A scene from Yahoo TV show Other Space, from Paul Feig.
A scene from Yahoo TV show Other Space, from Paul Feig.
Opinion by Karl Puschmann
Karl Puschmann is Culture and entertainment writer for the New Zealand Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
Karl Puschmann takes a closer look at New Zealand's latest TV streaming service, YahooTV.
I don't know what I found more surprising. That Yahoo was launching a new online streaming TV service or that Yahoo was still a thing.
But it is and they have.
You could ask yourself why they have. And you'll need to cos I dunno why they have so I can't enlighten you.
All I know is that right now our online streaming space is getting increasingly crowded so if you're attempting to bust in you need some kind of USP to stand out and get noticed.
Turns out Yahoo have a pretty bloody big USP up their sleeves. YahooTV is completely free. No subscriptions required, no monthly fee to fork out.
But more than that, it's also incredibly easy to use. There are no log-ins, no Yahoo account required, no password to remember. No barrier to access.
Because of this it's by far the simplest of all the various services. To watch any of their shows all you need to do is go to yahoo.co.nz/TV and choose something. I should quickly point out that YahooTV did not run on the web app on my SmartTV. Which is a massive oversight on their part. But watching shows on my iMac or my Android phone was easy, breezy.
Once you hit the homepage the menu system is simple, uncluttered and well thought out.
Now this could be because there's naff all to actually watch. But it was still a pleasant change. Especially after dealing with the deceptive practices of Netflix and Neon who like to obfuscate their selections by having the same shows repeat themselves under various genres as you flip through looking for something to watch.
So, YahooTV is free and it's easy. But is it any good? Well, that depends.
If you like terrible television then yes, it's the bees knees. With an over reliance on Aussie soaps, cooking competitions and celeb reality shows Yahoo is definitely taking aim at a certain demographic rather than the scatter-gun approach favoured by the others.
If those genres rock your world then you're gonna find a lot to love about Yahoo TV. For the rest of us, move along. There is quite literally nothing to see here...
Home and Away could be a big draw card for the service. I don't know. That shiz is so far from my bag it's not even funny. But TV3 certainly seemed to be suffering after losing the screening rights to it so if you're missing your daily Summer Bay fix then there you go.
Cooking show wise I also don't know. There are a couple to choose from and I'm sure they're entirely unique and different from each other in some indistinguishable way. Or not...
On the celeb front there's a wedding planning reality show starring Beverly Hills 90210's Tori Spelling, there's a conversational reality show that has celebs telling Full House's '80s heart throb John Stamos how they got jiggy wit it for the first time and there's a reality show about what life's like for the 80's Night Time Lover La Toya Jackson.
Away from the reality mess Yahoo also launched with a comedy called Sin City Saints that is not a continuation of the excellent Frank Miller/Robert Rodriguez action-noir films like I originally thought and is instead a comedy about a B-league basketball team.
The cast of Sin City Saints.
Bridesmaids director Paul Feig also has a show on the service but I haven't got round to watching Other Space yet. If it's any good, I'll tell you about it.
Further lols are provided by a couple of sketch shows that aren't entirely humourous and appear to have been pinched from FunnyorDie.com and a bad YouTube idea.
So reality and not comedy is the strength of YahooTV. That right there tells you if YahooTV is for you or if it really, really is not.
For now anyway, Yahoo are obviously committed to growing this thing and are pumping cash into making their own exclusive series' so I reckon it's worth keeping an eye on. Even if, for now, they're mainly focusing on producing junk telly. A strategy TV3 also seems to currently be following. Let's see who wins this race to the bottom.
