Saturday, December 10, 2016

Streaming Video Power Rankings: Week 37 (Special Tribute Edition)

This week's list is dedicated to the late John Glenn, a real American hero. Somehow, the fact that he probably never ever watched Fuller House only makes him greater in my eyes.

1) PIX11: Hey, I said this might reach number one once I had a chance to watch the clips! A lot of the material has been aired on WPIX--right now, there's a series of Magic Garden clips culled from a retrospective that aired on the channel--but so what? Please keep bringing it on, PIX11, and let me keep reliving my childhood.

2) Netflix: Any other week, Netflix would be numero uno with the premiere of originals like Captive, White Rabbit Project (from the Mythbusters team), Luna Petunia (I don't know, either), a movie called Spectral, and what will draw more eyeballs than all those things put together: season 2 of Fuller House.

Boy, I sure didn't like the story I read about Netflix bragging about how much money it will spend on "reality programming" in 2017. Sounds like a lot of our subscriber bucks going out the window.

3) Hulu: It premiered new series Shut Eye by dropping all episodes at once, it added some series from Awesomeness.TV  (must be awesome, right?) and debuted Louis CK's Horace and Pete. I imagine that last one is a big draw for those who were too cheap to pay for the series when CK unveiled it--in other words, everyone.

4) Amazon Prime: I signed up for a month for the holidays, and it still has that shiny new toy feel for me--hence the high ranking. Check the blog next week for notes on some things I'm watching.

5) YouTube: Announced a few things for YouTube Red, which may be the company's way of trying to prove to me that it actually has subscribers. One of the projects is a Mariah Carey Christmas special. Remember when Mariah wasn't crazy? Then she became liberated from her controlling husband and she totally went the other way? I miss the innocent, plausibly intelligent Mariah.

6) The CW: Legends of Tomorrow is just totally going for the goofiness this season and is much better for it.

7) ChristmasFlix: There are several free holiday-themed channels on Roku, most with similar selections of public domain material, but this one has no annoying start-up screen, plus it offers some modest original content.

8) Pizza Flix: Again, we're talking public domain content, but it's nice to have so much in one spot. This SVOD re-enters the top 10 because it finally made a "newly added" category to prove that it really is "adding new titles weekly." Unlike Pub-D-Hub, this channel draws heavily on post-1970 content as well, so you can hit it here for sure gems like Robert Blake's 1975 Italian movie The Boxer, also starring Ernest Borgnine.

9) Acorn TV: I continue my trend of honoring channels that provide dedicated holiday areas with a salute to Acorn, which has a generous helping of Christmas-themed episodes and specials in one convenient section. Get some blood pudding and kidney pie, and watch a yuletide Miss Marple! (I really don't know what I'm talking about, but Acorn does have this section)

10) Warner Archive Instant: Two nice things WAI is doing right now: 1) It is letting everyone, even non-subscribers, stream 1977's holiday flick The Gathering free of charge; 2) It is offering 40% off on subscriptions right now.

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