tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/apple-tv-14426/articlesApple TV – The Conversation2024-02-01T19:03:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2221462024-02-01T19:03:24Z2024-02-01T19:03:24ZBlack comedy, political drama and a documentary about a cult: what we’re streaming this February<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572100/original/file-20240130-15-a46qob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C11%2C3982%2C1982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Binge/ABC/Paramount+/The Conversation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the new year gets going and we’re all looking towards evenings on the couch again to unwind after work or school, there is again a glut of shows to choose from. </p>
<p>This month, our academics have suggested everything from a drama exploring the AIDS epidemic, to the latest outing from Marvel, to a documentary about a cult. </p>
<p>If you like your comedy black or romantic, if you want to watch a film or a series, we have you covered for what to stream this February. </p>
<h2>Fellow Travellers</h2>
<p><em>Paramount+ (Australia) and Neon (New Zealand)</em></p>
<p>Fellow Travellers picked up two nominations in the Golden Globes; I would have given it many more. But maybe the combination of political history and hot man-to-man sex was too much for the nominators.</p>
<p>Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel about two men who fall in love in the homophobic Washington of Senator McCarthy has been expanded to explore racism and the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. But the essential tensions of forbidden love remain, even if the television series takes us into worlds Mallon chose not to explore.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xR0dT9B-_bE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The performances of the two leading actors Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey are
extraordinary. So too is Jelani Alladin as a black reporter who struggles to balance his racial and sexual identity.</p>
<p>Bomer’s character is the ultimate survivor, who marries for his career and treats all relationships transactionally. Bailey’s is seemingly weaker, a right-wing Catholic who falls completely for Bomer. His transformation at the end into an AIDS activist stretches credulity, but Bailey has the skill to carry it off.</p>
<p>Fellow Travellers is politically more sophisticated than Oppenheimer and more complex in its sexual politics than Barbie. Like them it interrogates the myth of America, which sadly promises to preoccupy us over the coming year.</p>
<p><em>– Dennis Altman</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-kid-called-troy-at-30-this-beautiful-aussie-film-was-one-of-the-most-important-hiv-aids-documentaries-ever-produced-218715">A Kid Called Troy at 30: this beautiful Aussie film was one of the most important HIV/AIDS documentaries ever produced</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Curse</h2>
<p><em>Paramount+ (Australia) and Neon (New Zealand)</em></p>
<p>The genre-bending black comedy The Curse is a persistent, excruciating tummy ache of a show – and that’s a recommendation.</p>
<p>Newlywed white liberal do-gooders Whitney (Emma Stone) and Asher (Nathan Fielder) arrive in the socio-economically deprived town of Española, New Mexico, with louche filmmaker Dougie (Benny Safdie) to film an obnoxious HGTV show called Flipanthropy. The wealthy couple will ostensibly “help” the community through their high-end eco-home company, but things do not go to plan.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tui5vl13Gqg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The satirical ten-part series, created and written by Safdie and Fielder, defies convention and description. It’s filmed in an uncanny, dissociative style. Very long takes, awkward framing and unsettling points of view marry contemporary surveillance cultures with the dream-like stupor of David Lynch. It’s a Rorschach test for viewers as it takes on a huge range of targets: gentrification, the constructed nature of “reality” television, vanity, racism, class, colonisation, capitalism, power, art, privilege, entertainment, taste, masculinity, loneliness.</p>
<p>The show inflicts a lot of psychic damage on the viewer, but it’s worth making it to the end. The performances are impeccable, and the astonishing finale offers what might be the biggest water cooler moment of television this year.</p>
<p><em>– Erin Harrington</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nathan-fielders-new-comedy-the-rehearsal-will-be-familiar-to-anyone-with-autism-188071">Nathan Fielder's new comedy The Rehearsal will be familiar to anyone with autism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Total Control season three</h2>
<p><em>iView (Australia)</em></p>
<p>Two years after First Nations MP Alex Irving (Deborah Mailman) outwitted the major
parties and leveraged the new power of the crossbench to install Paul Murphy
(Wayne Blair) as Australia’s first Indigenous prime minister, the shine has worn off Murphy’s leadership. </p>
<p>In the third season of Total Control, Murphy has sacrificed one social justice commitment after another on the altar of electoral politics and the knives are out between him and Irving.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q9COArnLkR4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Irving is at boiling point, as her commitment to youth justice and to
securing resources for her disaster-struck regional community is constantly thwarted.</p>
<p>Her nemesis, former prime minister Rachel Anderson (Rachel Griffiths) – all
sangfroid and intrigue – has reinvented herself as a warrior for ethical, truly
representative democracy and is attempting to set up a new alliance of independents. The stakes are high, the tension palpable.</p>
<p>Filmed in Parliament House, this final season continues Total Control’s stylish, taut political drama. Consultations with political insiders informed themes of political corruption, dirty money in politics and the reconfiguration of the political landscape with the rise of independents, set against the ongoing neglect of Indigenous communities.</p>
<p>But this is no cynical exercise; there is an optimistic vision here for the real change independents could bring.</p>
<p><em>– Anne Rutherford</em></p>
<h2>Smothered</h2>
<p><em>Binge (Australia) and Neon (New Zealand)</em></p>
<p>Many of us have bemoaned the lack of rom-coms in the cinema, but luckily television is increasingly becoming a space for dynamic and interesting romantic-comedies from You’re the Worst to Everything I Know About Love. </p>
<p>A recent entry into the TV rom-com landscape is the delightful new British series Smothered, created by Monica Heisey. Danielle Vitalis stars as Sammy, a chaotic but fun twenty-something interior designer, who is disillusioned by her current dating (read: sex) life. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6eakT52a_Hs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Jon Pointing plays her counterpart Tom, a quiet, lost, old-before-his-years “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/27/four-lads-in-jeans-meme-made-into-statue-in-birmingham">lad in jeans</a>.” In a classic meet-cute conceit, an impossible but alluring deal is struck between our two leads: a hot casual affair, no last names, no details, three weeks and they’re done. But of course life and feelings complicate best laid plans. </p>
<p>Equal parts absurd and sincere, this is the perfect show for those who love Nora Ephron and Sex and the City. Like these predecessors, Smothered is populated by quirky supporting characters who are inexplicably invested in Sammy and Tom’s romance, but it works thanks to hilarious performances by Aisling Bea, Harry Trevaldwyn and Lisa Hammond.</p>
<p>– <em>Jessica Ford</em></p>
<h2>Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God</h2>
<p><em>Binge (Australia) and Neon (New Zealand)</em></p>
<p>Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God charts the life and death of Amy Carlson, who in early adulthood claimed she was a divine being in communication with a host of “Galactics”, including deceased comedian Robin Williams, and built a following of tens of thousands on Facebook and YouTube.</p>
<p>The three-part documentary series begins with the discovery by police in 2021 of the former McDonalds manager’s corpse, blue from ingesting copious amounts of <a href="https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/colloidal-silver-what-you-need-to-know">colloidal silver</a> and attended by her inner circle of devotees in Crestone, Colorado. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2PweoTaa_OA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Director and producer Hannah Olsen successfully compiles several key interviews with those closest to the believed 254th reincarnation of Mother God, including testimony from Carlson’s four “Father God” partners and from those who maintained the religious movements’s online presence whilst witnessing her decline first hand.</p>
<p>The eerie use of cloud photography (“starships” coming to ascend Carlson to a higher “5D” dimension) alongside the group’s influencer-style social media livestreams and a <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/46oBuu2KmtIUsMDFgQP89Z?si=5f34857125db4ccb&nd=1&dlsi=91f9923c750c4896&go=1">soundtrack</a> of atonal electronica makes for a unique post-millennium aesthetic.</p>
<p>Ultimately Love Has Won left me pondering the relationship between the unknowable mysteries of our existence and the myriad mental health effects of trauma.</p>
<p>– <em>Phoebe Hart</em></p>
<h2>Echo</h2>
<p><em>Disney+ (Australia) and Apple TV (New Zealand)</em></p>
<p>Among swathes of Marvel spin-offs, Echo’s bingeable five chapter run caught and kept my interest. Echo spotlights Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), a deaf assassin who flees New York following deadly conflict with her “uncle”, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). Fisk is “Kingpin”, a villainous businessman who lacks interstellar prowess but employs monstrous methods of controlling “his” city.</p>
<p>We open on Maya’s childhood within her Choctaw family and heritage. After a targeted tragedy – including the loss of her leg – Maya and her father move to New York where Fisk’s indoctrination begins. Present-day Maya returns home to a wary family and town. Only her cousin, Biscuits (Cody Lightning), leaps to provide support and charmingly obvious comedic relief.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AFUKnherhuw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Kingpin’s shadow – cast by D’Onofrio’s stellar performance – looms, but Cox shines as a tight-lipped young woman at crossroads, determinedly independent, drawn to the past. Maya is a break-out role for Cox, who is herself Native American, deaf, and an amputee. Exposition and relationship-building are communicated through sign language. Sound mediates emotion and action, oscillating between manically heightened music and tense, heart-beating silence.</p>
<p>We soon root for antihero Maya, despite plentiful onscreen violence at her hand. While she debuted in Hawkeye as a heartless killer, Echo goes deeper, exploring inheritance, loss, and betrayal, via a lick of magic and a lot of blood.</p>
<p><em>– Marina Deller</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/marvels-echo-is-a-one-of-a-kind-superhero-and-an-inspiration-to-the-deaf-community-221148">Marvel's Echo is a one-of-a-kind superhero – and an inspiration to the Deaf community</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222146/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This month, our academics have suggested everything from a drama exploring the AIDS epidemic, to the latest outing from Marvel, to a documentary about a cult.Anne Rutherford, Adjunct Associate Professor, Cinema Studies, Western Sydney UniversityDennis Altman, VC Fellow, La Trobe UniversityErin Harrington, Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies, University of CanterburyJessica Ford, Lecturer in Media, University of AdelaideMarina Deller, Casual Academic, Flinders UniversityPhoebe Hart, Associate Professor, Film Screen & Animation, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2053302023-05-15T11:47:07Z2023-05-15T11:47:07ZSchmigadoon!: darker musical influences make season two a more complex, but satisfying watch<p><em>Warning: the following article contains spoilers for Schmigadoon! series one and two.</em></p>
<p>Apple TV’s musical comedy <a href="https://tv.apple.com/gb/show/schmigadoon/umc.cmc.1tqmf2znhr4oui4vo69ircyui">Schmigadoon!</a> has just aired its second series. It follows couple Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) and Melissa (Cecily Strong) in their adventures in the magical town of Schmigadoon, which they stumble across while backpacking.</p>
<p>The musical town of the show’s first season is an amalgamation of the golden age musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. Think <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6uD9-aLCps">Oklahoma!</a> (1943), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqgTaNqolXo">Carousel</a> (1945) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_Oe-jtgdI">The Music Man</a> (1957) – simple romantic storylines and a happy cast of characters who frequently burst into song for no reason.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FBn4jL4xKNw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for season two of Schmigadoon!</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Melissa loves these musicals and can predict the course of events based on their familiar formula. Following the plot of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpk9JNUDr9k">Brigadoon</a> (1954), the couple can only leave the town when they find love – that is, when they fix their rocky relationship. Happily, it works: the corny musical tropes become deeply meaningful and a vital therapeutic resource for the couple.</p>
<p>When we meet them at the start of season two, Josh and Melissa are enjoying the doping effects of the musical and its required suspension of disbelief. They marry and decide to start a family. </p>
<p>However, when their fertility journey proves difficult, reality hits hard. Compared with the dopamine-fest of season one, their situation feels bleak.</p>
