• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, August 30, 2021

What is the message of a new DirecTV Stream product for customers? One TV ad execution points to the idea of easily shifting between live TV and on-demand programming.

On reflection, isn’t this something you can get with many virtual pay TV platforms, or even a single premium streaming service? And if not, is it that big of a deal?

DirecTV Stream is a separate TV service to the company's satellite business. It comes attached with a well-known brand name: DirecTV.

In the ad, a couple on the couch find out what it can do. A man show a woman the easy approach — shifting between live and on demand. On the living room TV screen is a live portion of a tennis event featuring Serena Williams. He then changes to an on-demand movie scene from “Wonder Women 1984.” He flips back and forth between the two videos several times, resulting in a fantasy popular cultural mash up.

A Wonder Women-dressed Williams is found at a mall, slamming tennis balls destroying menacing robots. Those robots are morphing from common tennis ball machines that shoot balls at players for practice.

The legendary tennis John McEnroe makes an appearance -- apparently after a stop at the food court.

The spot is interestingly, but maybe not all that compelling. Telling modern consumers there is a remote tool where you can switch easily from live to on-demand programming isn't a draw.

The creative seems to miss one key word: stream. That's something the DirecTV satellite platform, and debunked virtual pay TV DirecTV Now business, never fully adjusted to.

For sure, it's also hard to go into granular detail about all the things a new streaming service can do.

We assume consumers expect new modern media services to have not only legacy, live/linear TV channels, but the capability to access new streaming apps, perhaps major on-demand capability of all kinds. And they should be easy to navigate.

If you can that get message out there with a low, low price tag, you might have something.

The man on the couch responds to the unexpected Williams-Wonder Woman mash up with: “That was not in the movie.” Woman on the couch: “Must be the director’s cut.”

Maybe something was cut.