Linked List: April 19, 2022

Tuesday, 19 April 2022

Biden Administration Looks Gift Horse in Mouth, But Can’t See It Because the Horse Is Wearing a Mask ★

Matt Yglesias, in his column for Bloomberg:

The federal judge who on Monday struck down the CDC’s mask mandate in airports, airplanes and other public transit did President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party a favor.

This lingering non-pharmaceutical intervention, at a time when mask rules have been dropped in virtually every other context (including in the U.S. Capitol Building) has become an embarrassment at a time when the country has otherwise moved on from so-called NPIs.

The basic problem is that the rule itself was issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is a scientific agency — and a conservative one at that. CDC guidelines suggest, for example, that nobody should eat rare steak or runny eggs, and that a woman should not have more than one alcoholic drink a day.

The science behind those calls may be sound. But they are sharply at odds with the habits and values of huge numbers of Americans. Fortunately, they do not have the force of law. Alcohol regulations are made by state legislatures, which ideally will be guided but not controlled by science as they make laws about public health.

The CDC is even more conservative than Yglesias suggests. They recommend cooking steak to 145°F, which is a hell of a lot more well-done than merely “not rare”. I’d send a steak cooked that well-done back to the kitchen.

In reality the White House should have put its foot down and lifted the rule weeks ago. But its reluctance to meddle with a scientific agency is understandable. At the same time, scientifically speaking, it’s always going to be the case that everyone wearing a mask will be at least a little bit safer than everyone not wearing a mask. The problem is that mask-wearing is annoying and socially divisive, with efforts to enforce the rule generating clashes between passengers and airline staff.

So the judge — a Trump appointee who is surely no fan of Biden, Pelosi or their party — may have succeeded in getting an awkward topic off the agenda. For that, Democrats ought to be grateful.

Well, so much for that.

Netflix Shares Drop 25% After Company Reports Losing Subscribers for First Time in a Decade ★

Sarah Whitten, reporting for CNBC:

Netflix on Tuesday reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers during the first quarter — its first decline in paid users in more than a decade — and warned of deepening trouble ahead. The company’s shares cratered more than 25% in extended hours after the report on more than a full day’s worth of trading volume. Fellow streaming stocks Roku, Spotify and Disney also tumbled in the after-hours market after Netflix’s brutal update.

Netflix is forecasting a global paid subscriber loss of 2 million for the second quarter. The last time Netflix lost subscribers was October 2011. [...]

Co-CEO Reed Hastings said the company is exploring lower-priced, ad-supported tiers as a means to bring in new subscribers after years of resisting advertisements on the platform.

Netflix previously told shareholders it expected to add 2.5 million net subscribers during the first quarter. Analysts had predicted that number would be closer to 2.7 million. During the same period a year ago, Netflix added 3.98 million paid users.

That’s a big miss — expecting to add 2.5 million subscribers and instead losing some, and now expecting to lose millions next quarter.

Here’s one spitball idea for what’s wrong: too much focus on quantity of content and not nearly enough on quality. My wife and I have been slowly watching old seasons of Seinfeld on Netflix when we have nothing else to watch, or just want to watch one more easily-digestible show before going to bed. But it occurred to me this week that we haven’t watched anything else on Netflix in weeks. Just old Seinfelds. We’re watching lots of stuff on HBO Max and Apple TV+, and some new movies on Disney+, Hulu, and even Paramount+ — but not Netflix. This is a sample size of one family of three, but at this point, if we were forced to drop one of our streaming subscriptions, Netflix might be the first to go, based purely on what we’re actually watching. It seems weird that the only thing we’ve watched recently on Netflix is a sitcom from 25 years ago. The last Netflix original I can recall watching was (the admittedly very good) Don’t Look Up, and we’re looking forward to the final episodes of Ozark. But right now HBO Max has The Batman, Disney+ has all their recent theatrical releases and The Kenobi Chronicles coming soon, and Apple TV+ has Slow Horses and Severance. (Severance is probably my favorite show or movie in years — it’s so fucking good.)

The average quality of the average Netflix original just isn’t very good compared to their competition — not enough to justify the highest subscription prices in the industry.