<p>German playwright and theorist Bertolt Brecht found <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-brecht/2D0C869D864DA0636AECA03E3E77414F">“autonomous” dramatic music</a> (music for music’s sake) suspicious. He believed that theatre should be used to challenge audiences and promote social ideas and self-reflection. This is threatened by pleasure-focused operas and musicals.</p>
<p>Brecht believed that dramatic music’s seductive charms could dupe audiences into submission, so the musical comprised a dangerous smokescreen. In Josh and Melissa’s case, the musical has distorted their sense of reality and they are about to enter a world of danger.</p>
<h2>The musical darkens</h2>
<p>As Schmigadoon did a great job of solving their problems last time, the couple decide to return, hoping it will once again work its magic. When they find the town, however, it has transitioned into Schmicago: the dark, sensual era of the 1960s and 1970s musicals such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfL1J4QVhSM">Cabaret</a> (1966), Chicago (1975) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acHBq_oZm-8">Sweeney Todd</a> (1979).</p>
<p>This era is more concerned with terror, excitement, shock and disgust – themes familiar in gothic fiction. These musicals resemble the formulaic gothic dramas of <a href="https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01809-7.html">excess, hyperbole and fantasy</a>, which garnered a similar mass appeal from the late 18th century.</p>
<p>This era was also associated with concept musicals, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-the-musical/65AF6EFD39A6DDCFF13AB3CDBD5C749E">which rejected</a> traditional storylines and linear narratives in favour of abstract ideas. </p>
<p>As concept musicals experimented with traditional structural boundaries, lines between reality and fantasy became unstable, providing a maze-like structure for eccentric stories to be told.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XY2zwk9fepQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Ariana DeBose performs Over and Done in Schmigadoon! season two.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The characters in Schmicago musicals reflect those in English gothic <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/themes/fin-de-siecle">fin-de-siècle</a> novels. </p>
<p>Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray loses his identity in his picture, the identity of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll becomes entangled with Mr Hyde and the victims of Bram Stoker’s Dracula lose theirs in vampirism. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bram-stokers-dracula-bats-garlic-disturbing-sexualities-and-a-declining-empire-186392">Bram Stoker's Dracula: bats, garlic, disturbing sexualities and a declining empire</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Meanwhile, Sweeney Todd is overwhelmed with revenge, Cabaret’s Sally Bowles sports an impenetrably vivacious facade and the world of law in Chicago is hopelessly subsumed in the world of show business.</p>
<p>The unconventional forms of these musicals represent their characters’ damaged boundaries: their inability to maintain a clear sense of morality, or to keep their delusions from infecting reality.</p>
<h2>How season two deviates</h2>
<p>Season one followed the structure of a golden age musical. Josh and Melissa inevitably realised their love for each other and escaped. Season two’s outcome, however, is less predictable. The musicals of this era have no clear moral and the couple have no idea what lesson they must learn in order to escape.</p>
<p>What’s more, the Narrator (Titus Burgess) is highly unreliable. While Melissa is an expert in old-timey musicals, she is less familiar with the Schmicago era. Her lack of foresight allows the narrative to take a chaotic shape.</p>
<p>The couple are trapped in a place that is apparently trying to destroy them. As this era is more about survival than happiness, they are forced to confront the fact that – as in many gothic tales – the only solution might be to kill the villain. The moral of the story becomes harder to untangle.</p>
<p>The Narrator is based on the narrator of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U2Ji5-MebA">Pippin</a> (1972), the Leading Player who, in the show’s climax, tries to convince Pippin to set himself on fire for the “thrilling finale”. When Josh and Melissa are about to leave Schmicago, the townspeople try to persuade them to stay and avoid the misery of reality. </p>
<p>The Narrator’s plea for them to stay in the world of “magic” echoes the Leading Player’s plea for Pippin to give up his life to perform one glorious feat of spectacle. Like Pippin, however, Josh and Melissa refuse: all they want is something real.</p>
<p>As it turns out, this was the lesson all along. The magic of a musical is only effective when contrasted with reality. Indeed, that is the appeal of a Schmicago musical, which integrates misery with joy to create a stronger emotional impact.</p>
<p>Schmicago teaches that musical logic is not meant to be applied directly to reality, or necessarily untangled, but used in configuration with reality to draw personal conclusions. The musical’s effect becomes enlightening rather than doping, providing catharsis and self-knowledge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jodie Passey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Compared to the dopamine-fest of season one, Josh and Melissa’s situation in season two feels bleak.Jodie Passey, PhD Candidate, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2022092023-03-22T12:47:10Z2023-03-22T12:47:10ZManagement lessons from Ted Lasso: the importance of clear goals and positive feedback<p>Apple TV’s wildly successful comedy, Ted Lasso, has returned for a third series. The show’s well-meaning, if bumbling, American coach of fictional English football team <a href="https://ted-lasso.fandom.com/wiki/AFC_Richmond">AFC Richmond</a> is known for his motivational speeches. Take this example from the first series:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Y'all played a heck of a game out there. We may not have won, but y'all definitely succeeded … I want you to be grateful that you’re going through this sad moment with all these other folks. Because I promise you, there is something worse out there than being sad, and that is being alone and being sad. Ain’t nobody in this room alone.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lasso is a good manager – and an inspirational one – who always puts his team’s needs first. He can be too optimistic and ambitious at times, but he’s generally very supportive of those around him. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/managing-people-for-the-first-time-expert-tips-on-how-to-succeed-198615utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Managing people for the first time: expert tips on how to succeed</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/postpartum-exercise-can-have-many-benefits-heres-how-to-do-it-safely-200388utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Postpartum exercise can have many benefits – here’s how to do it safely</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/chris-brown-a-fandom-expert-on-how-racialised-loyalty-helps-the-controversial-singer-retain-his-fans-201123utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Chris Brown: a fandom expert on how racialised loyalty helps the controversial singer retain his fans</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296318305253?casa_token=iPKFqSUshN4AAAAA:6OvXVQJTqz3E7FUIEofQ4QWEB9U1kxhotoT3bCObcgsO8L0LJd25WZCSEmxP6875l6aO7_mL">An inspirational leader</a> motivates others, develops talent and offers opportunities for growth. They are passionate and willing to take risks if it means unlocking their team’s untapped potential. The intent is not to put people under too much stress or pressure, but to push them out of their comfort zone.</p>
<p>However, inspiring others is not an easy task. You must first earn their trust and respect, make them feel appreciated, and promote a sense of togetherness. </p>
<p>This means giving your team a strong shared purpose so they can support each other, learn from one another, and resolve conflicts quickly. For Lasso, these qualities come naturally – which is a big part of why his players get along so well.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A9jI7id8c1Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">One of Ted Lasso’s inspiring speeches.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, being a decent manager – and possibly a nice guy like Ted – shouldn’t stop you from getting things done. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0149206318816179">Managers are more effective</a> when they stay focused, keep their eyes on the big picture, and overcome obstacles as they arise – ultimately achieving success for themselves and those around them. Since performance is very important, especially during challenging times, good managers must take charge, be confident, and remain ambitious.</p>
<p>This creates an interesting paradox. We live in a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/cmr.2016.58.4.59?casa_token=Smc7toWn6usAAAAA:ruORVg0DEQeZBDcfW4GxGcqqD_Sik2tcIf30DTMhlIvbUZK_5H6IQPU-WATB9AM-C_ocycmNZFc">rapidly changing world</a> where businesses are cutting costs, dealing with stiff competition, and adapting to new technologies. At the same time, people are taking extra jobs, working longer, and grappling with growing uncertainty about the future.</p>
<p>In this context, even good managers like Lasso must sometimes choose between pursuing <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01492063221094263">bottom-line results</a> and protecting team wellbeing. Two important questions arise: is high performance synonymous with working too much, too hard, and under too much pressure? And can we really deliver ambitious targets without putting people’s wellbeing at risk?</p>
<h2>Overcoming managerial challenges</h2>
<p>Today, <a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/full/10.5465/amj.2017.1481">there are growing concerns</a> about increased work intensity – a measure of how much physical or mental effort a person puts into their job.</p>
<p>Many people are facing consistently longer hours and tighter deadlines, with no time to get enough sleep or socialise with friends and family. For some, this is happening while staying at the same pay grade for years, even with an increased workload and few or no opportunities to learn new skills.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02678373.2022.2080778">Research has linked</a> high work intensity to dissatisfaction and mental health issues such as stress and anxiety. So, as a manager, do you keep asking your team to reach for better results, even if they are overworked and worried about their jobs?</p>
<p>What’s more, due to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1748-8583.12238">high work intensity</a>, team members may put a lot of pressure on each other to work harder than they normally would. </p>
<p>They will monitor each other’s work, hold themselves accountable to a high standard, and scrutinise each other’s actions or behaviours to see who is and isn’t putting in their best. The atmosphere can become more toxic and unfriendly, leading to anger, despair and frustration.</p>
<p>Lasso faced similar challenges when he was first hired for the job, despite having little coaching experience and his boss doubting his ability to motivate a struggling football team. He prevailed by striking a good balance between high performance and team members’ wellbeing. </p>
<p>Lasso communicates openly with his team, soliciting their input in decision-making and encouraging them to stay disciplined. At the same time, team members who perform poorly (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PmX7zEUg_w">like Sam Obisanya</a>) are given extra support, while those who perform well (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2Cwnrcc3hE">like Jamie Tart</a>) are inspired to do even better.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y_TJHIV5vDs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Lasso inspires his team with a pre-match speech.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the show, Lasso’s character teaches us an important lesson: being an effective manager is more than just delegating tasks and pushing people beyond their performance limits. It’s about setting clear goals, leading by example, supporting your team, and empowering them to deliver results.</p>
<p>Effective management is also about giving positive feedback, praising team members for a job well done, and making them feel valued. If done right, team members will be happier, more satisfied and motivated to do a better job. They will work hard at their jobs and avoid doing anything that could damage the team’s overall success. </p>
<p>The team will also have a stronger sense of belonging, which is important for bringing out the best in everyone – something AFC Richmond know well under Lasso’s positive management.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202209/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chidiebere Ogbonnaya receives funding from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of his research commitments at Kent Business School</span></em></p>Being an effective manager is more than just delegating tasks and pushing people – as Ted Lasso’s positive leadership shows.Chidiebere Ogbonnaya, Professor of Human Resource Management, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1321732022-10-05T19:04:10Z2022-10-05T19:04:10ZShantaram – the Black white man’s burden<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487934/original/file-20221003-14-22kihl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C26%2C2225%2C1536&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Charlie Hunnam as Gregory David Roberts in the forthcoming TV adaptation of the 2003 novel.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anonymous Content/Paramount Television</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are only two things you’re likely to encounter in India as much as Delhi belly: ubiquitous copies of Gregory David Roberts’ best-selling 2003 novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33600.Shantaram?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=igqZd4smgL&rank=1">Shantaram</a> in hostel lobbies and Swiss bakeries and, as noted in the book, constantly “being stared at with the […] almost accusatory censure of those who’ve convinced themselves they’ve found the one true path”.</p>
