Chick-fil-A cooking up new “family-friendly” video streaming service

Fast-food chain is paying up to $400K for unscripted content, Deadline reports.

See full article...

 

[nathand496]

Sweet. Imma pitch 'em a home improvement show based exclusively on anachronistic tools and targets the untapped Amish audience.

The Woodwright's Shop was on for 35 seasons, but I don't think the Amish were watching.

 

[Ixarku]

Today is still August 21st, right, not April 1st?

 

[Faceless Man]

I guess they didn't want to buy GAF?

And is Chris Hardwick really family friendly?

Depends on whether you believe Chloe Dykstra.

I mean, I could see that the religious organisation that runs Chik-Fil-A might consider him family friendly.

Chex made a Chex based Doom mod...
Burger King made three XBox games.
McDonald's had a few games for NES and Genesis.

But... NONE of those were ongoing subscription services! What the hell is this? The only thing crazier would be if KFC actually DID produce their chicken fried console.

KFC do run a successful record label in Indonesia. Or did, I can't find anything saying whether it's still going.

 

[Litazia]

Aren't there already "wholesome" streaming services out there? Isn't PureFlix a thing? And the Daily Wire+? And I just learned about this BYUTV or whatever. What the hell is Chick-fil-A going to offer in this already crowded marketplace, to say nothing of the even larger streaming service ecosystem?

 

[AusPeter]

I’m done. Blocking the asshole before I have an an aneurysm.

Which one?

 

[JMTronicHobbyist]

You say that, and that all sounds good, but...with this company, is religion ever aside? That might be the problem for a lot of people. And CFAs brand of religion isn't the "this is just a collection of stories about how to not be an asshole" brand of religion. It's quite a bit more extreme than that.

They're not buying ancient tablets afaik. Come to think of it, someone should make sure the hobby lobby people aren't trying to call forth Gozer. It's not Christian but if it starts the apocalypse that would make it ok.

They don't do other Christian stuff, like providing free health care, feeding and lodging visitors from other countries, refraining from casting stones at sinners, etc. Hmm... paying taxes without whining over it, treating women (even adulteresses and sex workers!) and children with respect... not blaming misfortunes on moral failings, ummm I guess I could just repeat almost the entire New Testament...

 

[Dark Jaguar]

As a parent of young kids that consumes a lot of kids media with a critical eye, your “fact is” is simply wrong. There is objectionable material out there. Not only that, there exist LOTS of good kids programming, so the only reason to create even more is because you think you can make a buck, or because you find all the current programming objectionable, and are going to do something different. One of those scenarios seems far more plausible than the other, given history.

Also, why distinguish between what is included vs excluded as if one is better than the other? If a show purposefully excludes minorities, people of color, women with careers, or fathers being nurturing, is that somehow better?

As a reminder, Mr. Rogers showed black people in positions of power, washed a black man's foot, had a gay man working on the show, had a segment showing bare breasts in a montage showing how mammals feed their young milk, all in an effort to help normalize what should never have been taboo.

So "family oriented" has sinister undertones.

 

[JMTronicHobbyist]

I remember when someone I knew brought back some chicken-flavored candy from East Asia. My gawd it was awful.

You fool! One of the classic blunders. You never go shopping in a candy store in Asia!

 

[Dark Jaguar]

I'll define woke. Woke is choosing winners and losers based on anything other than objectively defined merit. Attempts to solve all the past injustice in the world by intentionally ignoring the merit of people uninvolved counts.

Oh, well then as it turns out none of us are woke then, because that doesn't match any of our political positions! You must be delighted to learn that!

(Is there now a time limit on when I can edit an old post? I wanted to edit one I made and the option appears to be oddly missing.)

 

[ERIFNOMI]

You fool! One of the classic blunders. You never go shopping in a candy store in Asia!

Bullshit. The best candy comes from the Asian markets. I love getting candy from my local Korean and Japanese markets.

 

[Andrew Wade]

As a parent of young kids that consumes a lot of kids media with a critical eye, your “fact is” is simply wrong. There is objectionable material out there.

Yeah, I remember explaining that the Lion Guard ethnically cleansing the pridelands was really not okay.

Not only that, there exist LOTS of good kids programming, so the only reason to create even more is because you think you can make a buck, or because you find all the current programming objectionable, and are going to do something different.

Agreed, there is a lot of good kids programming out there. I'm having trouble thinking of unscripted examples. It sounds like the Chick-fil-A-plus niche is family-friendly game shows, which is most of them? The game shows on dropout.tv can be pretty adult, but that's really the exception. Most game shows I would think would be fine for kids, albeit probably of not much interest for them.

 

[JMTronicHobbyist]

"Moralizing stories rarely make good art."
What about M.A.S.H.? All in the Family, ... or pretty much every sitcom from the 70's and 80's. (of course it depends on your definition of art though)

I just started YuYu Hakusho. So far I highly recommend, the anime not live-action. I watched the first episode of the live action one and they condensed it so much it basically lost the whole plot. I wish Netflix would stop with the live-action anime adaptations because they make them MCU wannabes and have nothing of what makes anime good.

