• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October 31, 2023

Buffering, lag-time, pixelated content. 

One might have figured these technical issues were all in the past for digital media/streaming platform businesses. And yet they still show up. 

And recently this was for just for some minor programming event -- a low-level bit of scripted/unscripted content on some modest/small streaming platform.

Oh, no. Now we see that in week 8 of the current NFL season, none other that YouTube TV’s NFL Sunday Ticket has had major issues -- perhaps one of highest-priced, most celebrated pieces of any type of TV/streaming content anywhere -- and a deal that costs Google's YouTube an estimated $2 billion over seven years.

The glitches were not isolated. Instead the company said multiple YouTube platforms were affected -- including YouTube TV, a virtual pay TV service that carries broadcast/cable networks, and the mothership YouTube video-on-demand streaming platform.

This comes as streaming platforms are increasingly moving to many areas of highly visible and desired TV content. That can't be good news for companies pursuing ever-higher pricing for these services.

To be fair, early on for Season One of Amazon Prime Video “Thursday Night Football” a year ago, it too had some growing pains with glitches here and there. It has since grown out of that. 

Marketing materials for any of these high-priced events make little references made to "quality" of service. It is assumed to be top-notch.

For the most part, the growing streaming consumer marketplace apparently does not need to be messaged to the fact that streaming/digital is the same, equal to, or better than cable, satellite, or telco distributed programming content.

But it has not been just sports that have been affected. Early this year, the venerable streaming platform Netflix had its own issues with a live presentation of the dating series “Love Is Blind.”

This live reunion with the cast for Season Four was canceled after a 75-minute delay. To make good on its promise, the episode was then quickly filmed and then released as a traditional video-on-demand.

So there’s your version of old-school adaptation to a problem.

Maybe all this is why the likes of Netflix continue to pursue live programming -- sports and otherwise -- slowly and tentatively.

I'm sure Netflix executives are taking notes.