<p>Based on <a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=K_4QAAAAIBAJ&sjid=SZIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5939,20927">Roberts’ own life</a>, Shantaram tells the story of Lin, an armed robber on the run with a false passport. Lin ends up in a Bombay slum and is adopted “like a son” by a mystic Afghan mafia boss before becoming a gun runner to Africa and a mujahedeen (guerrilla fighter) in Afghanistan. </p>
<p>Having sold over six million copies since publication, there have been <a href="https://www.slashfilm.com/joel-edgerton-to-replace-johnny-depp-in-shantaram/">numerous attempts</a> to adapt the book for film. It’s now a <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/apple-tv-series-shantaram-is-go-with-kurzel-but-without-depp-20190815-p52hhz.html">TV series</a> made for <a href="https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/sons-of-anarchy-star-charlie-hunnam-return-tv-shantaram-still-left-without-premiere-date.html/">streaming service Apple TV+</a> starring British actor Charlie Hunnam. Production was stop-start due to COVID, but after a long wait <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0429087/">the series</a> <a href="https://www.apple.com/au/tv-pr/news/2022/09/apple-reveals-trailer-for-highly-anticipated-drama-shantaram-starring-charlie-hunnam-and-based-on-the-international-bestselling-novel/">will premiere on October 14</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9SSHhQRsYcM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>The cult of authenticity</h2>
<p>Roberts’ <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120212145517/http://www.shantaram.com/pages/interview_2.html">semi-autobiographical</a> character Lin calls himself “<em>gora chierra, kala maan</em>”: white on the outside, but full Hindustani on the inside. Despite this, Shantaram perpetuates the Orientalist fantasies that much of Western art does when depicting India and Indians.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487925/original/file-20221003-26-tdomqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487925/original/file-20221003-26-tdomqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487925/original/file-20221003-26-tdomqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487925/original/file-20221003-26-tdomqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487925/original/file-20221003-26-tdomqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487925/original/file-20221003-26-tdomqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487925/original/file-20221003-26-tdomqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487925/original/file-20221003-26-tdomqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “Indies” have long exerted a powerful pull over the Western imagination. Operas and ballets such as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2007/05/11/10112052/lakme-by-leo-delibes">Lakmé</a>, <a href="https://www.abt.org/ballet/la-bayadere/">La Bayadere</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/742411?seq=1">The Pearl Fishers and others</a> portrayed Indian stories and people as exotic curiosities in <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/sheiks-araby">stereotypical, Orientalist spectacles</a>. </p>
<p>These productions served to excite both fascination and revulsion – as did <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087469/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</a> or <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1412386/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel</a> decades later.</p>
<p>Shantaram raises important questions about what author Vikram Chandra <a href="https://bostonreview.net/vikram-chandra-the-cult-of-authenticity">called</a> the “cult of authenticity” in which too often, representations of India are artefacts of heightened or caricatured “Indianness” – designed to appeal to Western audiences.</p>
<p>It’s what I’ve called in the past the “<a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;res=IELLCC;dn=228390996515912">mango novel</a>”: increasingly familiar mirages of magical-realist wonders and colourful terrors in places at once enticingly and reassuringly distant (think of David Davidar’s novel The House of Blue Mangoes or Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, set in a mango pickle factory.)</p>
<p>The Indians in Shantaram don’t vary much from the stereotypes, constantly needing Lin’s help and “revealing” the true nature of India through their simplicity, generosity and poverty. </p>
<p>Like Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love or Liam Pieper’s recent <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/expats-behaving-badly-20200309-p5486g.html">Sweetness and Light</a>, featuring similarly troubled spiritual tourists, the “natives” exist in the background or through the tour bus windows, India and its people merely a set and props for Lin’s journey to enlightment.</p>
<p>On the bus from the airport, Lin sees only what he wants to see, prefiguring other “<a href="https://www.oaktree.org/poverty_porn_101">poverty porn</a>” like the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/4362622/Slumdog-Millionaire-may-be-a-good-cause-but-its-not-a-good-movie.html">execrable Slumdog Millionaire</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What had seemed unimaginably strange and remote […] suddenly became […] comprehensible and fascinating […] the flare of shame I’d felt when I first saw the slums and street beggars dissolved in the understanding that they were free […] the city was free. I loved it.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Quality not quantity</h2>
<p>Defenders of white privilege aside, many authors and audiences are <a href="https://meanjin.com.au/essays/what-happens-when-you-tell-somebody-elses-story/">questioning telling other people’s stories,</a> even as literature allows us to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11103358_Empathy_and_the_Literary_Imagination">empathetically imagine</a> another person’s experience. As Salman Rushdie pointed out in his seminal essay, <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/v04/n18/salman-rushdie/imaginary-homelands">Imaginary Homelands</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Literature is self-validating […] a book is not justified by its author’s worthiness to write it, but by the quality of what has been done. There are terrible books that arise directly out of experience, and extraordinary imaginative feats dealing with themes which the author has been obliged to approach from the outside.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ontological questions about whether it’s fact or fiction, or who wrote it or where they’re from, shouldn’t matter as long as the writing’s good, such as in American author Katherine Boo’s profoundly affecting 2012 account of Mumbai’s slums, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/books/katherine-boos-first-book-behind-the-beautiful-forevers.html">Behind The Beautiful Forevers</a>.</p>
<p>Shantaram, however, is burdened by self-indulgent writing, cluttered with unrealistic, extraneous, often forgettable characters, strangled by meandering digressions, and addled with expository dialogue and perplexingly obvious aphorisms on the nature of life, or love, or – of course – India itself.</p>
<p>“This is not like any other place,” Roberts writes. “This is India.”</p>
<p>As reviewer <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-mountain-shadow-review-a-sequel-that-falls-far-short-of-its-predecessor-20160122-gmc6y3.html">Cameron Woodhead</a> wrote of its sequel, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25246584-the-mountain-shadow">The Mountain Shadow</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[It has] more in common with Oprah than Proust, and most readers with a shred of intellect or self-respect […] will cringe at [how] large chunks […] resemble the snake oil of the self-help industry.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://themountainshadowebook.com/interview.html">According to Roberts</a>, in the decade between Shantaram and its sequel, he “offered [his] writer’s perspective and writer’s skills to several NGOs, and worked in human rights, social justice, the environment and health issues.”</p>
<p>After The Mountain Shadow achieved neither the commercial success or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/books/review/the-mountain-shadow-by-gregory-david-roberts.html">critical acclaim of its predecessor</a>, Roberts stepped back from public life, and embarked on what he calls “<a href="https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/gregory-david-roberts-shantaram-interview-loveandfaith-debut-music-album-dale-virgo/article33240061.ece">the spiritual path</a>,” shaving his head, applying Hindu spiritual markings, foregoing shoes and donning Indian hermetic robes.</p>
<p>Making notes on his guru’s teachings, Roberts wrote an eponymous book, The Spiritual Path, featuring florid, cod-philosophical epigrams similar to those that choked his novels, such as “honesty is the river flowing into the sea of Trust” or “success is the full expression of personal fulfilment”. </p>
<p>He recorded a reggae album, <a href="https://gregorydavidroberts.com/gdr-music">Love&Faith</a> in Jamaica (featuring collaborations with Jamaican artists), <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/art-and-culture/how-writer-gregory-david-roberts-foray-into-music-with-album-love-faith-kept-him-going-in-the-pandemic-89">released in December 2020</a>, and has increased his focus on music since. A plethora of releases with titles such as Good Morning Morning and Deep SurRender (music to play while your project is rendering); a playlist called Shantaram House, and featured artists on his website including Scantana, “the man with the most grammar”, suggest literature’s loss is music’s loss too. </p>
<h2>Fixing the novel</h2>
<p>Great literary fiction is often unfilmable because the kinetic range of the camera can’t capture the affective tone of the narrator’s voice or the author’s use of language. </p>
<p>But in Shantaram’s case, it’s possible being transposed to the screen and focusing on the action, rather than the cod-philosophy and over-description, might actually address the inherent vices in Roberts’ book.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/v1YgvjXye9SNMCHo2Qg4iL/Book-Review-The-Mountain-Shadow-by-Gregory-David-Roberts.html">Indian reviewer Sandipan Deb wrote of The Mountain Shadow</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>skim the pages rapidly, and you will get a fine thriller… Read it sincerely, and you will find a man trying so hard to be, if not the Buddha, at least a rock ‘n’ roll Jesus figure, that it is irritating. Open the book randomly, and you will find a Paulo Coelho with a snub-nosed automatic …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The new TV series is co-created, written and executive produced by showrunner Steve Lightfoot, with Bharat Nalluri directing and executive producing. Two initial episodes directed by Australian Justin Kurzel (Snowtown, Nitram) <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/shantaram-review-apple-s-sprawling-12-parter-is-just-the-beginning-20221004-p5bmz0.html">were reportedly considered too dark</a>.</p>
<p>One hopes it will interrogate and subvert those persistent Orientalist, white saviour tropes, although <a href="https://youtu.be/9SSHhQRsYcM">with a trailer</a> focusing on the white characters, who enjoy moody close ups as faceless Indians swarm in the slummy background, and with dialogue that’s as forced and wooden as the book – including Hunnam’s unconvincing Australian accent – <a href="https://www.apple.com/au/tv-pr/news/2022/09/apple-reveals-trailer-for-highly-anticipated-drama-shantaram-starring-charlie-hunnam-and-based-on-the-international-bestselling-novel/">it doesn’t promise any great improvement</a>.</p>
<p>For as Deb writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a jailbird troubled by B-grade questions about life and the universe found India —in a very limited sense — in south and central Bombay. Then he found spirituality, with two knives hidden up the back of his shirt. And then he asks: What do you want from me, India? Mr Roberts, India doesn’t want anything from you. Write books, make money, get stoned, babble about nirvana, love the debauched expat life. India accepts you. We are not one, but we are us.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em>The first three episodes of Shantaram’s 12-episode first season will air on Apple TV on Friday, 14 October, 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132173/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sunil Badami does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gregory David Roberts’ best-selling 2003 novel has been adapted for TV. But its depiction of India and Indians brims with Orientalist, white saviour stereotypes.Sunil Badami, Academic Lead, Digital Transformation for Creative Industries, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1733092022-01-16T13:39:53Z2022-01-16T13:39:53ZThe movie ‘Finch’ explores how dogs help us define humanity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440269/original/file-20220111-21-jd0wke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C13%2C835%2C457&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A furry friend, Goodyear the dog, makes a safe human home in the post-apocalyptic 'Finch.' </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Apple TV+)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Warning: The following article contains spoilers about the movie ‘Finch’</em></p>
<p>The <a href="https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/finch/umc.cmc.47dkj9f2ho3h8dwxixflz65q5">movie <em>Finch</em></a>, released in November on Apple TV+, stars Tom Hanks and a <a href="https://www.madriverunion.com/articles/dogtown-seamus-goes-to-hollywood/">former rescue dog</a> named <a href="https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2021/11/05/finch-dog-goodyear-breed-does-he-die-apple-tv-plus/">Seamus</a>. Critic Tomris Laffly, writing for <em>Variety</em>, describes it as
a “<a href="https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/finch-review-tom-hanks-1235103786/.">big-hearted … post-apocalyptic saga</a>.” </p>
