Streaming Video Power Rankings #110

On Mother's Day, take a minute to recognize your loved ones...then get back in front of the TV and enjoy some streaming video.

1) MLB.TV:  I'm on a free trial of this, and I have been able to see the end of a no-hitter, several Pirates wins, and some other great baseball action. It's obvious Major League Baseball is loading up the games to get me to spring for the full season. It's still too expensive, and its blackout rules are absurd, but I still love this service.

2) Netflix: I'm not so crazy over recent reports that Netflix is going to give heavy emphasis to sci-fi and fantasy going forward. I'm not against it, but I like a more general approach, and I don't like the reports that it's moving away from comedies because they don't travel as well. I'm in the USA! USA! USA! And I would like to see Netflix try some intelligent comedies.

Speaking of which, Netflix got some buzz with the remixed version of Arrested Development season 4 and a premiere date for season 5. Isn't Michael C. Hall sort of a big deal? Well, he has a new series, Safe, which seems to have flown in under the radar compared to even something like season 3 of Bill Nye's show, also new this weekend. Evil Genius looks good, but I'm still in the middle of Wild Wild Country. Perhaps most importantly, it gets my "This is what my kids are watching this week"  prize. Uh, I mean Netflix in general, not Wild Wild Country. I probably should put in a paragraph break there.

3) Filmstruck: I didn't actually watch anything on here this week, but how can I not love Filmstruck when it adds collections devoted to Billy Wilder and Lauren Bacall plus "All the News That's Fit to Stream" (including Five Star Final and All the Preisdent's Men) and "Complicated Mothers" (including Mildred Pierce and White Heat)? Answer: I can't not love it. In other words, I do love it.

4) YouTube: While Cobra Kai continues to draw attention to YouTube Red and people are starting to get curious about some of the other original programming on there, the free stuff still rules with me. My personal pick of the week is this 1980 clip of Stan Lee on Beyond Belief, a CBC show where a panel of psychics play something like What's My Line?

5) HBO: I'm half-watching the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony right now, and it's  not great, but I like that it's there. Thumbs up to HBO for the premiere of Dunkirk

6) Hulu: It has been invaluable for prep for the podcast this week, but it gets docked for a widespread outage yesterday. However, we have to credit it because tons of people are going to say they're going to watch Dunkirk this weekend but are actually going to watch Baywatch.

7) Pix11: New to the Archives section is a complete newscast from May 3, 1980 hosted by great WPIX announcer Bill Biery, complete with original commercials. I have to bump it down a bit for posting a story from 1983 about Howdy Doody being decapitated (?) that isn't playable on Roku.

8) Tubi TV: I haven't talked about Tubi in a while, but it has quietly added a lot of cool genre movies recently, like the original Penetentiary  movies, and we should all keep an eye on this 100% free service. It's easy to lose track of the free channels while we're struggling to keep up with the ones we're paying for. Another interesting recent add here is The Green Girl, a documentary about character actress (and staple of 60s TV like Star Trek) Susan Oliver. I heard about the doc several years ago but forgot about it until now. Into the queue it goes.

9) Shout! Factory TV: One word for you--OK, two words--Street Hawk! Do I really want to watch it? No! But it's cool that Shout! added it!

10) Steelers Desk Site: I don't think this has been updated in months, and I can't vouch for anything on here, but it's a free Roku channel devoted to Pittsburgh Steelers news and info. I have to rank it at least once. If you are a sports fan, check your Roku new channels section because a host of team-specific ones appeared recently.