 

[nathand496]

As a reminder, Mr. Rogers showed black people in positions of power, washed a black man's foot, had a gay man working on the show, had a segment showing bare breasts in a montage showing how mammals feed their young milk, all in an effort to help normalize what should never have been taboo.

So "family oriented" has sinister undertones.

Washed a gay black man in a position of power's foot, no less. Unfortunately even Mr. Rogers had to keep the gay part secret in 1969.

 

[JMTronicHobbyist]

Bullshit. The best candy comes from the Asian markets. I love getting candy from my local Korean and Japanese markets.

I actually agree. But in my defense candy store rhymes with landy war.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Washed a gay black man in a position of power's foot, no less. Unfortunately even Mr. Rogers had to keep the gay part secret in 1969.

True... From the interviews I saw it seems that the man in question understood that position and didn't resent him for it, but it's a shame Rogers didn't feel like he could get away with going THAT far just yet. I guess there were more than sweaters he was keeping in that closet.

Also for some reason my comment about other weird unrelated random tie in products fast food joints made got downvoted. I'd like to say it was the position of some odd "anti-woke" types in this very thread, but I'm not even sure how what I said was "woke" or not.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

I actually agree. But in my defense candy store rhymes with landy war.

So you're suggesting we should avoid a land war in asia?

 

[Dark Jaguar]

I just started YuYu Hakusho. So far I highly recommend, the anime not live-action. I watched the first episode of the live action one and they condensed it so much it basically lost the whole plot. I wish Netflix would stop with the live-action anime adaptations because they make them MCU wannabes and have nothing of what makes anime good.

I can't speak to Yoyo Hackysack, but my big problem with Netflix is the wider problem of only sliding in like eight episodes for a whole SEASON of television. I remember when series had more like twenty. If we want to keep stories from getting condensed into oblivion, letting them "breathe" is a good place to start. I can't even imagine a show like Deep Space Nine working at only eight episodes a season.

 

[nathand496]

True... From the interviews I saw it seems that the man in question understood that position and didn't resent him for it, but it's a shame Rogers didn't feel like he could get away with going THAT far just yet. I guess there were more than sweaters he was keeping in that closet.

Also for some reason my comment about other weird unrelated random tie in products fast food joints made got downvoted. I'd like to say it was the position of some odd "anti-woke" types in this very thread, but I'm not even sure how what I said was "woke" or not.

I mean, in 1969 homosexuality was considered a mental illness and was a crime in Pennsylvania.

 

[Faceless Man]

True... From the interviews I saw it seems that the man in question understood that position and didn't resent him for it, but it's a shame Rogers didn't feel like he could get away with going THAT far just yet. I guess there were more than sweaters he was keeping in that closet.

Also for some reason my comment about other weird unrelated random tie in products fast food joints made got downvoted. I'd like to say it was the position of some odd "anti-woke" types in this very thread, but I'm not even sure how what I said was "woke" or not.

I heard an interview with the actor, on Wait, Wait,... I think, where he spoke about his relationship with Fred Rogers and his wife, and how they basically adopted him. I think it was around the time the movie came out. Extremely touching, even for a cynical old bastard like myself with no connection the Mr Rogers' Neighborhood other than seeing references to it in American popular culture.

 

[nathand496]

I heard an interview with the actor, on Wait, Wait,... I think, where he spoke about his relationship with Fred Rogers and his wife, and how they basically adopted him. I think it was around the time the movie came out. Extremely touching, even for a cynical old bastard like myself with no connection the Mr Rogers' Neighborhood other than seeing references to it in American popular culture.

Who raised you if you didn't have Mr Rogers' Neighborhood? Parents?

 

[Deleted member 1061767]

I remember when someone I knew brought back some chicken-flavored candy from East Asia. My gawd it was awful.

I cannot judge them. Almost everything consumable in the U.S. has a ranch and/or bacon version.

Similarly, I laughed when I saw an advertisement for the Squash Channel on Amazon Prime. Then I remembered, with shame, that the U.S. unleashed pickleball upon the earth.

We may need to subscribe to Chicken TV to atone for our sins.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

I cannot judge them. Almost everything consumable in the U.S. has a ranch and/or bacon version.

Similarly, I laughed when I saw an advertisement for the Squash Channel on Amazon Prime. Then I remembered, with shame, that the U.S. unleashed pickleball upon the earth.

We may need to subscribe to Chicken TV to atone for our sins.

Don't forget the deep frying, or the cheese.

 

[zogus]

Please Ma'am, refrain from the fowl language!

And please, no flipping the bird!

 

[kaibelf]

Unscripted content? Who the hell wants chick-fil-a curated reality television?

 

[Faceless Man]

Who raised you if you didn't have Mr Rogers' Neighborhood? Parents?

I grew up on Play School and Humphrey B. Bear.

Just a reminder, I'm not from the US.

 

[cwaynerl]

Meh. Never understood why the craze for their food. I like Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich better as they seem to have more flavour. That and the weird, creepy, look a-like Stepford Wives crews working inside. Would the actors in any of their streaming shows be the same type of blank eyed automatons endlessly smiling throughout the show?