<p>Hanks plays the titular Finch, a survivor in a world with a failing ozone layer. Expecting he will soon <a href="https://forbestimes.com/finch-finch-explained/">die from the sun’s radiation</a>, Finch builds Jeff, a hyper-intelligent robot voiced by Caleb Landry Jones, to care for his dog, Goodyear.</p>
<p><em>Finch</em>, like other <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25746446">science fiction stories featuring dogs</a>, explores the human-dog relationship in part to define what it means to be human.</p>
<h2>Something revealed ‘between beings’</h2>
<p>Over the course of my research on post-apocalyptic fiction — a sub-genre of science fiction that imagines <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-apocalyptic-and-post-apocalyptic-fiction#what-is-apocalyptic-fiction">the Earth as we know it coming to an end</a> — I have been struck by how often dogs accompany the protagonists of such stories.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-0bYWnP3jH4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for ‘Finch.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fiction like <em><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765357151/iamlegend">I Am Legend</a></em> (1954) and <a href="https://www.google.ca/books/edition/A_Boy_and_His_Dog/3K05DAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0"><em>A Boy and his Dog</em></a> (1969), along with their respective <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/">film</a> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072730/">adaptations</a>, are some relevant examples, as is the film <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082694/">The Road Warrior</a></em> (1981) or the “<a href="https://screenrant.com/fallout-4-dogmeat-river-inspiration-rip-npc-companion/">Fallout” video game</a> series.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Sublime-Conclusions">Many</a> <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Terminal_Visions.html?id=ir-EAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">scholars</a> <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137545848">writing on the topic</a> of post-apocalyptic fiction suggest that one of the genre’s central preoccupations is the defining of humanity in relation to nature and to our place in the universe. </p>
<p>Similarly, literature scholar Joan Gordon, who has <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203871317-42/animal-studies-joan-gordon">researched science fiction related to animal studies</a>, argues that the speculative capability of science fiction is well suited to explore the human-dog relationship as “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25746446?refreqid=excelsior%3A6c7f273a9d4112742b4b8f5785cc9838">a mutually influential feedback loop between beings, as they change and are changed by one another</a>.”</p>
<h2>Dogs help make a home</h2>
<p><em>Finch</em> opens with Hanks’ character picking through an abandoned supermarket looking for food, and he just narrowly makes it home before being caught in a terrible storm. “Home” is an underground laboratory, but after descending the cold metallic staircase, Finch finds a warm welcome: a mat that reads “home sweet home” and a friendly dog who perks up at his master’s return.</p>
<p>Just as pets in our own time <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2009.01612.x">can enhance their human owners’ health and well-being</a>, Goodyear is able to relieve Finch of the mental distress brought on by apocalyptic <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.09.011">social exclusion</a>. </p>
<p>As argued by the distinguished historian of utopia, <a href="https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/gregory-claeys(5b39a4f4-deca-43e2-89ba-2c07cce645ef).html">Gregory Claeys</a>, humanity’s fear of <a href="http://DOI.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198785682.001.0001">the dystopian “bad place”</a> is partially inspired by our fear of the dangers lurking beyond the bounds of our societies. </p>
<p>While dogs are not biologically human, <em>Finch</em> suggests they nonetheless assist in differentiating the safe human home from the dangerous outside world.</p>
<h2>Dogs as companions</h2>
<p>Goodyear functions much like the dog in <a href="https://broadviewpress.com/product/the-last-man/#tab-description"><em>The Last Man</em></a>, one of the <a href="https://romantic-circles.org/editions/mws/lastman/paley.htm">earliest examples of post-apocalyptic fiction</a> by the 19th-century English Romantic novelist Mary Shelley. Shelley’s protagonist, Lionel Verney, ends the novel as a lonely survivor of a global cataclysm — in his case, a plague. Looking for companionship, Verney attempts to find sympathy among animals, but when a family of goats refuses to return his friendliness, he concedes that he “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18247/18247-h/18247-h.htm">will not live among the wild scenes of nature</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A painting of a beagle-type dog." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440285/original/file-20220111-23-1e1q9sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440285/original/file-20220111-23-1e1q9sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440285/original/file-20220111-23-1e1q9sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440285/original/file-20220111-23-1e1q9sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440285/original/file-20220111-23-1e1q9sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440285/original/file-20220111-23-1e1q9sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440285/original/file-20220111-23-1e1q9sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The dog has ‘never neglected to watch by and attend on me,’ notes the protagonist in Mary Shelley’s ‘The Last Man.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But like Finch, Verney finds a companion in a dog: “[He] has never neglected to watch by and attend on me, shewing boisterous gratitude whenever I caressed or talked to him.” </p>
<p>While the dog appears only briefly in Shelley’s novel, humanities scholar <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41236550">Hilary Strang suggests</a> that its appearance introduces “a perverse kind of optimism in this rigorously pessimistic novel,” for “in the novel’s final moment, at least there is the possibility of more than one living, humanized creature surviving the future.”</p>
<p>In both <em>Finch</em> and <em>The Last Man</em>, a line is drawn between the distinctly human realm and the realm of nature. And in both, dogs are on the side of humans. </p>
<h2>Emotion and character</h2>
<p>As in other post-apocalyptic stories, <em>Finch</em> considers the nature of human character by exploring the emotional relationship between humans and dogs. Audience members are invited to reflect upon their own emotional response. </p>
<p>For critic Bilge Ebiri, writing for <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/movie-review-finch-a-sci-fi-tearjerker-starring-tom-hanks.html"><em>Vulture</em></a>, Hanks’ successful portrayal of “an ordinary man for extraordinary times” makes the “tear-jerking” <em>Finch</em> particularly effective. Hanks is able to play “a deeply human, relatable hero, suggesting that one needs not stoicism or expertise or muscles to succeed against insurmountable odds, but rather decency and vulnerability.”</p>
<p>While <em>Finch</em> shows the positive side of human character, many dystopian works encourage their audience to reflect on their own emotions by depicting human beings acting inhumanely toward dogs.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A painting of a Newfoundland dog." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440272/original/file-20220111-18741-ak7a5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440272/original/file-20220111-18741-ak7a5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440272/original/file-20220111-18741-ak7a5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440272/original/file-20220111-18741-ak7a5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440272/original/file-20220111-18741-ak7a5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440272/original/file-20220111-18741-ak7a5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440272/original/file-20220111-18741-ak7a5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lord Byron also composed an epitah to his Newfoundland dog, Boatswain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">('Newfoundland Dog' by Charles Henry Schwanfelder/Leeds Museums and Galleries)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Contemporary science fiction author Paolo Bacigalupi, for instance, depicts curious yet callous bio-engineered soldiers abusing a dog in the short story “<a href="https://windupstories.com/books/pump-six-and-other-stories/people-of-sand-and-slag/">The People of Sand and Slag</a>.” </p>
<p>Similarly, Shelley’s contemporary Lord Byron took up this theme in his post-apocalyptic poem “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43825/darkness-56d222aeeee1b">Darkness</a>.” Here, the mistreatment of a faithful dog serves to demonstrate the breakdown of human society.</p>
<p>Byron and Bacigalupi, as well as <em>Finch’s</em> <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/finch-miguel-sapochnik-tom-hanks-interview-1235033236/">director, Miguel Sapochnik</a>, all encourage their audiences to reflect on their empathetic reactions to human-dog relationships. </p>
<h2>Trust and becoming human</h2>
<p>The robot Jeff’s role in <em>Finch</em> is to gradually learn what it means to be human. The robot begins as a typically mechanical being but takes on more and more distinctly human traits as the film goes on. The final hurdle for Jeff to surpass is the gaining of Goodyear’s trust. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Tom Hanks shown with a robot." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440267/original/file-20220111-25-1mlhm06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440267/original/file-20220111-25-1mlhm06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440267/original/file-20220111-25-1mlhm06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440267/original/file-20220111-25-1mlhm06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440267/original/file-20220111-25-1mlhm06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440267/original/file-20220111-25-1mlhm06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440267/original/file-20220111-25-1mlhm06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tom Hanks seen with Jeff, the robot, who, in ‘Finch’ must learn to build trust with Finch’s dog, Goodyear.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Early in the film, Jeff tells Finch, “I don’t think <em>it</em> likes me.” Finch responds: “Well <em>he</em> doesn’t trust you.” During a game of fetch, Jeff throws the tennis ball but Goodyear keeps returning it to Finch. Jeff once again expresses disappointment, but Finch assures him that Goodyear will come around. “Trust me,” Finch says. </p>
<p>As the film nears its end, we find Jeff mourning the death of Finch. Who should arrive just in time, wagging his tail and with a tennis ball in his mouth, but Goodyear looking for a game of fetch. Jeff raises his arms in excited triumph as Jeff runs to retrieve the ball.</p>
<p>The film’s final message, then, is captured in a passage from W. Bruce Cameron’s book <em><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765368294/adogsjourney">A Dog’s Journey</a></em> (also <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8385474/">made into a film</a>) about a dog, reincarnated, who returns to find his master: “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/566473-you-can-usually-tell-that-a-man-is-good-if">You can usually tell that a man is good if he has a dog who loves him</a>.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173309/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Cameron receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>‘Finch’ can be seen in a larger tradition of science fiction that explores the nature of being human through the human-dog relationship.Michael Cameron, PhD Candidate of English, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1238282019-10-14T12:32:00Z2019-10-14T12:32:00ZNetflix is losing shows to rivals – will the music streaming market also splinter?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296874/original/file-20191014-135505-1ncgzeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/aachen-germany-september-10-2019-video-1501425782?src=cFOKA76ZlRv3NfHO1wXAvA-1-2">Alexander Kirch/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Netflix is <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/friends-officially-leaving-netflix-warnermedias-streaming-service-1223151">losing Friends</a>. From 2020, viewers in the US will have to subscribe to the new WarnerMedia streaming service HBO Max to watch the 90s sitcom that until now has been one of the most popular shows on Netflix (the UK and other regions won’t be affected).</p>
<p>It is part of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/27/streaming-tv-is-about-to-get-very-expensive-heres-why">a splintering</a> of the streaming market that will see studios such as Disney as well as technology firms such as Apple launch their own Netflix rivals, dividing up popular content between them. Instead of being able to watch most of your favourite TV shows and films on one or two services, you may have to subscribe to several, or else miss out on content. </p>
<p>Is something similar now likely to happen in other media categories such as music? Our research suggests that proponents and early adopters of streaming services need not panic. In <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0008125618818841">a paper</a> we coauthored with Morgane Evenou (now a manager at Netflix), we found that the streaming business has a “winner-takes-all” dynamic that should eventually produce a small number of players dominating each media category. This means that in the long term, and for most consumers, a few dominant services should provide convenient and reliable access to most content.</p>
