It’s always fun when Jim Irizarry fills in on 960 AM WSBT Sports Radio‘s “Weekday Sportsbeat” in South Bend because that means I might get to do some radio with him. (An early-morning wake-up might not be so fun for Jim…)
That was the case on Thursday morning with the 2022 Major League Baseball season set to begin a few hours later. But rather than talk about the season at hand (Go Tigers! Go Mets!), Jim combined peanut butter with chocolate to discuss MLB’s new streaming TV deals with Apple TV+ and Peacock. Is this baseball embracing the future or making it more difficult for fans to find the product?
Maybe it’s because I have extra time on my hands with the Easter holiday weekend and major rain here in Asheville, but it feels like time to put my mail where my mouth is.
I keep saying this isn’t a newsletter and have posted that content here instead. But the reasons I haven’t really followed through on trying to do a newsletter is a) not having anybody sign up would be kind of depressing and b) I’m not writing enough at other outlets to have anything to collect here.
Plus, I’m already asking people to subscribe to The Podcass, which friends and followers have been supporting nicely, and I’d really like that to do well. At some point, you all will just get sick of me tugging on your pant legs, right?
I love that everyone’s blogging again, but why are they doing it over email?
But here’s the thing: I miss the old days of blogging. With me writing less professionally, I need an outlet and I’m enjoying writing for fun again. The era of Blogger, LiveJournal and Tumblr has passed, but the spirit of blogging still seems to exist, if not the interactivity and sense of community. Maybe it’s just in newsletters and podcasts now.
So here we go. This is becoming a newsletter. I’ll try to get this out on Thursday or Friday, since a lot of newsletters go out on Sunday. Please subscribe to Overzealous Recycling at tinyletter.com/casselberry. And thank you in advance.
After taking last week off, we’re back with a new Amusement Park Podcast. Chris and I look at the final Avengers: Endgame trailer for clues, react to Disney re-hiring James Gunn for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, review Netflix’s Triple Frontier, and wonder if “streaming fatigue” is real.
Difficulty lining our schedules up and what appeared to be a slow news week were the primary reasons for us not recording last week. But even if we had recorded, we probably would’ve missed the Avengers: Endgame trailer and news of Disney re-hiring James Gunn for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Hopefully, you’ll still want to hear what we have to say on those subjects, along with some thoughts on streaming “subscription fatigue” among consumers.
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With the Mister Rogers documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, debuting on both HBO and PBS last week, we thought it would be fun to talk about on the Amusement Park Podcast. I saw the movie last summer and thought it was one of the best movies of 2018, but Chris is just coming around to it now.
We also talk about the ideal streaming setup as more networks and studios create their own over-the-top services to compete with Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. If you want to (or already have) ditched cable or satellite, which are the best services to sign up for that provide the content you’ll want to watch?
I’m probably long overdue to make some decisions on streaming subscriptions. I’ve basically signed up for everything, yet still maintained a cable subscription. Whenever I think Hulu is something I could live without, they launch an original series or documentary that gets me thinking it’s worth keeping. I also subscribe to DC Universe and the upcoming Criterion Channel. I’ll surely sign up for Disney+ once that launches.
Where I’ll probably make a cut is with sports. I shouldn’t admit this as someone who’d still like to work in sports media, but I don’t watch as much baseball as I used to and the Detroit Tigers likely won’t be worth many of summer hours, so I’ll probably ditch MLB.TV. That almost seems inconceivable to me (and I wrote it off as a work expense). But that’s nearly $150 I can save right there.
Please leave a review and rating on iTunes for us and a like on our Facebook page to help spread the word. You can subscribe to the Amusement Park Podcast everywhere you find podcasts:
We’ve reached the 25-episode mark on The Amusement Park Podcast! (Actually, we’ve done 26 episodes, including a Special Edition. We haven’t done any of those since, probably because it’s not always easy to find time to record, and I’m not sure we’ll do so again.)
This time around, we talk about the Avengers: Endgame and Toy Story 4 Super Bowl teasers, in addition to a couple of other commercials. We also review Amazon’s Hanna pilot, which was available for 24 hours after The Big Game, and look back at Game of Thrones Season 1, trying to refresh ourselves on everything before Season 8 premieres in April. And we do some quick hits on a variety of topics, something we may do regularly on future podcasts.
One thing I didn’t mention during our discussion of Hanna was how much I enjoyed the soundtrack for the original 2011 movie. The music by The Chemical Brothers was a vital part of the film, setting the visuals to a beat that fit the story’s quick pace. Or in the case of “Hanna’s Theme,” the soundtrack was a play on the coming-of-age aspect of the main character’s story.
Also worth mentioning was how much of a departure this movie was for director Joe Wright, whose filmography is largely filled with dramas like Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Darkest Hour. But there wasn’t really a place for that during the conversation.
Please leave a review on iTunes for us and a like on our Facebook page to help boost our signal. You can subscribe to the Amusement Park Podcast everywhere you find podcasts:
Ian Casselberry 