Bruce Springsteen did a 1992 song called “57 Channels and There’s Nothing On.” He’s probably pulling his hair out now.
With Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Now, Direct TV…there seem to be an endless number of streaming services to choose from, and once you decide on your service….oh brother, the choices seem infinite for programming options.
Brain freeze!!
“The average adult reports taking a little over seven minutes to find something to watch. Younger adults, even more, closer to ten minutes,” says Peter Katsingris, SVP of Audience Insights for Nielson, the company that monitors who is watching what. He says everyone adapts in their own way based on choices they have available.
And you know Disney is coming with a new streaming service because you haven’t seen Frozen enough times. They’ll offer all the Disney movies like Star Wars, and Marvel and Toy Story and oh so much more. And sometimes by the time you get to the end of all the options you forget what the first choices were.
“It just makes it like an information overload, like a choice overload for consumers. That’s why a lot of times you just don’t know what to watch after going through everything,” adds Katsingris. About 2/3 of adults know what they want to watch when they start the process, he says, but for the other 1/3 it’s an endless buffet of options.
People accustomed to watching broadcast TV, when they can’t decide which program to stream, just turn on their favorite TV channel. It’s so much easier.
Fixer Upper on HGTV. Sure, they don’t film new episodes, but it’s easy.