<p>However, the long-term situation we envisage has not yet arrived, as we are starkly reminded by the current upheaval in the video streaming market. Netflix is not only losing Friends <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/17/20694711/netflix-friends-the-office-earnings-q2-2019-subscribers-disney-hbo-apple-amazon-stock-drop">but subscribers</a> – 130,000 of them in the last quarter in the US, where market fragmentation is at its strongest.</p>
<h2>The music model</h2>
<p>Convenient and reliable streaming isn’t yet the standard way to access most media content, except for music, as most popular artists are available on most commercial services. This exception reflects the fact that different media industries are in different stages of their digital lifecycle. The music industry was among the first to experience <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/">substantial upheaval</a> in the 2000s due to online piracy. This challenge spurred innovative commercial responses that evolved to become the currently dominant <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/24/weve-got-more-money-swirling-around-how-streaming-saved-the-music-industry">streaming model</a>, through services such as Spotify and YouTube. Listeners have benefited, enjoying access to large catalogues, few geographical restrictions and the ability to listen to music offline.</p>
<p>But it took many years for digital music services to offer this combination of features, and to identify <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christopher_Cayari/publication/234579002_The_YouTube_Effect_How_YouTube_Has_Provided_New_Ways_to_Consume_Create_and_Share_Music/links/5a33e2c345851532e82c933b/The-YouTube-Effect-How-YouTube-Has-Provided-New-Ways-to-Consume-Create-and-Share-Music.pdf">ways to create value</a> for subscribers such as personalised music recommendations and community features such as playlists. </p>
<p>Film and TV, meanwhile is in an earlier phase of this digital lifecycle. Books are increasingly distributed digitally but subscription services such as Kindle Unlimited or Scribd still represent a small share of the market. And video game streaming is still <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/jul/26/video-game-streaming-is-it-worth-it">in its infancy</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296870/original/file-20191014-135501-1u7w8sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296870/original/file-20191014-135501-1u7w8sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296870/original/file-20191014-135501-1u7w8sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296870/original/file-20191014-135501-1u7w8sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296870/original/file-20191014-135501-1u7w8sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296870/original/file-20191014-135501-1u7w8sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296870/original/file-20191014-135501-1u7w8sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Video streaming firms are making their own content.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/madrid-spain-august-13-2018-samsung-1154935315?src=RV1Q0nOGXiZVnemT7mHDcg-1-83">Manuel Esteban/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are also important differences between these media industries. In the case of film, distributors such as Netflix, Amazon and HBO are <a href="https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-content-spending-2019-15-billion-1203112090/">investing heavily</a> in producing their own content, such as House of Cards, The Vikings and Game of Thrones, in order to grow and retain their subscribers. This makes it harder for consumers to access everything without multiple subscriptions.</p>
<p>In contrast, production and distribution are mostly separated in the music industry. Record labels continue to focus on production while other players such as Spotify and Apple focus on distribution. This separation allows each distributor to offer a deep catalogue of content, which has enabled music streaming services to become a practical alternative to piracy for the average music lover. If record companies were to break this model by requiring consumers to pay for several music service subscriptions to access their favourite artists, it would risk pushing them back to illegal sites.</p>
<p>Instead, music distributors compete mainly on how this catalogue is presented, navigated and consumed. And this is where a large user base is beneficial to the distributor, generating information that improves content navigation and recommendations, as well as valuable social interactions on the service and through integration with social networks such as Facebook. It also increases the distributors’ bargaining power when it comes to securing the content from the record companies.</p>
<p>This gives an advantage to companies with more users, encouraging a <a href="https://www.london.edu/lbsr/nine-reasons-why-tech-markets-are-winner-take-all">winner-takes-all</a> dynamic in which a small number of firms become dominant. In fact, the advantages of a large user base together with a large content catalogue are so strong that we don’t expect the launch of new streaming services by film and TV studios to keep the market fragmented forever. So while Netflix faces significant short-term challenges, it (or one of its rivals) may still eventually emerge as the dominant player.</p>
<h2>Other media</h2>
<p>How this separation between production and distribution will play out for books and video games in the long term is yet uncertain. But if consumers require several services to access their desired content, physical copies will remain attractive. And in these media categories, the physical still retains the upper hand.</p>
<p>While <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/18/tech/e3-video-games-cloud-gaming/index.html">some are enthusiastic</a> about video game streaming services, these have yet to prove they can match the gameplay experiences traditional consoles are capable of. If the stream is slow to register a player’s commands or the video quality suffers or cuts out even for a split second, it could make many fast-paced games <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/jul/26/video-game-streaming-is-it-worth-it">less enjoyable or even unplayable</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, physical books still provide an experience many readers appreciate, which may explain why <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/03/leading-the-entertainment-pack-uk-print-book-sales-rise-again">sales have rebounded</a> over the last few years. Physical collections also help consumers build more of a <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/07378830911007673/full/html">personal relationship</a> with their media, in contrast to the impersonal abundance of choice promoted by digital services. They also have resale value that, in some cases, can be substantial.</p>
<p>So in the long term, we expect the distribution and consumption of media to migrate to a small handful of streaming services, as they already have for music. But in the meantime, catalogues could remain fragmented over several providers. We will have to wait and see if new streaming services are worth it. But if you can’t be bothered with multiple subscriptions or adapting to their current limitations, a shelf of carefully selected Blu-Rays, books and video games remains a safe bet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123828/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Movie studios are launching their own streaming apps but record labels aren’t about to do the same.Andres Hervas-Drane, Senior Lecturer in Management, Cass Business School, City, University of LondonPaolo Aversa, Senior Lecturer in Strategy, Cass Business School, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/506722015-11-17T16:00:21Z2015-11-17T16:00:21ZOn a clear day you can see Apple Corp (in fact, that’s pretty much all you can see)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101814/original/image-20151113-10407-1rsthre.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">World's biggest company ... and still growing.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Apple Inc.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ladies and gentlemen we are fast approaching peak Apple. In recent days we’ve seen the Steve Jobs <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2080374/%20">biopic</a> starring Michael Fassbender released, heard the current CEO, Tim Cook, tell <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/11984806/Apples-Tim-Cook-declares-the-end-of-the-PC-and-hints-at-new-medical-product.html">the Daily Telegraph</a> that the government’s plans for increased surveillance powers could have “very dire consequences” and been informed that the company is to create a 1,000 new jobs in <a href="http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/apple-to-create-up-to-1000-jobs-as-part-of-irish-expansion-34189877.html">Cork, Ireland</a>.</p>
<p>Then there was also the extremely unedifying video <a href="http://twww.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2015/nov/12/melbourne-apple-store-accused-of-racism-after-asking-black-students-to-leave-video">posted online</a> in which a member of staff in the Apple store in Melbourne, Australia, asked a group of black students to leave because security was “just worried” that they might steal something. That’s different all right.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lR2PX97itSs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps this bit of bad PR won’t unduly worry Cook, because in October <a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/10/27Apple-Reports-Record-Fourth-Quarter-Results.html%20">he announced</a> that (the fiscal year) 2015 had been the company’s most successful ever, during which revenue grew 28% to nearly US$234 billion.</p>
<h2>How do you like them Apples?</h2>
<p>To put Apple’s profits in context, according to the Telegraph this is the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/11959016/Apple-reports-biggest-annual-profit-in-history.html">biggest annual profit in corporate history</a>, surpassing the US$45.2bn made by ExxonMobil in 2008. </p>
<p>Many analysts have reported Apple is the world’s most valuable company and this is before, as forecast, China overtakes the US to become its biggest market. Quoting World Bank statistics, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/27/apple-2015-revenue-iphone-sales%20">Rupert Neate</a> wrote in the Guardian that Apple now has more money in the bank than the Czech Republic, Peru and New Zealand make in gross domestic product (GDP) a year.</p>
<h2>Strength to say ‘no’</h2>
<p>There <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%20https:/www.quora.com/What-are-the-key-reasons-for-Apples-success-Are-Apple-product-so-successful-because-of-the-brand-status-and-premium-pricing">are some</a> who attribute Apple’s success to their commitment to a relatively small range of products. Before Apple TVs, there were phones, pads, pods, watches and Macs – that was pretty much it. Compared to the sprawling range of goods offered by Samsung that’s a relatively small range and it means that the company’s designers and promoters can better channel their resources into areas they are familiar with. </p>
<p>The sayings and aphorisms of Jobs have gained almost Confucian gravitas since his death, but perhaps one of his most famous utterances is relevant here. In an <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2004-10-11/the-seed-of-apples-innovation">interview with Business Week</a> in 2004 he said that innovation comes from:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That said, Apple is now at the forefront of what <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-10/21/apple-news-launched-what-is-apple-news">James Temperton</a> calls the “battle for control of people’s online reading habits”. In October it also launched Apple News, a service for iPhones and iPads which in the words of <a href="http://www.apple.com/uk/news/">Apple’s own publicity</a>: “Collects all the stories you want to read, from top news sources, based on topics you’re most interested in – so you no longer need to move from app to app to stay informed.”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102171/original/image-20151117-21590-1sav4k3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102171/original/image-20151117-21590-1sav4k3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102171/original/image-20151117-21590-1sav4k3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102171/original/image-20151117-21590-1sav4k3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102171/original/image-20151117-21590-1sav4k3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102171/original/image-20151117-21590-1sav4k3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102171/original/image-20151117-21590-1sav4k3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102171/original/image-20151117-21590-1sav4k3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Remember the first Macintosh? No? Us neither.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kevin chen2003 via Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, Apple is not going to be a content provider. Already signed up to do that are TIME, CNN, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Quartz, Vanity Fair and WIRED in the US and, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/22/apple-news-uk-newspapers-ios-91">in the UK</a>: BBC, Sky news, the Sun, the Financial Times and the Telegraph, among others.</p>
<p>Apple Pay, the new contactless payment system for iPhones and iWatches, also looks set to make a splash, while the new Apple TV has broadcasters such as the BBC racing to develop apps to suit. Apple, Apple, everywhere. </p>
<h2>Monopoly of influence</h2>
<p>Which is all well and good, but the consequences of such monopolies of influence have long concerned political economists and cultural theorists. <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/greening-the-media/201505/worries-about-the-apple-watch-and-the-internet-things">Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller</a> argue that the digital environment of wearable computers is a place where things relate only to other things. We might imagine otherwise, they say, but we relinquish a little more digital freedom each time we click on “I Agree”. </p>
