First, the television experience became streaming and now the whole thing is going back the other way. The latest example is Disney+ announcing a brand new “lean-back viewing” experience, a 24-hour continuous stream of The Simpsons. Starting today, it’ll run all 767 episodes of the show in chronological order. When that ends in about 10 days or so, the channel will continue with “a programming lineup that will be refreshed monthly and accessible to Premium subscribers,” according to the press release.
“From day one, the fans have asked for a stream of The Simpsons, and we’re happy to oblige,” Gabe Lewis, SVP of Programming & Content Curation, Disney+, added. “Streams on Disney+ have been a fantastic go-to experience for subscribers looking to sit back and relax with their favorite shows and movies, and we look forward to evolving the user experience and expanding the offering with more streams, to more subscribers, later this year.”
Now, a few things here. First of all, I’m actually all for a Simpsons channel that I can put on, not think about, and it just keeps going, as opposed to individually selecting new episodes. That’s also because I was born in the 1980s and I’m used to television, which did that not just for one thing, but for everything. In fact, it still does. So while this is a nice addition to a Disney+ subscription you’re already paying for, coming up with fancy terms like “lean-back viewing” and acting like you invented the idea of a television channel comes off as a little smug. Next they’ll be touting a landmark idea where you pay for all your streaming services in one big package that allows you to flip between them and see what you want to what. You know, like the cable you had 20 years ago!
Nevertheless, a 24/7 Simpsons channel is a good idea and a nice addition to an already pretty spectacular offering. Even without the stream, Disney+ has a really strong menu of curated Simpsons content based on a whole slew of categories: character, future predictions, sports, music, horror, you name it. And now you can also watch Springfield’s most famous family all day, every day, without touching your remote. Here’s the commercial for it.
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