Netflix And The Futue Of Global TV Networks

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Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed:

  • Heather B was feeling under the weather, so it was just Terry and me this morning. Feel better, Heather!
  • Is Netflix the first global TV network? That is what CEO, Reed Hastings, stated the other week at the famous CES conference that took place in Las Vegas, when he announced the launch of 130 additional countries, making Netflix available in close to 200 countries. With that, Netflix also said that they will be cracking down on streaming from abroad. That sucks for us up here in Canada. It means that the company is going to get even more serious about preventing people from using virtual private networks, proxies and IP-masking unblocked technologies to watch videos that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to stream in their countries. This is a geographic licensing issue, and it’s the reason that Netflix in Canada (and many other countries) is so much more limited in selection than the US version. According to Netflix: “We are making progress in licensing content across the world…but we have a ways to go before we can offer people the same films and TV series everywhere. In the meantime, we will continue to respect and enforce content licensing by geographic location.” So, no more IP blockers for the rest of us? 
  • Messaging Apps are now bigger than social networks. There’s a reason that Facebook spun off Facebook Messenger into its own app, and a reason that they also paid close to $25 billion for WhatsApp. Well, the next Twitter, or Snapchat… or whatever could have made its debut in the past few weeks. Peach is a new messaging app from Dom Hofmann, who is also the founder of Vine. People are saying that it’s the mass market’s version of Slack (a very popular and growing business messaging app that was also named the company of the year by Inc. Magazine in 2015), with a slick onboarding process, and lots of fun features. So, you’re hearing about this first… and early, but it’s looking like Peach could be that next big thing that everybody is always looking for. 
  • App of the week: OMG I Can Meditate!

Listen here…