Should Netflix and Hulu give you emergency alerts?

Tue Mar 12 03:24:09 UTC 2019

On Mon, 11 Mar 2019, Michael Thomas wrote:
> It seems to me that it would be much better to use the standards we already 
> have to deliver text, voice and video, and just make it a requirement that 
> some list of devices must be able to listen for these announcements and act 
> accordingly. It's not like compositing video or muting one audio stream in 
> favor of the other is rocket science.

Ecosystem owners control what their smart devices do (and won't do). The 
major smart device ecosystem owners don't allow other parties to control 
their devices without going through ecosystem owner controlled APIs.

Amazon controls what echo speakers and fire tv do with alexa.

Apple controls what apple tv and apple homepod speakers do with siri.

Google controls what google home speakers do with google assistant.

I think you are correct, Netflix and Hulu are at the wrong layer. Netflix 
and Hulu don't control the smart TVs and smart speakers ecosystems used 
to present their content.  Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and Google Assistant 
do.

Yes, there are add-on apps for weather and news, but without support by the 
ecosystem owner in the base operating system, add-on apps can't interrupt 
other Apps. I understand why ecosystem owners wouldn't want to give 
third-party Apps an API to interrupt other Apps. Ecosystem owners could 
include emergency alert functionality controlled as part of the base 
operating system/intelligent assistant, preserving whatever UX it wants 
without allowing other third-parties to interrupt.

Apple has announced its going to announce something on March 26.

I wonder if any reporters will ask if the new Apple TV supports emergency 
alerts?