Well, friends, it’s December 23. Do I even need to tell you what’s coming up in two days? I’m sure I don’t. After all, you’ve been primed for this day ever since stuff started showing up at Costco back in August. Like it or not, the holiday season gets longer every year and at some point like Ke Huy Quan’s character in Loki, it will become a snake that eats its own tail. (Don’t know what I’m talking about? Google the character’s actual name, Ouroboros.)
Let’s presume for a moment that you’re a grinch.
Or, for whatever completely valid reason, the kind of streaming fare that you find during the holiday season isn’t for you. Maybe it’s as simple as you don’t care for seeing Lacey Chabert 18 hours a day on Hallmark Channel. No slight intended to Lacey Chabert, mind you. Just, you’re entitled to your opinion. All I’m saying is that if you’re not in what’s euphemistically called “the holiday spirit,” you might get a little perturbed by the absolute saturation of that kind of stuff on streaming. That’s perfectly ok. For the record, it’s also perfectly ok if you’re the kind of person who would like to see that stuff year-round. Plenty of room for plenty of different folks here at The Solid Signal Blog.
If you are a little tired of seeing the tinsel and the red hats lined with white fur, you may be asking yourself what you can stream that’s… different. After all, the internet is supposed to be this really diverse place and sometimes the popular streaming apps don’t seem that way.
It’s called “counterprogramming.”
Back in the days when there were really only about 5 channels in every city, network executives had to make tough decisions. After all, it was possible that about 2/3 of the televisions in use at any given moment were tuned to one specific show. That was great if you were a CBS station and that show was I Love Lucy. On the other hand it kinda stunk if you were an ABC station at that very moment.
So, the theory of “counterprogramming” evolved. The idea was that in most cases, there would be enough people who didn’t like the really popular show. You could put on something that was totally different and try to get those people. Sometimes, this worked well. Most of the time, it didn’t. You’ve heard of The Cosby Show, right? Have you ever heard of any of the shows that aired against it? There was one called Our World which honestly wasn’t that bad. It only got about 14% of the viewership of Cosby and it was canceled after one season.
It could work better in the streaming world though
Counterprogramming didn’t work very often in the world of network television. It worked somewhat better once cable TV came in. Famously, Comedy Central got a huge boost by being one of the few channels not to air footage of the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995. They even boasted of it, as you can see in these commercials:
I bet counterprogramming could work really well in the world of streaming. Why? Because you could choose it when you wanted. Imagine if, instead of your Hulu feed being lousy with holiday fare, you could push a button on your remote and all those programs would be hidden from your feed. They would still be there and you could swap back and forth if you wanted. But if you got to the point where, hey it’s December 23 and I’ve been hearing those sleigh bells jingling, ring ting tingling too for about four months, you’d have a choice.
In fact I’d like to see this be an option on every streaming app. I think it could really catch on. What do you think?
