I get the attempt here - take some pseudo-premium content that was rejected by most other streamers, put it in an app, and charge a nominal fee for ad-free viewing. If I'm seeking out this lower-tier content, it's mostly as filler or background, so is the add-freeness really that much better than viewing it on the linear FAST channels Roku has (or other FAST apps like Tubi or Pluto, for instance)? I would expect that a lot of the content on those channels will happen to be part of Howdy's catalog.

I welcome the expansion of the BBC into the global entertainment scheme. They've been choked off from the rest of the world due to licensing quirks and their stance that entertainment and programming they produce needs to remain with their license-paying audience in Britain. If they do this right, the Beeb will be one more reason I might end up dropping my cable TV altogether and joining the online-only VOD audience.

The rooms could have smelled like booze and cigarettes - I don't think that would have had a significant amount of influence on the monetary splits. Consumer behavior at retailers has been proven to be influenced by certain smells, but decision making and morality? Um, no.

. . . before wireless carriers and GPS makers begin making billions on selling special antennas you have to wire up, mount externally, and plug into an already overworked battery. Seems to me people would rather crank their engines harder than have their battery conk out in the middle of their commute because they needed to power a mobile cell tower to make an outgoing call.

'Tis always fun to see studies like this, because making a bitrate comparison will always yield different results. I've always downconverted audio in my collection to the standard 128Kbps, because I know that at higher rates I can't "get" more of a listening experience from the audio. To claim that people, at any level of consistency, could make the distinction is nothing more than a market ploy. I bet if the same 16 people were put through the same study with a different track, the numbers could swing completely in the opposite direction.