AUGUST 20, 2026

Welcome back to Buffering, where we are very happy to have Rosie O’Donnell back on our TV screen via ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! As Vulture’s Jason P. Frank put it in his excellent recap of her first night back, watching daytime’s former Queen of Nice in action “feels like a warm hug.” Instead of telling lots of Trump jokes, as many of us expected she would, Rosie has used her guest-hosting gig to perform a soft reboot of both her stand-up and talk-show careers. Hopefully some TV or streaming exec out there figures out a way to make her return to hosting a regular thing.

This week, our main story is actually written by you. Last month I wrote about how Netflix’s recent programming woes were freaking out some folks on Wall Street. You had a lot of opinions about what’s behind the streaming giant’s bumpy patch, and some of them were so well-articulated, we decided to highlight them in a new report. We’ve also  got thoughts on Peacock’s latest price hike, my look at how Pluto TV is trying to replicate the idea of appointment viewing for streaming, and more.

— Joe Adalian, West Coast editor

In this edition: Josh D’Amaro, Brendan Carr, Donald Trump, Kevin Feige, David Ellison, Bari Weiss, Tanya Simon, Nick Bilton, Tom Cibrowski, and everyone who ever kvetched about Netflix …

Are you ready for some football? Well, it’ll cost you — at least if you watch the NFL’s Sunday night showcase via Peacock. The NBCU-owned streamer, which made a big deal about its robust free offering when it launched, this week rolled out its fourth price hike in as many years. Subscribers now have to fork over $13 per month for ad-supported Peacock and $20 for an ad-free experience, a roughly 15 percent increase over the old rates of $11 and $17, respectively. Instead of being the most-affordable subscription streamer, Peacock, for now, is the most expensive major streamer in America when looking at basic ad-supported tiers. Hulu and Disney both charge $12 per month for their ad-supported tiers; HBO Max costs $11; and Netflix, Paramount+, and Prime Video will each run you $9 per month.  

To be fair, the gap between Peacock and other streamers will likely shrink in coming weeks. If recent history is any guide, there’s a good chance the Disney streamers, HBO Max, and Paramount+ will all unveil rate increases sometime this fall, if not sooner. And if you’re a sports fan, the combination of Sunday Night Football, countless NBA and WNBA games, and Premier League soccer certainly makes Peacock pretty attractive, just as Love Island and The Traitors are big draws for reality TV fans. But while it’s improved dramatically in recent years, the platform’s overall offering — particularly when it comes to scripted originals — is still thinner than any major streamer. The idea that NBCU now believes its streamer should cost more than any of its main rivals, especially Netflix, feels a little… (pea)cocky. —Josef Adalian

Honestly? Good move from new CEO Josh D’Amaro. Disney is taking the Federal Communications Commission to court in a new lawsuit that accuses the agency of violating its First Amendment rights. It’s the latest in a protracted game of Regulator and Mouse, nominally over the company’s DEI policies but really over the threat against Disney’s eight local broadcast licenses, which began in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel joking about Donald Trump. Despite producing thousands of pages of documents in response to the Brendan Carr–led FCC’s inquiries, Disney still has a target on its back over its perceived political stance, the company claims, which has sent a chill through ABC. “The DEI angle is being used as a pretext to go after ABC because the president doesn’t like Kimmel,” former FCC chief counsel Robert Corn-Revere told us in April. Throughout this process, Trump has demanded that the FCC strip broadcast licenses from companies who don’t produce sufficiently fawning coverage. D’Amaro’s Disney, to its credit, is fighting back. —Eric Vilas-Boas

Vulture was on the floor last weekend at Disney’s buzzy biennial fan expo, D23, and a lot went down. We covered some of the proceedings: Kevin Feige and Marvel need more than buzzy announcements to save themselves; Robert Downey, Jr. hasn’t entirely hung up the Iron Man helmet just yet; “Girls’ ex-men are now in X-Men,” my favorite headline ever; and Bluey, the most popular show on streaming, is undergoing a silver-screen makeover. Read Savannah Salazar’s live blog of the dizzying weekend. —E.V.B.

L.A. Times: “Paramount Demands $1.9 Billion From States, Citing Warner Deal Delays” 

IndieWire: “Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger Could Cost 4,500 Jobs”

Vulture: “All 3 Major Movie-Theater Chains Now Support the Merger”

By Josef Adalian

Photo: Colleen E Hayes/Netflix

Not long after Netflix took its first baby steps into streaming back in 2007, people started finding ways to criticize it. “I have to sit at my computer to watch a show,” one blogger fumed a month after the company debuted its Watch Now feature, offering a whopping 1,000 films to stream on-demand. “I will never watch a full length movie at my computer!” And so began what has become an international pastime: Kvetching about the world’s biggest, most profitable subscription streaming service.

Netflix execs no doubt long ago figured out how to tune out the nattering nabobs of negativism, understanding that such scrutiny — from both consumers and the press — is the unavoidable by-product of success. But sometimes, the critiques grow loud enough to suggest a real problem. Social media’s instant rejection of Netflix’s Qwikster spin-off, for instance, forced the company to scuttle that bad idea almost immediately after it was introduced in 2011. And more recently, a slew of the streamer’s younger series (The Four Seasons, Running Point, etc.) have returned to dramatically lower ratings, a trend predicted by months of online complaints about the increasing mediocre feel of Netflix’s overall offering and annoyance by long gaps between seasons.

