The Washington Post had a mildly interesting piece today about Tubi, which reminded me of something else I wanted to muse upon.
The headline is “Tubi or not Tubi? The weirdest streaming service has the most devoted fans.”
You know Tubi. It’s that thing you run into sometimes when you want to stream a certain movie, and it’s not on Netflix, or Prime, or Britbox or any of the services you PAY for, but it is on Tubi — for free.
The Post story is about what a vast variety of material you can find on that service, from stuff so awful that it would make one of the robots on “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” blush, to gems that you would expect to pay for on Criterion — and loads of random stuff in-between.
And it’s free, it a very old-fashioned sense. As the story notes, “But Tubi is a streaming service that doesn’t feel like one. Owned by Fox, it’s free, so long as you can stomach a few ads (you know, like old TV).”
And that’s what I wanted to talk about.
Is the future of screen entertainment going to be the past — the way, way, past, going back before we first got VCRs so we could tape what we wanted to see, and skim past the commercials?
Later, moving into the current century, we thought we were really, truly free — with no ads at all. And without even recording anything on low-res magnetic tape, we were no longer slaves to the clock! Whatever we wanted to see was on whenever we wanted to see it, and in 4k! And no bloodsucking cable!
Except, of course, we had to pay new fees to a bewildering, growing array of ravenous streaming companies. And the worst part is, I for one have NO IDEA how much I spend on these services. Sure, I could look it up and calculate a figure, but I really don’t want to. How would that make me happy? And there’s so much good stuff, way better than broadcast days! You want me to get all depressed and have to drop AppleTV + just as they’re releasing a new season of “Slow Horses?” Of course not. I mean, a TV show starring Gary Oldman, with the theme song sung by Mick Jagger? What’s wrong with you?
But then an interesting thing happened a year or two back. Suddenly, the already huge selection on Prime got much, much bigger, with an amazing proportion of the new content being really top-drawer stuff.
There was just a small catch — most of this new stuff you’d just discovered came with… commercials. Commercials you couldn’t just fast-forward through (or at least, I don’t know how to).
And you know what? I don’t mind. At least, not much. Just keep giving me an expanding supply of high-quality material like this, and you won’t hear any complaints from me.
In fact… you remember when these 15-second ads were 60 seconds? Like on Captain Kangaroo? That was OK. That was our break time. Hit the loo, and come back with another bowl of Kellogg’s cereal. And when you’re back, there’s Tom Terrific!
I wouldn’t even complain about a full minute. But I want one thing — you’ve gotta bring back the Captain. Oh, and Mr. Green Jeans…
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