NFL Sunday Ticket: How Much Do Bars and Restaurants Pay? ★

Philip Swann, writing at The TV Answer Man back in October:

We don’t know how many bars and restaurants actually subscribe to the Sunday Ticket, but we do know how much they pay if they do and it’s significant. According to DirectTV’s web site, a bar/restaurant with a Fire Code Occupancy (FCO) of 101-200 must pay $6,000 a season for the Ticket. Owners of establishments with a FCO of 201-350 must pay $8,500; those with 351-500 must pay $12,350 while those with places that can serve 501-750 people must pay $13,700.

The rate goes even higher: If you have a bar/restaurant that can serve 751-1000 people, you would have to pay $19,000 for the Sunday Ticket; $28,125 for a place with a FCO of 1,001-1500; and $37,500 for an establishment with a FCO of 1,501 to 2,000.

Finally, if you have a mega place that can serve between 2,001 and 5,000 people, you’ll need to fork over $78,000!

I omitted bars and restaurants from my piece yesterday on Apple purportedly having already secured the rights for Sunday Ticket streaming rights in 2023, but it’s worth thinking about. Even small bars and restaurants pay a lot more for Sunday Ticket than home users do. And my understanding is that businesses have to get it via satellite DirecTV service — there’s no streaming option.

Even consumer Sunday Ticket is only available via streaming for certain people — students, and people who live in multi-unit buildings who can’t install a satellite dish, for example.

I would expect all of this to change under Apple. Swann speculates that even if Apple secures the rights for streaming, that businesses might still be served by DirecTV. I can’t see that happening. No way does Apple pay $2 or 2.5 billion for partial Sunday Ticket rights. At that price, Apple should reasonably demand exclusive rights, which means Sunday Ticket will only be available via streaming, and NFL fans can climb up on their roofs and disconnect their DirecTV dishes.

When you think about it, it seems obvious the NFL would want to move in this direction. Even if, say, Apple bid the exact same amount for Sunday Ticket as DirecTV, it seems to me the NFL would prefer to sell the rights to Apple. Streaming is the future. Satellite TV service has always been a niche, at best, and at this point is going the way of the dodo. If you’ll forgive mixing sports metaphors, skate to where the puck is heading, not where it’s been.

The question is, how will Apple charge bars and restaurants for Sunday Ticket? And what sort of equipment will they need to set it up and control it?

Open Letter to Apple About Final Cut Pro ★

From an open letter signed by over 100 industry professionals:

Final Cut Pro is a wonderful application used by many YouTubers, education and small business content creators worldwide. We know why it is successful. It is liberating, efficient and fun to work with. But, unfortunately in professional film and TV, editors who use Final Cut Pro are a tiny minority.

I seldom link to open letters because I generally think they’re pointless. And I wavered on linking to this one because it isn’t particularly well-written. The above paragraph that I quoted is the nut of it: Final Cut Pro has great bones, many pros who do use it love it, but it’s hard to use in many pro workflows because so few pros do use it. This quote from the preface to the actual letter addresses it:

Steven Sanders, editor in chief of the Fox TV series War of the Worlds season 3, said, “The two main reasons why I am often not allowed to choose my favourite editing application, which is Final Cut Pro are:

Collaboration! Editing big productions needs collaboration. Different users have to be able to access the same library at the same time. There is no way around this. Avid Media Composer does it and even DaVinci Resolve does it. Apple still targets the single user. They have to change that. That will change everything.

Many professionals do not know how Final Cut works. They are afraid of it, even regard is as ‘iMovie Pro.’ I hear that all the time in my business. This perception really has to change.”

In other words, these Final Cut Pro-using professionals are asking Apple to do whatever it takes to make Final Cut Pro more popular in the industry. That it’s so seldom used — to name one example, it’s not on Netflix’s list of approved products for their own commissioned productions — is proof that something has gone deeply awry.

Scott Simmons, writing at ProVideo Coalition, has culled a bunch of insightful comments from fellow signers of the letter.

‘How I Experience the Web Today’ ★

Only barely, just barely, a parody.

(You’ll want to disable any content blockers you have installed for this one.)