How Open Source Streaming Insights Evolve with Josh Matthews, Publisher at StreamScoop

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 0:00

Welcome back to the State of Streaming Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Rowe, and this week we're sitting down with Josh Matthews. Josh is the founder of StreamScoop, a premiere substack that I encourage everyone to check out. It'll be linked nearby, right at the top of the show notes for this episode. Josh does an incredible job collecting open source viewership data across streaming, broadcast, cable. He compiles that into weekly data dumps and does these monthly deep dives and puts together the best streaming TV guide. It's so good that we repurposed it. We syndicate Josh's column, the Streaming Scoop, Streaming TV guide each week on State of

Welcome And Who Josh Is

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 0:45

Streaming. So find out what StreamScoop is all about. Hear from the man himself. Enjoy this episode. Josh Matthews, thank you so much for taking time out of your day. You started a substack called StreamScoop.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 1:06

Yes, sir.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 1:07

Can you tell us about StreamScoop? Why did you start StreamScoop?

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 1:11

I got my undergraduate degree here at the University of South Carolina, and I absolutely love my time here.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 1:16

Are you from South Carolina? Yeah, I hear a little twang. Are you from South Carolina?

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 1:20

Yes, sir. Yeah. I'm I'm from a low country here in South Carolina, somewhere between Columbia and Charleston, we'll call it. I love my time here at the university, and I got my degree in print and journalism. And towards the end of my degree, I was really realizing I love journalism. I loved reporting, but I was maybe looking for something a little bit more. And so my senior year, I kind of started to build infographics in my reporting. We have this really cool reporting class. And so I started

From Print Journalism To Infographics

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 1:43

to build infographics through my stories. And so I was really inspired and I loved doing that. And I said, okay, well, how can I take this and do it in grad school and make it something that's really valuable? And so whenever I got to grad school, you know, we have plenty of classes where we discuss the media at large. You know, we're we're encouraged to look up all these headlines and all these stories and come into class prepared and ready to discuss them. And it was a semester of just talking about streaming and talking about movies and talking about sports. And it really sparked my interest in more than just the media landscape, specifically the streaming landscape. Because as we were having these conversations, I realized that there's a lot of business conversations. You know, this company's not going to make this amount of money. The SAG after strikes were going on at the time. So there's a lot of like business implications there. But there wasn't a whole lot of conversation about this is the most streamed thing and this is what everybody's watching. And if it was, it was kind of far and in between, just kind of like news articles from deadline to higher reporter. And so it wasn't, I didn't feel like it was a uniform kind of process to learn that information. And so I was really inspired. And so my second semester, I found a professor and I said, listen, I'd love to do an independent study, but I want it to be two-pronged. I don't just want to do a white paper. I want to be able to do, you know, data analysis in a white paper, but I also want to have a digital presence online. I said, I don't know if that's a TikTok, an Instagram, a newsletter, whatever it is.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 3:02

Okay, so it was I want to do this project that's outlined, but I also want to have the freedom to do these other elements and bring it all together.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 3:11

Absolutely. It was really a way that I could fit building infographics and doing social media into my independent study.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 3:17

So let me let me take us back a little bit there. You said you were going to school for print journalism, and I made the very obvious observation there uh about your regional accent, but you're also a pretty young guy. Like print journalism, what year is this? Like, obviously, print was probably going the way of the buffalo as you're at school reconsidering like what am I actually doing with my focus and time.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 3:43

Yeah, uh, there's a lot of students there who most students are broadcast students, and I I guess for me, I just I wasn't really interested in in doing broadcast TV and doing local TV news reads, and so that kind of didn't interest me. And so, I mean, I just kind of kept going down the print journalism route, and so yeah, I mean, I'm uh I'm well aware that you know print journalism is not a thriving industry for sure.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 4:04

But you but you took, but you were able to to I I think what's really admirable about that was you said this is the thing that I'm most interested in, this is the thing I'm most passionate about. I see that the the conventional wisdom says this is a dying thing, but I want to apply my focus there and I want to see what I can create from that intentional focus. I just don't I don't know that everyone has that same belief in themselves to bet the farm, to burn the boats, and you were willing to do that when in a moment in time where, hey, you know what, it would have made sense if you wanted to change focus. So, okay, so you go through this whole experience, you're you're going through the the the program, and obviously you've since graduated. So take us now post grad, StreamScoop. It's this super successful project. You you get an A. Hopefully, you get an A on this and like totally crush the course, right?