<p>It’s a world where human agency and compassion become subsumed beneath a desire to own and consume – but of course this depends on those who sweat to make our electric dreams come true. In Apple’s autumn of profit and launch, the <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-supplier-factory-shanghai-rife-labor-abuses-report-2152722">International Business Times</a> reported on life at a major Apple supplier factory in Shanghai where workers toil “in excess of the tech giant’s self-imposed 60-hour limit per week, putting in 12-hour shifts six days a week”.</p>
<p>There is also the damage to the ecosystem that goes hand-in-hand with our reliance on electronic goods. As Maxwell and Miller point out, around US$1 trillion a year is spent on electronics. There are more than 14 billion network-enabled electronic devices needing electricity today at a rate equal to 15% of total global residential energy use. Without any changes to this trend, Maxwell and Miller reason, the residential electricity needed to power our digital conveniences will rise to 30% of global consumption by 2022, and 45% by 2030. This includes billions of dollars worth of electricity wasted while these network devices are on standby.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102172/original/image-20151117-16026-1wfrtzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102172/original/image-20151117-16026-1wfrtzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102172/original/image-20151117-16026-1wfrtzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102172/original/image-20151117-16026-1wfrtzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102172/original/image-20151117-16026-1wfrtzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102172/original/image-20151117-16026-1wfrtzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/102172/original/image-20151117-16026-1wfrtzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People waiting to buy the new iPhone in New York, 2007.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Padraic Ryan via Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And that’s before we get on to Apple’s record of tax minimisation which reportedly enabled the multinational to pay <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3149056/Apple-pays-just-12m-UK-tax-2bn-profit-Miserly-bill-400million-short-figure-tech-giant-paid.html">just £11.8m in British corporation tax</a> last year on profits estimated at almost £2 billion.</p>
<p>The presence of Apple products in our lives continues apace and shows no signs of slowing. And with the company’s <a href="http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/10/28/apple-spent-record-17b-on-research-development-last-quarter-6b-in-fiscal-2014">spending on research and development</a> growing by 35% to more than US$6 billion in 2014, we can be relatively sure that the <a href="http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/132763-apple-car-what-s-the-story-so-far-on-project-titan">Apple car</a> is not too far away.</p>
<p>On reflection, then – peak Apple is nowhere near.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50672/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Apple is already the biggest company in the world and looks set to grow even faster in the future. Is that necessarily a good thing?John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/473722015-09-10T14:23:14Z2015-09-10T14:23:14ZApple’s iPad Pro looks good, but who needs a phone with a 13" screen?<p>Apple’s annual September keynote as usual brings hardware changes, software updates and the occasional surprise. </p>
<p>Rumours of a larger iPad Pro <a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/09/ipad-pro-first-impressions/">were proved true</a>: the significantly larger 12.9 inch iPad with upgraded ARM A9X processor and faster graphics and internal components is being sold as a device on which desktop-class applications could run.</p>
<p>This is supported with a stylus and keyboard (sold separately in typical Apple fashion) that essentially converts the iPad Pro into a laptop. The stylus, dubbed Apple Pencil, has provoked comment as Steve Jobs had <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/jobs-if-you-see-a-stylus-or-a-task-manager-they-blew-it/">expressed his distaste for them</a> in the past. The Pencil features hand writing recognition software, and improvements to iOS finally allow multitasking by splitting the screen between two apps. </p>
<p>However, with prices starting at an eye-watering US$799, there will be many who think that this won’t light a fire under tablet sales, <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/12/forrester-tablet-sales-have-plateaued-but-theres-a-future-in-business">which have been flat</a>. For example, Amazon has taken the opposite approach, aiming for the bottom end of the market with <a href="http://www.inquisitr.com/2402232/amazon-to-release-50-tablet-will-the-6-incher-have-mainstream-hardware-and-features/">a US$50 tablet</a> subsidised by purchases made through Amazon’s services. </p>
<p>There may be iPad sales in education, and in retail where they are often used as point of sale devices, but in business the iPad faces considerable competition. For example, the iPad Pro bears an uncanny similarity to Microsoft’s own convertible tablet/laptop device, the <a href="http://www.inquisitr.com/2402232/amazon-to-release-50-tablet-will-the-6-incher-have-mainstream-hardware-and-features/">Surface Pro</a>, in cost and size and style. But the big difference is that Surface comes with a full operating system, Windows 10: few will take Apple’s claims that the iPad Pro can run desktop-class applications for professional use while it’s running the stripped-down iOS operating system originally designed for phones, instead of the full OS X as found on Macbooks and iMacs.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94403/original/image-20150910-27340-ztjq4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94403/original/image-20150910-27340-ztjq4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94403/original/image-20150910-27340-ztjq4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94403/original/image-20150910-27340-ztjq4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94403/original/image-20150910-27340-ztjq4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94403/original/image-20150910-27340-ztjq4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94403/original/image-20150910-27340-ztjq4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94403/original/image-20150910-27340-ztjq4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet, keyboard and stylus combo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Microsoft</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>A surprise was the <a href="http://winsupersite.com/apple/microsoft-makes-appearance-during-apple-product-keynote">appearance of Microsoft staff</a> on stage to demonstrate Microsoft Office apps running on the iPad – something greeted with a stunned silence in the auditorium. Microsoft Office has been updated to support the stylus, and the invitation to appear at such a high-profile Apple event shows the extent to which Microsoft has been pouring money and effort into ensuring its software suites are cross-platform, rather than tied to Microsoft Windows. Another visitor to the stage was Adobe, whose reps showed off <a href="http://www.dezeen.com/2015/09/10/apple-ipad-pro-apple-pencil-stylus-launch-technical-drawing/">new design tools with the stylus</a> – which all suggests an outbreak of corporate peace between the firms. </p>
<h2>Pushing Apple TV into the home</h2>
<p>The Apple TV finally gets a long-awaited upgrade, a wait during which many competing devices have appeared such as NOW TV, Roku, or Google’s Chromecast. Originally classified as a “media extender”, Steve Jobs called the Apple TV a “<a href="http://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/02/jobs_apple_tv_a_hobby_because_theres_no_market">hobby</a>” when introduced in 2007, but with this update Apple has refreshed the device, reorienting it to support the app ecosystem that has thrived elsewhere.</p>
<p>The new Apple TV features a new operating system <a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/09/apple-tv-first-impressions/">tvOS</a>, making use of the extensive iPhone/iPad developer tools and software already available. Boasting a much higher hardware specification, the Apple TV now runs apps and games, provides a new interface and a touch-enabled remote that can also process audio commands through the Siri digital assistant voice recognition system. With this a user can use their voice to search for content across multiple television networks.</p>
<p>It should be easy to port existing iPad/iPhone applications to the TV, bringing an unparalleled range of services compared to the competition. The surge in streaming services from Amazon and Netflix has sidelined Apple to some extent, so it will be interesting to see whether reorienting the device around apps will increase Apple’s footprint in this space. Sony and Microsoft should be worried that the massive back catalogue of iOS games can now be used in the living room through Apple TV. Prices start from US$149, available from October.</p>
<h2>Phone and Watch</h2>
<p>An update to the Watch, dubbed <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/wearables/apple-watch-os-2-release-date-news-and-features-1296413">WatchOS2</a>, arrives later this month and features updated accessories, colours and straps. The update will give apps direct access to the hardware, allowing developers to write full native applications for that are more independent of the iPhone, to which the Watch has so far played second fiddle.</p>
<p>The iPhone 6S and iPhone 6SPlus are unchanged externally, but Apple claims internal upgrades including a 12 megapixel capable camera, faster A9 processor and a <a href="http://www.wired.com/2015/09/what-is-the-difference-between-apple-iphone-3d-touch-and-force-touch/">Force Touch</a> capable screen, which responds to varying degrees of pressure. This is still a new tech, for which capable software has yet to be written. </p>
<p>Finally, as signalled in the developer conference earlier in the year, owners of older devices will get access to new features when iOS 9 is launched very soon. An incremental upgrade, nevertheless it offers features many users have been calling for and will provide a significant increase in speed and features for older devices.</p>
<p>It’s unlikely these changes will lead to the extraordinary sales achieved with the larger iPhones last year, so it may provide an opportunity for other manufacturers to play catch-up – improving their hardware and services which Apple has always claimed is what differentiates them from the competition in a crowded market.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47372/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barry Avery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Apple tries to repeat the same supersize trick with the iPad that made the iPhone 6 wildly popular. But bigger isn’t necessarily better.Barry Avery, Associate Professor, Informatics and Operations , Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/397832015-04-08T20:07:21Z2015-04-08T20:07:21ZIs Foxtel most at risk in the new Game of Screens?<p>If the experience in other major television markets like the United States and Canada is anything to go by, the omens are mixed for Foxtel. </p>
<p>In the US, the phenomenon of “cord-cutting”, or “churn” – when a consumer cancels their subscription to a cable or satellite pay television service, often in order to take up cheaper “over the top” services delivered online, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV – has attracted increasing attention in recent years. </p>
<p>The US launch today of the stand-alone service HBO Now (initially available exclusively via Apple TV boxes) has increased the frenzy of reports on cord-cutting, and proliferated guides to <a href="http://time.com/money/3767927/cable-tv-without-paying-bill/">“ditching cable”</a>.</p>
<p>And yet while pay television subscriptions are falling in both the US and Canada, they are falling very slowly. One research firm has reported that the 13 largest US pay-television providers that collectively represent about 95% of the market, <a href="http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/press/030315release.html">lost a total of 125,000 subscribers</a> – or 0.1% of the total – in 2014. </p>
<p>In Canada, the drop in 2013 was even smaller, from 11.514 million to 11.507 million subscribers (or less than 0.1%). Meanwhile, revenues, profit, and employment in the sector all <a href="http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=848179">increased</a>. </p>
<h2>The Netflix wildcard</h2>
<p>In Australia, <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/foxtels-price-cut-pays-off-with-boost-in-subscribers/story-e6frg8zx-1227217809689">Foxtel reported</a> in its half-year results ending December 31, 2014 that its subscribers rose by 118,000 to 2.6 million. This rise, while probably due to substantial discounting by Foxtel in the lead-up to the Australian launch of Netflix, more than offset a very high churn rate of just below 11.5%. </p>
<p>Despite Foxtel’s rise in subscriptions, its revenue growth was a weak 1.2% for the half-year, and less than 30% of Australian households currently subscribe to a pay television service. This proportion has risen very slowly over the last decade. In the USA, the equivalent figure is more like 80%.</p>
<p>The “glass half full” take on this, represented by Telstra CEO David Thodey, (Telstra is a part-owner of Foxtel) is that the Australian subscription television/SVOD base is set to rise to approximately 70% in future. Thodey did not predict what <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/telstra-hopeful-paytv-market-will-hit-70-per-cent-20150215-13d6h5.html">proportion Foxtel would command</a>. </p>
<p>At the end of 2014, <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2015/the-total-audience-report-q4-2014.html">approximately 40% of American households subscribed to an SVOD service</a>, with Netflix by far the most popular.</p>
<p>In Australia, it has been reported that around 200,000 Australians have previously subscribed to the American Netflix service. Around ten times that number have <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/netflix-takes-lead-in-race-for-subscriptions/story-e6frg996-1227292402172">reportedly</a> indicated that they either already subscribe, or intend to subscribe to the Australian Netflix service.