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Meh. Never understood why the craze for their food. I like Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich better as they seem to have more flavour. That and the weird, creepy, look a-like Stepford Wives crews working inside. Would the actors in any of their streaming shows be the same type of blank eyed automatons endlessly smiling throughout the show?

They're just employees with no real say in how the company is run. You can't really be mad at them.

 

[Lorentz of Suburbia]

If CFA could do it, a Wal-Mart certainly could, and [RETRACTED] … nope, my bad,, they don’t seem to have similar vslues.

 

[enlightened.doggo]

As a white person, white people are "hated for being white" because we spent countless centuries trampling over literally millions of non-white people to get our way and enslaving millions more. You and I may not have lived those years, but our ancestors did, and their bill of accountability has fucking come due. (EDIT: And white people in the US are still perhaps the biggest perpetuators of violence towards people of different races. It's literally baked into how our society operates, through, e.g., systemic violence.)

This screed is just a roundabout way of saying that European military technology surpassed the rest of the world at whatever points in history you care about, which is undoubtedly biased by a eurocentric education. Before modern day European technological dominance the Mongols, Turks, and other groups ran circles around "white" societies at various points. It also ignores the fact that most of the world has and continues to be dominated by non-white mono-racial states, which doesn't happen without internal ethnic violence. Genocides and wars are constantly being fought along ethnic lines including many going on right now. The craziest part about this generalization is that you don't even need to know history to understand how silly it is to ascribe racial violence to a particular culture or race–you just need to follow current events for more than Europe and North America.

 

[cwaynerl]

They're just employees with no real say in how the company is run. You can't really be mad at them.

No, I know they're just employees but they all look like they're victims in a cult. You either want to save them or avoid them. It would be like being irate at Christian door knockers as they're just in a cult tasked with recruiting more members to the cult and don't know any better. It's why I have a big dog in a fenced yard to reduce foot traffic to my door.

 

[Kaiser Sosei]

I'd check the EULA, you thought forced arbitration was bad. It could be forced churchin. What else are you going to do on Sunday?

 

[nathand496]

I grew up on Play School and Humphrey B. Bear.

Just a reminder, I'm not from the US.

Oh, I get that. I was just making a joke about how many American kids of the time were more or less raised by Mr Rogers, so who raised kids in other countries that didn't have Mr Rogers?

 

[theotherjim]

I assume there's free gravy and sausage and a heart attack with that.

 

[zangetsu]

there is no valid reason for them to do this.

this is a huge frak up for them.
they make good chicken sammiches, they need to stick to doing that.

 

[kensolar]

Yes this is weird and I have my doubts about how it will do, but OTOH no one questions the existence (and huge success) of the Hallmark channels.

At the time I would have doubted the ability of a greeting card company to successfully launch a stand-alone channel on linear TV. But here we are.

Yeah, it seems bland vanilla pablum sells, the sheep like to graze on it.

 

[Dan Homerick]

However, I think they’re about to discover just how hard streaming video is.

From a business perspective, sure.

From a technical perspective, the difficulty really depends on how ambitious their goals are.

Streaming pre-recorded video on the web is pretty straightforward, thanks to excellent browser-based support for standards like DASH and HLS. Extending that to mobile apps takes some more dev work, and navigating app store approvals and such, but it's a well-trod path.

Once you start targeting TV sets instead, it gets a little harder. It's the same tech under the hood, but now you may find yourself negotiating deals with Roku, or various "smart" TV makers to get your app/service through compatibility testing and featured.

I bet they'll limit to just the web and iOS at launch. So long as their usage projections aren't grossly wrong, they shouldn't stumble too hard at any point.

Again, it'll be producing content and profitability that are tough. If brand building is the goal, genuine profitability may not even be a requirement, though.

Someone else mentioned Twitter live events melting down. Doing any live event is a significantly harder problem, especially if you're trying to scale to 100K+ users. It's a much spikier load than you'll ever see from VOD, among other things. Optionally, you can throw in a bit of malicious activity to make it even harder -- there are a lot more lulzs to be had by disrupting a live event than some 24/7 video on demand service, so more people will be gunning for you.

 

[pi.squared]

Yes this is weird and I have my doubts about how it will do, but OTOH no one questions the existence (and huge success) of the Hallmark channels.

At the time I would have doubted the ability of a greeting card company to successfully launch a stand-alone channel on linear TV. But here we are.

The Hallmark channel started out as a channel for charismatic tv evangelists.

 

[Pishaw]

They're not buying ancient tablets afaik. Come to think of it, someone should make sure the hobby lobby people aren't trying to call forth Gozer. It's not Christian but if it starts the apocalypse that would make it ok.

They don't do other Christian stuff, like providing free health care, feeding and lodging visitors from other countries, refraining from casting stones at sinners, etc. Hmm... paying taxes without whining over it, treating women (even adulteresses and sex workers!) and children with respect... not blaming misfortunes on moral failings, ummm I guess I could just repeat almost the entire New Testament...

I'm wondering how someone that makes shitty sandwiches thinks they can do video.

The 'New Christians' don't believe in that crap anymore. It's more hatred and treason now.

 

[raxadian]

This is a publicity stunt for sure.