@glend123 wrote:
You guys are barking up the wrong tree. Do you think they made this change not knowing what it would do? They know exactly what they are doing. The change is not to benefit the customers, it is to benefit the Advertisers. The more channels we are exposed to, the more money Roku makes. Just like everything else, follow the money to get your answer.
I agree 100%. Your post should be marked a solution. Renaming antenna tv to live tv shows something is afoot. Adding 1000 streaming channels to antenna tv was step 2. Roku doesn't make money from antenna tv. No carriage fees. So, they add 1000 channels to antenna tv to try and get into your view (compete with antenna tv).
Presumably, antenna tv is a bad habit people need help getting out of. Favorites enable that habit. It's like a comfort zone of viewing. Now you have to see all the available channels. (You can't even hold the channel-change button down and change channels. You have to push it once for each channel. More "impressions." We're not customers, we're sources of revenue. We don't buy the Roku device/software, we rent it. The upfront price is just the cost of entry. Roku has a motivation to "shape" our viewing habits to make more money for Roku. Not satisfied with just selling demographic analytics about our viewing habits, but we're chattel for the highest bidder. Driving our habits to more profitable channels/content.). I can see a content provider doing that. But, when you buy a tv, you think you're buying a tv that's yours to use how you wish. Not a "tool" to persuade you to change your habits for the benefit of the tool maker. It's a "smart" tv. But, "smart" for whom? The motives aren't as clear as merely watching YouTube or Hulu, where you know they're heavily entrenched in advertising.
But then there's things that make you wonder if it really is all sneaky & crafty like that.
For example, the new 1000 streaming channels added to antenna tv can't be individually hidden. If Roku wanted antenna viewers to be exposed to more modern & varietal content, why would Roku give them only "hide all?" If Roku's goal is to do our thinking for us, and break "bad habits" (which, of course, is extremely insulting), why wouldn't they let us hide the 900 streaming channels we don't want to watch? Obviously people will hide all as soon as they discover that option. If Roku was as malignantly self-interested as it often appears to be, they'd give us the option to individually hide those 1000 channels, not "all." That would be the way to make it harder for customers to revert to their "bad habits."
A lot of this stuff just looks like a badly managed company; development without vision or control. Uninspired. In most cases that is a much more natural explanation than a Q-like "plot" to milk us as mindless advertising consumers. Roku does a lot of stuff that is contrary to that, alienating customers, breaking their tvs. It just seems like they don't care (and never have); lack leadership, vision. I said before that Roku reminds me of a cross between Fry's Electronics & Harbor Freight. (Unbelievably badly managed, and a customer base that seems content with products that break easily/frequently.). It could be as simple as that. It's hard to believe a company wouldn't want to be more than that, so we assume there's a grand plan behind it.
"People are often amazed at how much we’ve done with the number of engineers we’ve got." (Roku CEO Anthony Wood, Austin Statesman, Oct 4, 2019). "Amazed" is one way of putting it.