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 5:00

Yeah, absolutely. I I definitely got an A. But yeah, I so I graduated with my master's in mass communications, my MMC about a year ago, maybe a little a year and a half, maybe some change here. Thank you. I appreciate it. But yeah, I I love my program here, and I I really I loved building infographics and print journalism. And that senior year I was really inspired by I didn't even realize it, but you know, as a kid, I had all these superhero encyclopedias, and they're really they're these really great infographics, and they inspired me. And I mean, I I really I wanted to find the data and the information from that point. And that's why I started the study. And once I started to do these cool data analyses, I realized a lot of people are confused about streaming. A lot of people don't know where to stream sports, they don't know where to what's coming out on streaming, or if something's coming out on linear TV, if they want to watch America's Got Talent, how can they stream it? When can they stream it? That was there was a lot of confusion then, and so I was really inspired to create my newsletter StreamScoop. It's been about a year and a half since I've been publishing articles, but yeah, I have four articles that I kind of publish a month, three a week, and then one kind of monthly that's a data analysis. But I mean it's really cool information. I just I really want to break down these insights for consumers.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 6:14

Let's start there. Let's start with the the monthly piece, which is the data analysis. Is that right? That's the monthly one.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 6:20

Yes, sir. Yeah, these are my data analyses. I call them data crunches, but yeah, I just I kind of felt called to like really dive into really small, specific topics that I felt like weren't getting a lot of coverage. And I mean, as you can see here, this was at the end of the last bananas baseball season. I I really wanted to dig into the numbers and see how well it's been doing. And there were all these articles about how the bananas have expanded into ESPN and how they're killing it on TNT. And not that I disagree, but I just said I want to dive into that data. I want to tell people half a million people were watching, a quarter million people watch whatever the insights are. That's the inspiration behind my analyses. I really just wanted to find very specific topics, very

Monthly Data Crunch Deep Dives

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 6:59

small verticals to cover information in. And I've really, really enjoyed doing it because I think it it provides insights that streaming companies aren't self-reporting data, whether it's negative if it's negative.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 7:10

So I couldn't agree more. And I think what you're doing here, one, that the work is beautiful, it's thoughtful. You can tell how passionate about the work you are because of the quality. But but to your point, bringing all of those data points together in sort of a unified view, put them all in one place where I can make sense of it. Give me give me some relative scale here. How did Loki season two perform against Daredevil Born Again and other titles maybe of a similar genre or across different platforms? So, okay, so that's the data data crunch or the data analysis that comes out once a month. How are you how are you doing all of this? Uh do you have a team behind you? Like this seems like an incredible undertaking.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 7:56

Yeah, it's definitely taxing. I don't have a team of reporters at the moment. I do have a social media intern that's kind of helping me out and doing some great graphics. But I really just as we kind of go through the year and as topics and concepts kind of pop up, I just kind of try to come up with these really interesting deep dives, kind of around Monsters Fun Day, uh altcast for Disney Plus. And I said, Man, that's so interesting. They keep wanting to do all these sports kids altcasts. How well have they done? And so I said, Okay, well, let me go find any information. Well, the TNT and HBO Max had an NHL one a couple years ago, and Peak Mock has an a Madden alt cat had a Madden altcast, and they had a reality TV Bravo altcast.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 8:36

So, really just trying to dive inside out ESPN NHL one earlier this year.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 8:40

Yeah, so all those kinds of I mean the Simpsons green, basic greens.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 8:44

That's true. Yeah, that there really are. There, there are a lot that would be even fun just to see all of all of them in one place, just visually. Uh see the absolute.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 8:52

