They're probably overlaying the local ads with their ads.
IDK, I tried watching the local news and they showed me 5 solid minutes of commercials, then some tabloid crap of some woman dramatically describing living in a crack house. I'm not bougie enough to get off on that crap. Basically, they threw ads at me and then didn't show me what I asked for. They do have a bunch of channels, and that's nice, but they don't actually show you what's going to be on. The TV guide only scrolls what's presently playing, and I just learned it lies, so that part of the service is useless.
Aside from that, I've been clicking around on Paramount, and I honestly think Paramount+ has got to be the worst streaming service I've tried so far. I've either had or currently have Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Discovery+ (my GF is into fish documentaries), and a bunch of free services like Tubi. I'm not exactly sure what makes a good streaming service yet, but I think I can look at Paramount+ to see what makes a terrible service.
First of all, when I scroll the content, every single row of graphics shows me the same things: Star Trek (especially Picard), FBI, Bull, and NCIS. If you don't want the Star Trek reboots, or copaganda, you're gonna have to scroll a bit to find something to watch.
They do have Smithsonian Channel docs, but I think every single service I've tried has a section for Smithsonian docs. It's like intergalactic law that all streaming services have Smithsonian.
The classic nickelodeon stuff is nice. Who doesn't want to watch old episodes of Double Dare and Ren & Stimpy? Also, the MTV stuff is good, but it doesn't actually have a lot of the classic MTV stuff that the MTV generation grew up with. You can see Aeon Flux and Celebrity Death Match, but there are only 10 episodes of Beavis & Butthead, and none of them show them making fun of any music videos. They don't have Headbangers Ball or Yo MTV Raps. If you are nostalgic for that kind of stuff, you will have better luck on the Pirate bay. Aside from half a dozen classic MTV shows, the rest of their MTV content is reality TV, which is garbage. Nobody wants to pay extra to stream that crap. The only reason it exists is because stupid boomers are too hooked on brain-rotting TV to go anywhere else for entertainment, so they have a captive audience of morons. Chord cutters are always going to see reality TV as inferior, and that inferiority reflects on the quality of the streaming service.
They do have some interesting late night shows. Colbert is good, and Trevor Noah is good, but if they do anything worth watching, you can usually see it for free on YouTube. They also have James Corden, if you like watching an awkward englishman sing off key while they drive (I do support immigration, but just this once, can we please send him back to the UK?)
The absolute worse part, though, is the ads. Before every single show, there are at minimum two ads, and the first ad is at minimum a minute long. They are unskippable. If you have ad blockers, or a VPN, nothing will run, so you can't block their ads. High quality services like HBO and the free tier of Peacock have no problem with my ad blockers or VPN (I use PIA), but Paramount absolutely will not run without ads.
To re-iterate: I bought the ad-free tier!
To be fair, I did only pay $2 a month for the first month, so trying Paramount+ was not an expensive mistake I'm just going to cancel them and move on. I don't understand how they thought this product would be acceptable enough to push the service hard with superbowl commercials like they did.
So the content is lame, but the library is actually larger than Hulu's. If you combined the size of Disney+'s and Discovery+'s libraries, that library would still be smaller than Paramount+'s library. So their library size is decent! It's just the absolute bottom of the barrel, quality-wise. This is a prime example of how library size does not correlate with quality of a streaming service.
I think I'll try Peacock next, because it's the only streaming service I haven't tried yet, and I was going to get it for a couple of months anyway, because they are about to do American Eurovision (officially named American Song Contest), and Eurovision. American Eurovision premieres in a couple of weeks, and Eurovsion premieres after that.
arstechnica.com
