I Stream, You Stream! Unless...

If you are of a certain age, you probably remember complaining to your parents, “Nothing’s on TV.” Now, even with the writers’ strike stopping production on talk shows and scripted series, with just one paid streaming service, you likely have more shows available than you have time to watch.

However, if you have been putting off watching a particular show, you might be out of luck. In what my daughter Emma cleverly labeled “merge and purge,” streaming networks are joining forces to combine content and save money. With mergers like Disney+ and Hulu and whatever is happening at HBO, shows and movies that have been around for years may disappear or only be available for rental.

In order to save money, streaming services are downsizing inventory and pushing content to the rentalverse. Already gone are The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the first three Spiderman movies and one of my personal all-time favorite movies Jerry Maguire, which is leaving Netflix on  July 1. 

Iconic HBO shows like The Sopranos and popular new series like The Last of Us are safe from “merge and purge.” However, if you’re a fan of the HBO science fiction hit Westworld and didn’t quite finish the final season, you’ll have to pay about $2.99 per episode from a service like Google Play to watch even if you are still subscribing to Max.

HBO Max subscribers don’t have to do anything to benefit from its parent Warner Bros. streaming consolidation, as the new Max adds programing from Discovery including HGTV and the Food Network. Of course, then you have to choose if you want your home renovation programs with ads or if you want to up your viewing game to Max Ultimate Ad Free for a few more dollars a month. 

One way to get more content is to combine streaming services. Bundling isn’t just for Flo from Progressive. Now you can purchase bundles like Disney Trio (Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu) which recently became available for $12.99 a month. 

This week Paramount Global combined Paramount+ and its Showtime app. You can stick with just Paramount+ and keep watching for $5.99 a month (up from $4.99) or move up to Paramount+ with Showtime for $11.99. And yes, that’s the name of the service.

So now that you’ve decided what services to keep and what to cancel, how do you decide which programs to watch? You can eliminate the guesswork by following the “We think you’ll like” or “based on your viewing” recommendations on your home screen. That sometimes works. It led me to Bad Sisters on Apple+ and Jewish Matchmaking on Netflix. Would I be watching Merpeople right now if it hadn’t shown up on my recommendations? Probably not, and then I’d never know all about these crazy kids who are determined to become professional mermaids despite the risk of hypothermia, tail breakage and other “findustry” perils. 

Unfortunately, the all-knowing viewing advisors at Netflix also suggested Your Place or Mine, a trivial, chemistry-free romcom with Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher. Netflix was wrong again with Glamorous, a badly-written “non-com” that debuted June 22. I can see why my past viewing of the original Sex and the City, The Mindy Project and Emily in Paris (which Netflix could not possibly know that I only watch for the clothes and the scenery), would lead the all-knowing streamer to suggest Glamorous. It took all of 17 minutes for me to know they were wrong.

I do give my streamers credit. I almost never watch horror, reality shows and science fiction so those genres are rarely recommended to me. I am also intrigued by some of the creatively named categories like “Easy-To-Watch-TV.” What exactly does that mean? Why is Only Murders in the Building easier to watch than say Arrested Development? 

I find that a more successful method of program selection is to make my daughter Emma watch the first episode of a potential show and report back if I’d like it or not. She’s right almost every time. I also suggest checking out the ratings and reviews at rottentomatoes.com. If I had done that I would have seen that Your Place or Mine scored a 36. Spoiler alert: that’s not great. 

Recently my friend found herself living the dream when she learned she would have the house to herself for nearly a week. That meant total control of the TV and the time to start powering through the backlog of shows in her queue. She asked her friends, including me, “What should I watch?” If more than one of us insisted she would enjoy a certain show, she watched it, and loved it. Sorry streamers, you don’t know best.