If this latter figure is correct, it is not far off Foxtel’s current subscriber base. </p>
<p>It is of course highly likely that many Foxtel subscribers are also subscribing to Netflix – at least during the latter’s initial first month free promotion. It will be fascinating to see whether Netflix’s numbers fall when this promotion ends.</p>
<h2>Substantial price discounting</h2>
<p>In November, Foxtel drastically reduced its prices for new subscribers, <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/foxtel-boss-flags-major-changes-tackle-threat-streaming-rivals-249430">offering</a> a range of new channel bouquets. In February, through its part-owner Telstra, Foxtel <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/foxtel-unveils-triple-play-bundle-streaming-competition-heats-273580">launched</a> a “triple-play” bundle combining subscription television, broadband, and home phone. </p>
<p>And late last month, just as Netflix opened for business in Australia, Foxtel launched its new iQ3 set top box. Unfortunately for Foxtel, the box has been plagued with problems, much to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/foxtel-bats-away-suggestions-iq3-glitches-were-consequence-of-rush-to-beat-netflix-20150406-1mdn78.html">subscribers’ annoyance</a>. </p>
<p>All of these moves reflect the fact that Foxtel is not able to compete with Netflix on price alone. The new SVOD service’s basic offering costs A$8.99 per month, while Foxtel’s cheapest package is A$25 per month, which doesn’t include the new set top box. </p>
<p>Foxtel considers itself much more competitive in terms of content offered. Netflix’s Australian catalogue currently boasts about 1000 films and programs. This is substantially smaller than its offerings in the USA and Canada, leading the chief executive of News Corp (half-owner of Foxtel) to describe the Australian service as <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/arrival-of-netflix-and-svod-set-to-change-australian-tv-20150327-1m8zlo.html">“slightly warmed-up leftovers”</a>. This is both disingenuous, given Netflix’s investments in original content, and hypocritical, given some of the programs that fill Foxtel channels’ schedules. And further, takeup of Netflix to date suggests consumers are unconcerned.</p>
<h2>Content will be king</h2>
<p>Exclusive content is the main battleground, and Game of Thrones is Foxtel’s champion – <a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/entire-fifth-season-of-game-of-thrones-to-be-timed-with-us-release/story-fnjwneld-1227258050042">for the next ten weeks, at least</a>. Two years ago, Foxtel signed a deal with GoT’s producer HBO. This was soon followed by a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-foxtel-bbc-deal-implications-for-australian-television-and-content-13654">landmark deal</a> for first-release content with the BBC. And of course Foxtel also has a slew of sports content that Netflix cannot match, for the moment at least.</p>
<p>Neither should it be forgotten that Foxtel has its own VOD service – Foxtel Play – as well as Presto, a joint partnership with the Seven Network. In theory, Foxtel Play should be Foxtel’s trump card. Along with access to a huge back catalogue, the service also allows subscribers to watch live television online. * </p>
<p>But the app that allows access to Foxtel Play on mobile devices – somewhat confusingly called Foxtel Go – is as buggy and unpopular with subscribers as the new iQ3 set top box. And judging by comments on the app’s page in the Appstore, and on <a href="http://community.foxtel.com.au/t5/Foxtel-Go/bd-p/Foxtel-Go">Foxtel’s own Foxtel Go Community page</a>, these problems are not new, and Foxtel seems unwilling or unable to do anything about them. </p>
<p>Foxtel has a number of advantages that should help it maintain its business for the time being. First, it has a large and still growing (albeit very slowly) subscriber base, which <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/spending-on-digital-entertainment-tipped-to-hit-40b-by-2018-20140706-3bgit.html">delivers a very healthy average revenue per user of around $100</a>. However, high churn rates and the issues with some of its services and technologies suggest that subscribers are not all rusted on.</p>
<p>Second, it has an extensive catalogue of exclusive content, including an unmatched offering of sports programming.</p>
<h2>Powerful backers</h2>
<p>Third, it is an innovator, brokering deals to offer its services through devices such as Microsoft’s XBox and Sony’s Playstation, as well as online. Its set top box technology, in theory, is top of the range, although teething problems have taken a bite out of the iQ3. It offered catch-up services online in advance of most of its competitors, but technological problems persist.</p>
<p>Fourth, it has the backing of two major players in the form of joint owners Telstra and News Corp. Neither of these behemoths are likely to see their offspring go down without a fight, and there are clear indications that they will do all they can to prop it up. </p>
<p>The “triple play” deal leverages Telstra’s market power, with Foxtel also an integral part of Telstra’s T-Box service. And if Megan Brownlow, editor of PwC’s Australian Media and Entertainment Outlook, is correct in arguing that “<a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/foxtel-unveils-triple-play-bundle-streaming-competition-heats-273580">This will be a marketing war not just a content war</a>”, then News Corp will be an invaluable ally.</p>
<h2>Watch this space</h2>
<p>There are also several factors that play against Foxtel. First, its overheads are considerably higher than Netflix’s, given the technological infrastructure and support services that Foxtel must maintain. </p>
<p>Second, <a href="http://screenaustralia.gov.au/news_and_events/bulletins/didyouknow/2015/10Mar2015.aspx">Australians are increasingly comfortable with VOD services</a>. In research conducted prior to the launch of Netflix, over 50% of Australians surveyed reported regularly watching video online. 50% of those surveyed said that they would watch more content online if they had a faster Internet connection. </p>
<p>It will only be a matter of time before this changes. In its latest <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/8153.0/">Internet Activity survey</a>, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that at the end of 2014, almost 99% of all Internet connections were broadband. Over 70% of broadband subscribers have a service with an advertised download speed above 8Mbps. While many still experience lower speeds, this is still more than sufficient to receive VOD services in Standard Definition. </p>
<p>There may be no ultimate victor in the new Game of Screens. But judging by the contestants’ moves, and by the audiences they are attracting, it will be compulsive viewing for some time to come.</p>
<hr>
<p>* <i>Since publication this piece has been amended. The original piece incorrectly identified Presto as a joint venture between Foxtel and Fairfax Media. Presto is jointly owned by Foxtel and the Seven Network. Stan is the joint venture between Fairfax Media and the Nine Network.</i></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Goldsmith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australians have enthusiastically embraced new streaming service Netflix. But with its subscription business model under threat, Foxtel is coming out fighting.Ben Goldsmith, Senior Research Fellow , Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/385692015-03-09T22:56:02Z2015-03-09T22:56:02ZApple may have arrived late to the party, but with Watch it’s brought a gun to a swordfight<p>While all eyes and ears were trained on news of its smartwatch, Apple also used its spring Keynote to introduce changes to Apple TV, revisions to its laptop lineup, and a new service that builds on the health monitoring aspects of smartwatches to perform data collection for medical research.</p>
<p>As one digital TV service after another launches many have been left wondering when HBO, whose television dramas are highly sought and widely watched properties, would play its hand. And here it is: a partnership with Apple that makes the entire HBO back catalogue available through the new <a href="http://www.hbogo.com/">HBO Go</a> digital streaming service, available exclusively through Apple TV. So while the Apple TV hardware hasn’t been updated for years, the partnership with HBO (and a price drop to £59) is a nice reminder for those who may have overlooked it.</p>
<p>Apple has extended its reach into car dashboards with <a href="https://www.apple.com/uk/ios/carplay/">CarPlay</a>, into home automation with <a href="http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/129922-apple-homekit-explained-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work">HomeKit</a>, and into health monitoring with <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/11395073/What-is-Apples-HealthKit.html">HealthKit</a>. Apple hopes that <a href="https://www.apple.com/researchkit/">ResearchKit</a>, a new open-source API and service, will form the foundation for apps that can collect health data from larger numbers of volunteers, increasing sample sizes and frequency of data collection, making the data more useful for researchers. <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/09/apple-introduces-researchkit-turning-iphones-into-medical-diagnostic-devices/">Five apps</a> have been developed so far, to investigate Parkinson’s Disease, asthma, diabetes and cardiovascular disease with research groups in leading hospitals. There is an emphasis on privacy, with the user controlling the degree of information that is being shared.</p>
<p>The new <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/laptops/apple-retina-macbook-air-release-date-news-and-rumours-1274862">Macbook</a> – neither Air nor Pro – comes with the latest retina display, a faster, more energy efficient processor, and a trackpad that can supply tactile feedback. In a 12" format that fills out the line between 11" and 13", it is lighter and thinner even than the Air, has a re-engineered keyboard and somewhat controversially rolls many ports into just one: the <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/personal-technology/2015/03/09/the-new-apple-macbooks-only-port-usb-type-c-explained/">USB-C standard port</a>, which will handle HDMI video, external hard drives and other USB peripherals. Inevitably this is going to mean buying another set of cables. </p>
<h2>Watch my watch</h2>
<p>In any other keynote this reveal would have been the main news item. But of course the main event was the watch. Seven months since Tim Cook first revealed the device, it’s been a long wait for more technical details. Opinion is still split on whether it will be a hard sell. With fewer people wearing watches anyway, the market is split between those who want a fitness tracker and those that want a beautiful luxury object. Is there a need for a device which essentially duplicates the functionality of a smartphone? Apple has to convince us that the watch offers more, in clear terms of where glancing at a watch is preferred to pulling out a phone.</p>
<p>Usually reserved to only one or two colours, this time Apple offers 20 different combinations of ways to customise the watch in size, colour, watch and strap material – probably a necessity in order to sell a device that by nature of being frequently visible is more fashion than function.</p>
<p>The styling of the watch itself is reminiscent of the first iPhone, with three versions in two different sizes, 38mm or 42mm high: the cheapest Apple Sport at £299 with an aluminium body and plastic straps, the middle tier Apple Watch from £479 in stainless steel and wrist bands in leather, steel or plastic, and the gold Apple Watch Edition, which starts at £8,000 – perhaps more expensive even than the Apple Lisa from 1983, which sold at US$15,000 at the time.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74230/original/image-20150309-13543-btc23v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74230/original/image-20150309-13543-btc23v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74230/original/image-20150309-13543-btc23v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74230/original/image-20150309-13543-btc23v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74230/original/image-20150309-13543-btc23v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=702&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74230/original/image-20150309-13543-btc23v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=702&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74230/original/image-20150309-13543-btc23v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=702&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">All the information, but smaller and nearer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Apple</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most of the functionality of the watch requires an iPhone within a few metres – maps, messages, Siri and other apps are relayed from the phone using WiFi or mobile data. Apple suggests that the battery will last 18 hours in a typical day.</p>
<h2>Not first to market, but best?</h2>
