Ask Slashdot: Do Streamers Waste More Time Deciding What to Watch?

"Are you old enough to remember channel surfing?" asks long-time Slashdog reader MightyMait. "When there were only a handful of broadcast channels, it wasn't a big deal..."But when we got cable/satelite, one could spend inordinate amounts of time flipping through the channels looking for something decent to watch. Now, with the proliferation of streaming services... Streaming viewers are now "spending a record 10.5 minutes per session deciding what to watch," according to TV Tech, citing a new study from the Nielsen-owned entertainment-data company Gracenote. Their 2023 State of Play report "found that that there were 1.9 million video titles available to viewers in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico and Germany in July 2021, a number that had swelled to 2.7 million titles by June 2023."Of the total count, a whopping 86.7% were available on streaming services. Compounding complexity, many popular shows now appear in multiple streaming catalogs, as the industry pivots from offering content exclusivity to broad distribution strategies that companies hope will balance massive streaming loses, the report noted. The Gracenote analysis also found that audiences now have nearly 40,000 individual FAST channels, streaming providers and aggregators to choose from. The original submission from MightyMait asks Slashdot readers: "Are you feeling the pain? And if so, "What strategies do you employ to avoid this time suck?" Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. And do streamers spend more time deciding what to watch?

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