I mean, that's kind of how I go about finding the topics. I mean, I I think about a week or two ago, I was seeing some people talk about Daredevil Born Again. A lot of people like it. I'm a big Marvel fan, but I also saw people talking about how it doesn't have the viewership. And according to some Luminate data, it's smaller than these other releases. And so once I saw that, I said, okay, let me go dive into the data. Let me go see what Nielsen data, what self-reported data, Luminate, Samba, any any data I can find. And the Marvel analyses ended up being analysis ended up being really long. So I ended up just doing Nielsen and self-reported. But I mean, I was just so interested. I loved Daredevil Born Again. I thought season two was really good, but unfortunately, it wasn't more, it wasn't watched as much as She-Hulk. It wasn't watched as much as Moon Knight. And that's stuff that the Nielsen data and the self-reported data will kind of showcase.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 9:36

We have released some recent research that looked at some ComScore data and some data from partners at RealGood that's looking at the adoption of AI search as the primary method of discovery for not just for streaming, but for really anything a place to eat, a new car, whatever. And what ComScore found is really that sweet spot streaming audience is defaulting to AI search as the primary search. But what the real good data found was that AI search isn't really good at finding streaming content. So you almost wonder like so. Thinking about that, if we can solve the discoverability challenge, how much does that impact viewership?

AI Search And Bad Streaming Answers

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 10:22

For me, the biggest issue is really these AI searches, they're always inaccurate, but they're especially inaccurate when it comes to data. Especially if you're saying, I wonder how many people watched the College World series last year. You'll probably get that. But if you say, I want I wonder how many people watched the regional round two weeks ago, there's not a chance you're getting that. Like I have tried to pull data from Grok, from Claude, from ChatGPT, from Copilot. They're never really correct. They're never fully correct. They're always just finding a number. And then whenever you do a deep dive and you dig deeper into it, it's from like two and a half years ago. So it's not really the relevant data that I need.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 10:59

So then let's segue into getting the data that you do need. This is a weekly piece that you put out. This is different than the data analysis, which is a deep dive. This is the data dump. Talk to us about the data dump. What is this?

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 11:13

Yes. So this is really our marquee article. This was kind of my first idea. I said, man, I don't know what people are watching. I don't know how many people are watching things. And so from there, I started to find all these sources. My and my professor, I was also looking for sources for my my independent study, and I started to find all these kinds of reports out there. I started to find Nielsen reports through an independent source on X. I started to find Luminate data that was published weekly through Variety. I started to find Samba data, which they all they mostly release theirs every week.

The Weekly Viewership Data Dump

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 11:44

And then even more than that, I just started to find the actual PR pages. So I find ESPN's PR page, Fox's PR page, and I'd kind of just scroll through them every single week looking for any data points that I could pull out, anything that people care about. And I just thought it was really interesting because we all love entertainment, we all love sports. And I mean, in this media landscape, it's so confusing what people are watching. And so, in this way, if you're a fan of America's Got Talent and Linear TV, maybe you just saw that at the bottom on that Samba chart that it was number three or four. So a lot of people watched it last week. But it's just really hard. How many people watched the Detroit Tigers versus the Boston Red Sox on TBS? A lot of that kind of information was really hard to find. And so once I started to find these sources, I said I really want to just break it down for people. I want to lay it all out so everybody can just see exactly the exact viewership metrics as far as we know.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 12:35

That's great. And then maybe the foundational piece to all of this, the StreamScoop streaming TV guide. And you have two versions of this. You have streaming this week, and then you have a sports specific. Talk to us about how you go about compiling all of this. Again, we just talked about the AI challenge of discoverability on streaming. You're bringing all of the major releases that week together in one place.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 13:04

Yeah, absolutely. I have I have kind of a handful of sources that I use for this. The main one that I use is I love this site called Vital Thrills. They do these kind of like monthly articles. It's like, hey, this is everything that's coming to HBO Max in June, everything that's coming in July. And so what I'll do is every week I'll

Building A Weekly Streaming TV Guide

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 13:20

go in there, I'll scroll through the dates, I'll kind of pick out everything that comes, everything that's coming out. Um I only cover English-based content. There's just so much anime content, international content that would make it almost impossible to cover everything. I use Vital Thrills as as a source. I'll use TV Insider and I'll look through kind of some of their calendars. That's helping me out with a lot of broadcast releases, double checking, checking the actual HBO Max, you know, press release, checking the actual Disney press release. So really trying to double check two or three different ways just to make sure that it is coming out. And I mean, to be completely honest, I still miss things sometimes. It's it's so hard, and there's so much stuff that comes out. I was scrolling all of the Paramount Plus charts and schedules and everything last week, and I put out my article, and of course, Among Us came out on Monday, and I didn't even catch it. I didn't, I must have missed it somewhere because it was on none of these sites. Imagining how much harder it is for AI. Like, I mean, it's this is I mean, I'm somebody who's going through this every single week. I know where to look, and even I get a little confused here and there. So I can only imagine how wrong AI is most of the time. Great point.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 14:24

