALT HAS BEEN SUSPENDED FROM BLUESKY
Patton Oswalt has been suspended from Bluesky for suggesting that Megyn Kelly should be fed to a woodchipper for justifying the sexual abuse of minors.



READER FEEDBACK
My recent piece on AI prompted a lot of feedback - positive, negative and skeptical. And here is a representative sample:

"Wow, such a lovely, heartfelt, creative piece. Exactly what AI can’t do."

--Amy B.

"Is there perhaps a little hubris in the idea that your viewpoint and style are so unique, a computer could never replace them? AI isn't writing a bestseller any time soon, if ever. But I think anybody who believes their art is irreplaceable is as overconfident as anybody claiming that AI can replace artists. The list of professions that claimed they were irreplaceable is long; the list of professions that have remained irreplaceable is far shorter. And before anybody claims otherwise: I firmly agree that the AI hype is absurd. We're likely a decade or more too early to know if AI is replacing humans in anything. But if you had asked anybody 10 years ago if LLM's could do what they're doing right now, they would have thought you were being absurd."

--Sam H.

Well, I wouldn't be a writer if I didn't possess a healthy amount of hubris. And there are certainly some people that will argue I have more of it than is likely healthy for me.

But it's not so much a situation that my talent is impossible to recreate. It's that because I am a human being, my writing is constantly changing and evolving. Primarily because of experiences and feedback that unique for my life. Perhaps AI can capture my writing at a specific moment in time and recreate a reasonable facsimile of that version of me. But it can't change in the same way I can or react to feedback in a similar fashion. The best case scenario is that AI will always be recapturing a version of me - or any other artist - that no longer exists.

Bottom line is I personally don’t want to read AI writing. It’s an insult and a waste of my time. I don’t have enough time to read all the human written words as it is. As soon as it comes out that a publication is using AI for the actual text, that’s just brand destruction. Think about the new insult I am seeing everywhere: that film is so bad it must have been written by AI.

--Lynn

I certainly respect the view that AI writing is not worth reading. I think a lot of people hold similar views, or views like "I don't like this book because the author is known to be a terrible person." AI is not a human; if your personal view is that writing is only worth reading if it's done by a human, obviously improvements in AI writing won't change that view. I'm looking at this is purely from a "this is the quality of the piece, ignoring external factors." Because I've heard a lot of discussion that amounts to "the way that I write/paint/sculpt is so unique to me that a computer could never match it." *That* viewpoint is one I find overconfident. I don't think AI writing is close to being "good human writer" quality. We're probably far away from that. But it just rubs me the wrong way when I hear people claim, with absolute confidence, that what they do could never be replaced by AI.

--Sam H

If you acknowledge that at least for now, human writing is better than that created by an AI, it's worth noting that when human writers try and imitate someone else's style, it always seems to somehow miss the target. Sometimes the effort is so close that you can't define what it off about the attempt. You can know that something isn't quite right when you read it.

My biggest literary influence is famed rock critic Lester Bangs. And if you have ever read his work, you can see flourishes of his stye in my writing. But when I asked various AI's to write something in his style, they all captured the broad strokes of his writing. But it was the difference between watching video of Jimi Hendrix playing the guitar and some local garage band guitarist copying his approach. They might hit all the same notes, even make many of the same moves. But it misses the soul, the ease and the artistry of the original. And for me, that's what is lacking in AI-written material. It's workmanlike, it's competent. But AI isn't having original thoughts. It's simply crunching data and using what it's learned to guess what someone style might be. 

I'm not arguing that I have some incredible talent that no AI can recreate. I'm arguing that generally speaking, the difference between being AI and being human might not be much. But that small percentage of difference is what separates artistry from mindless replication.

ODDS AND SODS
* Disney’s Hulu’s Family Guy’s Hallmark Channel’s Lifetime’s Familiar Holiday Movie will premiere Friday, November 28th on Hulu.

* Season one of The Celebrity Traitors UK is coming to the U.S. and will premiere Thursday, November 20th on Peacock.

* Happy’s Place star Melissa Peterman will host NBC’s Countdown to Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which will air the night before Thanksgiving.

* The new sports talk show Good Sports with Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson has received a 12-episode order and will premiere on November 25th on Prime Video. New episodes will stream on Tuesdays.

* The theatrical film The Conjuring: Last Rites will get its streaming premiere Friday, November 21st on HBO Max.

TWEET OF THE DAY




WHAT'S COMING TODAY AND TOMORROW

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14TH:
* A Very Jonas Christmas Movie (Disney+)
* A Young Father's Nightmare (LMN)
* Belen (Prime Video)
* Come See Me In The Good Light (Apple TV)
* I Feel Like It Series Premiere (Netflix)
* In Your Dreams (Netflix)
* Lefter: The Story Of The Ordinarius (Netflix)
* LEGO Marvel Avengers: Strange Tails (Disney+)
* Malice Series Premiere (Prime Video)
* Nouvelle Vague (Netflix)
* The Creep Tapes Season Two Premiere (Shudder)
* The Crystal Cuckoo Series Premiere (Netflix)
* The Last Woodsman Season Premiere (Discovery)
* The Seduction Series Premiere (HBO Max)

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15TH:
* Deep Dive Australia Series Premiere (NetGeo Wild)
* Eric Jerome Dickey's Friends And Lovers (Lifetime)
* Three Wisest Men (Hallmark)
* Timeless Tidings Of Joy (Great American Family)

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16TH:
* Landman Season Two Premiere (Paramount+)
* Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints Season Two Premiere (Fox Nation)
* Montana Mavericks (The CW)
* Saving The Christmas Ranch (UP tv)
* Snakes In The City (NatGeo Wild)
* The American Revolution (PBS)
* Tiding For The Season (Hallmark)

SEE YOU EARLY MONDAY MORNING!