As we reported last month, this sophomore slump problem, paired with an unusually weak crop of newcomers during the first half of 2026, has resulted in months of gloomy media coverage, as well as more than a little bit of worry on Wall Street. In July, we outlined how Netflix execs were already mulling moves to address some of the concerns that have cropped up this year. (Who’s ready for some live Netflix channels?) But Vulture readers also had some smart takes on the streamer’s woes, as well as what it might do to solve them. Below, some of your most interesting suggestions, along with my thoughts on the proposed remedies.

The years between seasons are killing them, especially when a season only takes a week to binge, unlike the old days when a season lasted three to nine months of weekly episode releases. By the time season two of a Netflix show comes out, I could be in a totally different life phase, and no longer remember or care what happened last season — especially when last season wasn’t of a quality level as Apple or Hulu or HBO shows. —Aravis

Remember when shows would end in May — after 22 episodes — and be right back in September or October? —Marknyc64

By the time season 2 of Wednesday dropped, the kids looked 35. —June48

If Netflix wants to take a big swing, the most radical thing it could do would be to start producing shows at a volume and pace much closer to that of traditional TV. —Tserrof84

One of the reasons it takes so long for Netflix to churn out seasons of shows is because of its overall production model: binge releases to a global audience. Every episode of a show needs to be completely produced and dubbed or subtitled into dozens of languages before any episode can debut. Linear shows are often still in production, or finishing up post-production, when a new season starts.

I don’t think Netflix needs to abandon global binge releases, particularly for its big event shows. The ratings demonstrate most people are willing to wait a little longer for an epic such as Stranger Things or even Wednesday. Critics hate TV shows that feel like eight-hour movies, but viewers often love them. But they also love regular old TV, like The Pitt or ABC’s super successful streaming show The Rookie. Netflix has stubbornly refused to give them that with its originals, and I agree with Teserrof84: Making TV shows, at the classic TV show volume and speed, would be a game-changer.

I’m currently at war with their algorithm because the majority of shows I’m being offered in the “we think you’ll love…” categories are foreign. When I stream I’m almost always doing something else, so I can’t be bothered to read subtitles, and English-dubbed shows sound stilted, which is just distracting. Tried for several weeks to “thumbs-down” all the foreign stuff in the hopes of re-training the algorithm, but I got even more foreign stuff. —Aqrising

There’s simultaneously a million things to watch and nothing to watch because they push their algorithm so hard, it doesn’t ever really dial into any kind of focus that makes sense of what you, the subscriber, actually likes (vs. what they are pushing). —Escuincle

Their algorithm is the absolute worst. It offers me shows I’ve already watched! Shouldn’t it know that? —Missmagda

I actually don’t think the issue here is Netflix’s algo, per se. For users who sample shows it suggests, I’m guessing it is often a very effective way of connecting them to titles they might otherwise have missed because they’re buried deep down in the sprawling library. But many of us don’t have the time to experiment and don’t trust machines to curate content choices. Some of us still prefer content sorted by channels, brands, and even timeslots. There’s been buzz that Netflix is considering adding more linear-like channels or partnering with established networks (as it has with TF1 in France), and if it happens, I think it’ll be a tacit — and overdue — admission that relying mostly on an algorithm no longer makes sense.

It’s GOD AWFUL now. I need to cancel my subscription. Just mountains of garbage to wade through only to never find anything decent to watch. —Theocanada

So many good Netflix shows have been canceled with a cliffhanger after one or two seasons that I mostly refuse to watch anything new on there until I’m relatively sure I’m not going to be invested and then have it go bye bye. —Flickerclick

The streaming model isn’t about making great programs, but instead seems to be “Let’s see how much we can decrease quality before people start canceling their subscriptions.” They put a lot of money into hiring appealing casts that will initially attract eyeballs and buzz, but then the shows’ writing and execution seem deliberately substandard. They are counting on consumer inertia, and it shows.—Funlin798

Netflix needs to recruit Casey Bloys from HBO. Their development team would benefit from his experience running a successful slate. If I were Bloys, I’d be looking for the exit before the Ellisons take over Warner. —Roo_skee

There’s no denying Netflix has a lot of shows that critics would call mediocre (and viewers under 45 would label as “mid” ). I actually don’t think that’s necessarily a problem, because 75 years of TV history has demonstrated audiences love just-OK TV as much as, if not more, than “Must-See TV.” Netflix is a broadcast-style streamer, and not the digital version of HBO, and its overall slate should not try to mimic that of the “It’s Not TV” network. Instead, Netflix should aim to be more like early 1980s NBC, when Brandon Tartikoff oversaw a slate that encompassed critical darlings like St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, Cheers, and Miami Vice, as well as populist entertainments such as The A-Team and Riptide. While Netflix content chief Bela Bajaria has been aiming to do exactly that, I don’t think she and her teams have the balance right. Every year brings a handful of new Netflix darlings — Adolescence dominated the awards circuit just last year! — but they haven’t been enough to stand out in the service’s sea of so-so stuff, or to keep up with the buzz from rivals such as HBO/HBO Max, Apple TV, and, most years, FX.