Episodes

Have a question? Send us a text! The conversation is a companion to Nathaniel's recent piece on microdramas. Nathaniel Danziger, Founding Voice at State of Streaming, joins Tim Rowe to unpack what makes a microdrama possible, the operational realities driving this mobile-first shift, and what the partnership between Peacock and ReelShort means for the broader media landscape. On the Microdrama Boom Microdramas have rapidly grown into a $30 billion global phenomenon, defined by short, hyper-me...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Josh Matthews, Founder of StreamScoop, a Substack publication that aggregates open-source viewership data across streaming, broadcast, and cable into weekly data dumps, monthly deep dives, and the best streaming TV guide being published right now — which SOS syndicates weekly. 📺 Get This week's StreamScoop Streaming TV Guide Here Nobody was aggregating open-source streaming viewership data in one place. So Josh built it. StreamScoop s...

Have a question? Send us a text! Wim Sweldens, co-founder of Kiswe, built a direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming company because he unplugged his cable box — and never plugged it back in. Twelve years later, the technology he knew was coming has arrived, and the sports organizations smart enough to own the relationship with their fans are the ones pulling ahead. The RSN Collapse Created a Blueprint Problem, Not Just a Revenue Problem When regional sports networks (RSNs) fell apart, teams...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Russell Fink, a two-decade veteran of regional sports networks, to dig into the measurement crisis hiding in plain sight inside sports streaming. The conversation pairs directly with Russell's piece published in State of Streaming this week — Too Much of a Good Thing: Sports' Measurement Problem — and uses Jurassic Park to explain why having the data isn't the same as using it. The RSN Era Was the Last Time Everyone Won at Once Russel...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Lucas Bertrand, CEO of Looper Insights, to break down what Looper's Q1 Media Placement Value ($MPV) data reveals about how connected TV home screens are being used — and misused — heading into the biggest sports quarter in recent memory. Recorded the day the FIFA World Cup kicked off, the conversation pairs directly with the Preston Smalley/Roku episode released earlier that week. The CTV Home Screen The Arbitrage of Streaming Looper's...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Preston Smalley, VP of Viewer Product at Roku, unpacking the first new Roku home screen in a decade — how it was designed for 100 million+ households, what the hub methodology means for sports fragmentation, and why "delight" isn't just a brand word at Roku. It's a measured KPI. 82% of streaming viewers want you to read their mind Roku built a home screen with a billion possible configurations to get closer to doing exactly that — and ...

Have a question? Send us a text! The conversation is a companion to Hemant's recent piece on AI personalization at scale. Hemant Soni, AI Architect and SOS. contributor, joins Tim Rowe to unpack what streaming platforms can learn from the infrastructure telecom companies built under survival pressure — and how to start applying it now. On Combatting Churn Streaming platforms collect mountains of behavioral data — what you watch, what you skip, when you disengage — and respond days or we...

Have a question? Send us a text! Bonus Episode: Tim Rowe on the FPC Podcast — Open Infrastructure, Closed Loops, and the Ad Tech Middle Tim joins Kevin Flood, Rich Ashton, and Ciarán O'Kane — General Partners at First Party Capital — for a conversation on their investment thesis and what it reveals about where streaming advertising infrastructure is actually heading. FPC crossed State of Streaming's radar when their corporate innovation model announcement landed the same week as a notable pro...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Seth Mittman, VP of Integrated Sales at Ampersand, unpacking how the ad infrastructure jointly owned by Comcast, Charter, and Cox unifies linear and streaming inventory — and what that means for brand marketers, agency planners, and anyone trying to understand where Multichannel Video Programming Distributor (MVPD) inventory fits in a modern media mix. Did you know streaming-only buys are leaving reach on the table? Brands that added linear ...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with David Sanderson, Founder of Reelgood, unpacking how content availability data reveals where attention actually goes on streaming — and what that means for media buyers, platform teams, and content strategists. Content availability isn't a metadata problem. It's an attention problem. Most of the industry is making catalog, licensing, and buying decisions based on incomplete information. Reelgood built the infrastructure to fix that — an...