[Vulture:] …another finding: neither binge nor scheduled watchers find cliffhangers that appealing. How would you describe the major differences between the archetypal linear show and the archetypal streaming show in 2025? And how did that become defined over the past decade?

[Kathryn VanArendonk]: A linear show still needs to be legible and pleasurable within the episode, one hour at a time. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it has what we would think of as an “episodic plot.” What it means is, “This is a unit of a story that offers you something on its own whether or not there’s a thematic wholeness.” An episode of Mad Men tends to have this lovely thematic unity to it. HBO’s The Last of Us does not have what I would describe as thematically whole units, but it does often have a dramatic structure to each episode — to the point that it has the capacity to have departure or flashback episodes.

Traditionally, streaming seasons — that is, until The Pitt — do not do this for the most part. They are almost indistinguishable from one another. There will not be different guest stars. There will not be a different directing style; that’s a whole different issue on television. There’s not going to be an episode where they just all go and hang out at the beach. It will be this one big interwoven movement from episode one through to the end of the season.

J.A.: What things like weekly releases, time slots, and appointment television do is establish a habit. It reminds you, “I like this show. I’m going to keep returning to it and have an engagement over the course of nine months.” In some ways, streaming is even more dependent on getting you to watch right away, because if you watch one episode and don’t love it, you may forget to come back. It’s going to sit in the queue, but you’re going to move on…

Seventy percent of respondents say that feeling overwhelmed by choice is the thing that prompts them to keep going back to old shows. This tracks to me: It informs the stories around buying big back catalogues like The Office and Friends. In my mind, it’s also an argument for the popularity of free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels. When you see this finding, what do you see?

K.V.A.: That the value of familiarity is underappreciated. We have this obsession with novelty, particularly when we’re talking about what’s exciting. The other thing is that there is little understanding of how to surface old things and get them in front of people who are consuming similar new things. There’s so much opportunity there.

J.A.: Nostalgia has always been powerful, and it’s something that streamers haven’t always leveraged. Suits took people at Netflix and the industry by surprise, but it shouldn’t have, because rediscovering shows is common. For the longest time, in the heyday of syndication, some of the most popular shows on TV would be shows from ten years previous that aired at 11 at night. Old episodes of Friends and Seinfeld would do incredibly well on syndication, and The Big Bang Theory has been a force in cable for going on 15 years now.

The reason is that stations created time slots for them, and then they marketed. There was a strong sense of where and when I could find these shows. Streamers have failed to fix the fact that they unmoored us from time. There is no time slot. There is no sense of “this is the time of day when I get what I want.” There could be ways to get back into that if you change what your home page looks like based upon the time.

This also explains why shows like The Pitt and The White Lotus can still have monoculture-like moments despite being more connected to release schedules and a traditional TV calendar: There are all these different spaces where a communal experience can form. I see lots of talk about The Pitt on TikTok. When you throw a big enough party, people will want to come, even if they don’t usually go to parties.

…a tidal wave of newsletters and X threads expressing awe at every press release and product announcement to hoover up some of that sweet, sweet advertising cash.

That AI companies are actively patronising and fanning a cottage economy of self-described educators and influencers to bring in new customers suggests the emperor has no clothes (and six fingers).

In its own way, slopaganda exposes that the AI’s emblem is not the Shoggoth but the Ouroboros. It’s a circle of AI firms, VCs backing those firms, talking shops made up of employees of those firms, and the long tail is the hangers-on, content creators, newsletter writers and ‘marketing experts’ willing to say anything for cash.

“When these people pop up around an industry, it should be a sign that this is a worrisome bubble or that there are people actively looking to exploit it,” said [Ed] Zitron.