The Evolution of Streaming Services

Nathan Witherspoon staff writer

It’s a cold winter evening in 2016. Mom just finished making dinner and Dad just got home from work, carrying in groceries and a couple movies to watch this weekend from Redbox. You sit on the couch with your family for dinner and Dad grabs the remote and turns the TV on and tunes it to CBS, and it’s partway through an episode of Jeopardy!. This was the norm for most families locally and across America to sit in front of the tube and watch network television from CBS, NBC, and Fox, but it’s not the same anymore. Nowadays, families flip through streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, or Paramount+ to find a specific movie or to pick up where they left off in Grey’s Anatomy. Why have families made this drastic switch from watching network television to streaming any movie any time?

The year is 2007: Windows Vista is the newest computer operating system from Microsoft, Steve Jobs introduces the very first iPhone at Macworld Expo 2007 in San Francisco with his famous “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator” introduction, and the movie rental company Netflix announces its very own streaming platform. Since 1998, back when the “information superhighway” was dominated by Windows 98 and Netscape Navigator was the Google Chrome of the era, Netflix worked like every other movie rental company at the time. Like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, Netfix rented movies, but with more convenience. Movies were ordered and mailed to your home on DVD, a video format still in its infancy at the time, with VHS being the top dog. Netflix was a major innovator in the way we consume movies and TV. It wasn’t the first movie streaming service, the first being iTV, which was a project released in the late 90s out of Hong Kong that was “far ahead of its time,” according to producthabits.com. Due to the painfully slow dial-up method of internet connectivity, especially through America Online (AOL), iTV faded into obscurity since nobody had the technology to use it worldwide. However, by 2007, many advancements in the consumer technology market occurred. 2001 marked the release of Windows XP, the first Windows operating system with built-in support for wireless networking. Apple also released its very successful OS X operating system, which redefined what a Mac is, so much so that many of the UI elements are still in modern versions of macOS all the way to the 2022 release of macOS Ventura. 2007 had the technology to make movie streaming a reality, and Netflix became the first streaming success story, operational in 130 countries as of 2016. For years, network television and streaming services worked alongside one another. People kept tuning into Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune on network TV after school or work. People watched network TV when they couldn’t find anything on Netflix. People used streaming services when there was nothing good on network TV. People usually only had one streaming service subscription. All that was up until 2020. At the time, Netflix and Hulu were still the two top choices for movie streaming, but all that was about to change. Disney+ launched the year prior, and HBO Max, Discovery+, and Paramount+ were in the works. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, network television showed a major shift in its layout. Television stations couldn’t pump out new television shows anymore due to state “stay at home” mandates, and any new shows were entirely reformatted. Many talk show hosts did their show in their living rooms, garages, home offices, or home studios. But most other shows resorted to constant re-runs of the same shows to fill in their time slots.

Now in a post-lockdown world, the world is slowly returning to normal. TV shows are being made again, talk show hosts are returning to their sets, and everything seems well and good, but with a major hidden twist. Because COVID forced consumers who didn’t want to watch re-runs into streaming services, most new, non-generic TV shows are exclusive to these platforms, locking them into those platforms to keep watching new shows. Most talk show hosts returned to their normal Hollywood sets, but those shows are all dead and dying. Other hosts, like Conan O’Brien, noticed the success during COVID with the different style of entertainment. After eleven years, his late-night show, Conan, finally came to an end, ending Conan’s twenty-eight-year career as a late-night host. He invested more time into his podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, and is currently working on a new series for HBO Max.

graphic by Sofia El-Shammaa

Around 100,000 different albums by different artists are released each year, and by 2022 we received a wide range of genres. Sophomore Lux Yamamori listened to a decent amount of music that was released last year, with their top three favorite songs being “Thérèse” by Maya Hawke, “Sweet Nothing” by Taylor Swift, and “Sunshine” by Steve Lacy. Yamamori said, “I like these songs because they fit well into my playlists and I listen to them a lot.”

On the other hand, sophomore Atlas Ellingsworth didn’t listen to a lot of music released last year, with his top three of 2022 being “Pass The Nirvana” by Pierce The Veil, “Settle Down” by Ricky Montgomery, and “The Foundations of Decay” by My Chemical Romance.

Three of Yamamori’s top songs on their Spotify Wrapped were “Tea Errors” by Jack Stauber’s Micropop, “Dr. Sunshine Is Dead” by Will Wood and the Tapeworms, and “The Real Slim Shady” by Eminem. Their top artists were Jack Stauber, Jack Stauber’s Micropop, MARINA, Will Wood and the Tapeworms, and Maya Hawke. Ellingsworth, on the other hand doesn’t have Spotify, so he didn’t get a wrapped this year, but his favorite albums that were released this year were Inside by Mother Mother and It’s 2016 Somewhere by Ricky Montgomery. Yamamori’s favorite albums that were released this year were Moss by Maya Hawke, Beatopia by beabadoobee, and Gemini Rights by Steve Lacy. Yamamori feels that the worst song that was released this year was “abcdefu” by GAYLE, and Ellingsworth didn’t have a negative opinion about any music released this year. Overall, a lot of music was released this year, and both Yamamori and Ellingsworth listened to a lot of different types of music.

Avatar Sequel Releases

India Mohiuddin & Sofia Kokkino staff writer & page editor

There have been many amazing movies that have come out this past year. Out of all of them that have been released, one of the most anticipated movies would be the new Avatar movie. Avatar: The Way of Water begins to tell the story of the Sully family, the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure. Many Sheldon students watched this movie and were big fans of it. Sophomore Tate Templeman was one of them: “It’s an awesome and very well made movie with an original, exciting, and well thought and structured story, charged with action scenes with crazy and spectacular fights.”

With the hype of this movie, there are some people who have a lot to say about it. Junior Damon Uribe is one of them: “I have recommended this movie to multiple of my friends and have hyped it up a lot. I loved the plot and Neytiri. I’d definitely watch it again.” Not only was this movie incredible, there were also moral lessons to be learned from the film. There were many hidden messages about love and family that touched the hearts of many. Junior Colby Parosa noticed these themes and it meant a lot to him: “When I watched this movie, I was so heartwarmed by Jake Sully’s love for his family. It made me want to go and hug my mom.”

Overall, this movie has not only killed it with the box office earnings, it has also impacted the emotions and feelings of so many.