And how hard it must be for the end consumer who's just we're trying to find it that fast. Yeah, absolutely. My son is doing one or two searches, and if he can't find it, he's moving on to something else. He's and I'm sure that that's true for for most anyone, right? So it and that will be interesting to see. Maybe over time we'll be able to see more of those insights from streaming platforms. What does it look like? What does the user journey look like when they can't find something at the maybe CTV OEM level? If I if I'm searching for something, how does pricing, how does availability, how does all of this connect? Those are certainly some of the themes that we're interested in following. Josh, what are you most interested in following? What are you most excited about? What are you watching on streaming? I think you you gave us a a few titles and and things outside of the day-to-day of running StreamScoop. What excites you the most?

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 15:20

I am very much locked into the NBA finals in the Stanley Cup right now. Anytime there's a big sporting event, I really try to I tr try to tune in. I tuned in for the Kentucky Derby a few weeks ago. I tuned in to Coca-Cola 600. I really love Prime Video.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 15:34

NASCAR's crushing it.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 15:36

Oh, and their prime video coverage is really great. I wish they wouldn't have switched from big data to panel only because it's of course, as soon as they do, Nielsen's going to give them much better big data numbers. But I I love NASCAR's coverage on Prime Video. And so it really

What Josh Watches And Final Takeaways

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 15:52

I I love following the sports, especially as big events are coming along. I'm sure I'll tune in Thursday to the World Cup. I tuned in to the World Baseball Classic. So I love tuning into all the sports stuff because I mean they'll advertise it everywhere. The World Cup games are going to be on a ton of Fox Tubi. I think there's a couple games on Paramount.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 16:10

Some last-minute deals, even we're recording this on June 9th. It'll come out a little bit later. But there were some deals coming in last night across the wire. So there will not be an issue finding the World Cup. It's going to be choosing the destination, finding the game that you want to watch, all of those other tertiary challenges that come with it, some of which we've touched on here today.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 16:32

Yeah, for sure. But even, I mean, just outside of that, I try to, you know, touch into a lot of the new releases. I just finished Spider-Noir last yesterday. Yeah, and I think I love Spider Noir. Really great. Obviously, you have to watch it in black and white. It's a much cooler vibe. It's it's a great, it it really feels like a noir project. And you know, I I did tune into color and it and it still looks good and it's a great project, but I really love the black and white. I tuned into the America's Got Talent premiere, always been a big fan of that, just kind of grew up watching it with my family. So I was able to tune in and watch that live. The Boys finale was pretty recently. That was probably two or three weeks ago. The boys finale, I watched that, that's decent.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 17:10

I did a lot of coverage on that too.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 17:13

Yeah, a lot of coverage on the city. So as somebody who's read the comics, you know, I have criticisms of the finale in this final season, but the final season was still really good. But I will say my favorite thing that I've watched probably in the last month, I absolutely loved the Punisher special that came out on Disney Plus, Punisher One Last Kill. I love it. The Punisher is such an awesome character, I think. I I love dark, gritty characters who have a lot of trauma, who have a lot of they have a lot of edge to them. And I think that makes Punisher's character really interesting. And I thought that that that special was really fun.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 17:46

Well said. Well said. Josh, we're we're gonna make sure to link StreamScoop, make sure it's easy to find for anyone that would like to check out StreamScoop. It's gonna be right in the show notes. Go check out all of those publications, the data analysis, the data dump, the weekly streaming guides. We'll have it on state of streaming as well. You will not have a hard time finding StreamScoop. So, Josh, thanks so much for being here.

Josh Matthews, StreamScoop 18:11

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Tim.

Tim Rowe, State of Streaming 18:14

Absolutely. And if you found this conversation to be helpful, please share it with a colleague or a client. Start a conversation of your own today. We'll see y'all next time.