<p>Apple invests heavily in research and development to create new devices and interfaces that differentiate its products, at least, until competitors release their responses. Apple’s watch uses an <a href="http://www.cameradebate.com/2014/apple-watch-sport-ion-x-glass-vs-sapphire-crystal-display/">Ion-X glass or Sapphire crystal screen</a> which is pressure-sensitive to varying degrees. The side-mounted dial, which Apple terms a digital crown, enables scrolling and clicking, and a button below it jumps to frequent contacts. It has a “<a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/2690729/taptic-haptics-and-the-body-fantastic-the-real-apple-watch-revolution.html">Taptic</a>” engine which provides vibration feedback for certain apps, for example suggesting directions in Maps. The sensors on watch’s underside detect heartbeat and combine with the accelerometer to measure physical activity, something Apple is pitching as a major selling point. </p>
<p>Developers are already creating software that will extend their iPhone apps to interact with and be accessible from the watch, as Apple has with its Apple Pay contactless payment system. Miniature messages appear on the device in what Apple calls <a href="https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/WatchHumanInterfaceGuidelines/Glances.html">Glances</a>, giving the impression of dealing with such messages quickly without the hassle of pulling out a phone.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74233/original/image-20150309-13567-1ezplat.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74233/original/image-20150309-13567-1ezplat.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74233/original/image-20150309-13567-1ezplat.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74233/original/image-20150309-13567-1ezplat.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74233/original/image-20150309-13567-1ezplat.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74233/original/image-20150309-13567-1ezplat.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74233/original/image-20150309-13567-1ezplat.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74233/original/image-20150309-13567-1ezplat.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From watches to smartwatches, with only a little relief.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://xkcd.com/1420/">XKCD</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Will it sell? In the past 18 months customers have bought 5m smartwatches or fitness bands, with Samsung flooding the market with many smartwatch devices, but with fitness bands accounting for the majority of sales. Current estimates suggest that Apple could sell <a href="http://mashable.com/2015/03/09/apple-watch-sales-predictions/">more than 8m watches</a>, eight times as many as its largest competitor.</p>
<p>While many of its features will appear in competitor’s smartwatches in the subsequent years, for the moment the eponymous watch is best in class. To sound a note of caution: like the first generation iPhone, the second generation device will probably be half as deep and run twice as long. You may be unfazed about the risks of being an early adopter, but if the idea of paying another few hundred pounds for the latest model next year isn’t appealing, it may be sensible to wait.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barry Avery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Apple sets out its stall for a Watch for every wrist and health monitoring for every wearer.Barry Avery, Associate Professor, Informatics and Operations , Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/352532015-01-15T03:46:25Z2015-01-15T03:46:25ZThe future of sportscasting? Cricket Australia launches on Apple TV<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69072/original/image-20150115-2993-1bw1gzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The current five year broadcast rights for Cricket Australia are A$590 million.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Yesterday Cricket Australia <a href="http://www.cricket.com.au/news/cricket-australia-launches-apple-tv-channel/2015-01-14">launched</a> onto the Apple TV network, becoming the <a href="http://www.afr.com/p/technology/cricket_australia_lines_up_deal_ShdeYikg6SbsrGmNreEW6O">first Australian sports organisation</a> to join the platform. The new Cricket Australia channel will <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/cricket-australia-nine-choose-apple-tv-new-internet-channel-launch-270903">feature</a> a mixture of interviews, skills tutorials and highlights, with some content being created by Nine Network (which currently airs Australia’s international matches), but no live content, yet.</p>
<p>This new development raises the question of sports broadcasting rights and how the traditional television model may be changing. Does traditional free-to-air TV sports broadcasting have a future in Australia? </p>
<p>Cricket Australia <a href="http://www.alrc.gov.au/sites/default/files/subs/228._org_cricketaustralia.pdf">reported</a> in 2012 that “media rights typically account for 60-80% of the total annual income for Cricket Australia”. More recently those rights have expanded beyond television and radio to digital rights. Both the Australian Football League (AFL) and Cricket Australia have commenced digital subscriptions, which allows access to video streaming of games. </p>
<h2>Media regulation</h2>
<p>The concept of sport broadcasts becoming subscription-based is not new. </p>
<p>In 1992, paid-subscription media attempted to take hold of Australian sports. But this was prevented by the government’s introduction of anti-siphoning laws to regulate the media companies’ access to significant sporting events. </p>
<p>The provisions of the Broadcasting Services Act (1992) governing sports broadcasts have been the subject of long-running debate between free-to-air, pay television providers and the Australian public. </p>
<p>In 2002 <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/04/17/1019020660840.html">Optus argued</a> that “anti-siphoning in terms of sporting properties are a major impediment of (subscriber) uptake”. Fox Sports <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/21/1026898946381.html">too argued</a> that the “existing scheme favoured free-to-air broadcasters”. </p>
<p>In 2009 Free TV Australia Limited launched <a href="http://KeepSportFree.com.au">Keep Sport Free</a>, a public petition campaigning for sport to stay <a href="http://www.freetv.com.au/media/News-Media_Release/MED_Keep_Sport_Free.pdf">free on Australian television</a>. </p>
<p>Do things change, however, when a sporting code itself is effectively taking the role of broadcaster, as appears to be the case in Cricket Australia’s collaboration with Apple TV?</p>
<h2>Big money is involved in sports broadcasting</h2>
<p>Foxtel has recently held part of the broadcast rights for both AFL and cricket – although the Broadcasting Act requires them to collaborate with free-to-air broadcasters. </p>
<p>The current five-year broadcast rights for AFL are valued at <a href="http://www.news.com.au/finance/afl-announces-1bn-tv-rights-deal/story-e6frfm1i-1226046325694">A$1.25 billion</a> and for Cricket Australia at <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-04/grassroots-cricket-to-benefit-from-financial-windfall/4732566">A$590 million</a>. (Compare this to the latest NBA US$24 billion broadcast deal for nine years, to begin in 2017.) </p>
<p>These figures give an indication of how lucrative sporting rights are globally. </p>
<p>The formal negations will commence in the coming weeks for the AFL broadcasting rights from 2017, with bidding expected to start at <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/seven-to-remain-sensible-in-afl-broadcast-rights-bid-20141104-11gmym.html">A$1.5 billion</a>. </p>
<p>While all free-to-air television networks have expressed interest in the new rights, the real battle to watch is over digital rights. It is <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/seven-to-remain-sensible-in-afl-broadcast-rights-bid-20141104-11gmym.html">rumoured</a> that the Apple TV network, Google and YouTube could also become part of the new AFL digital rights discussions. </p>
<p>In addition to new players for the digital rights, The Age <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/seven-to-remain-sensible-in-afl-broadcast-rights-bid-20141104-11gmym.html">reports</a> that the AFL could potentially “produce a game of its own per week via its website and available on hand-held devices”.</p>
<p>Cricket Australia is taking a different approach. It has overhauled its digital presence for the 2014-15 season to allow the fans to “<a href="http://www.campaignbrief.com/2014/11/cricket-australia-to-bring-fan.html">get closer to the action this summer</a>”. </p>
<p>The update includes further strengthening its partnership with Nine Entertainment. During the television broadcasts of the cricket there are many discussions between commentators promoting the video streaming service; something not seen within AFL broadcasts. The new Cricket Australia content on the Apple TV network promises to further enhance this stream.</p>
<h2>Digital streaming by AFL and Cricket Australia</h2>
<p>The AFL’s digital streaming service <a href="https://id.afl.com.au/livepass">Live Pass</a> is the result of a deal with Telstra, which <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/afl-could-face-real-challenges-to-secure-20172021-tv-rights-deal-with-clubs-on-leagues-back/story-fni5f22o-1227031143151">paid</a> A$153 million in 2011 for the digital rights. The service has packages for those living in Australia and <a href="http://watchafl.afl.com.au">abroad</a>. </p>
<p>By contrast, Cricket Australia’s <a href="http://https://secure.cricket.com.au/account/subscribe">Live Pass</a> is available on mobile and tablet devices, along with streaming on computers. The subscription is only available in Australia, for games played in Australia (except the 2015 World Cup) and the Ashes tour of the British Isles 2015. This includes the Test series, one-day internationals, T20 (International and Big Bash) and Southern Stars (Australian women’s team) matches.</p>
<h2>Dedicated streaming for fans</h2>
<p>The AFL and Cricket Australia “live” streaming services are in competition with free-to-air television broadcasters, but also other subscription services such as Foxtel’s <a href="http://www.foxtel.com.au/discover/foxtelgo/default.htm">Go</a> service. But at A$50 per month for a Foxtel sports subscription, the cost is considerably higher than the combined subscription price of the AFL and Cricket Australia.</p>
<p>In the US, the global cable and satellite television channel ESPN is planning to commence its first online video streaming service that which is not part of a pay-TV bundle. Late last year it was <a href="http://recode.net/2014/11/24/espn-gets-ready-to-launch-its-first-web-video-subscription-service-for-crickets-world-cup/">rumoured</a> that the launch event for the service would be the 2015 Cricket World Cup, due to start next month, but is yet to come to fruition. </p>
<p>The US cricket fan base is estimated by ESPN to be 30 million, but ESPN doesn’t see the streaming service as a replacement for its current cable television services. The President of ESPN, John Skipper, says he suspects his audience will “<a href="http://recode.net/2014/09/04/espn-thinks-millennials-will-graduate-from-cheap-web-tv-to-expensive-cable/">trade up</a>”. </p>
<p>ESPN’s model differs to that of both AFL and Cricket Australia as it still involves a subscription service provider, rather than the broadcast and subscription being direct from the sport’s corporation.</p>
<h2>Speed of uptake</h2>
<p>The impact from the AFL and Cricket Australia’s video streaming services could take some time and it’s early days for Cricket Australia’s partnership with Apple TV.</p>
<p>The first and most important barrier is the <a href="http://www.oztam.com.au/documents/Other/Australian%20Multi-ScreenReport%20Q2%202014%20FINAL.pdf">social uptake</a> of the technology. </p>
<p>Currently 80% of Australian home have access to the internet, but the percentage of Australian homes with tablets is 42% and smartphones 71%. Australians are on average watching only <a href="http://www.oztam.com.au/documents/Other/Australian%20Multi-ScreenReport%20Q2%202014%20FINAL.pdf">12 minutes of video content per month</a> across these two platforms, along with PC and laptops. </p>
<p>If the AFL wants to become the prime broadcasters of its sport this could be done as a free (ad-driven) service with an alternative for subscription, ad-free.</p>
<p>Currently <a href="http://www.oztam.com.au/documents/Other/Australian%20Multi-ScreenReport%20Q2%202014%20FINAL.pdf">27% of Australian homes</a> have televisions with internet connectivity. As this number increases, sporting organisations will have greater direct access to their audience. </p>
<p>For now, sports television will remain but the future looks exciting, particularly for the audience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc C-Scott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Yesterday Cricket Australia launched onto the Apple TV network, becoming the first Australian sports organisation to join the platform. The new Cricket Australia channel will feature a mixture of interviews…Marc C-Scott, Lecturer in Digital Media, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.