South-Carolina
Amid streaming chaos, Dropout carves out its own niche
There’s been a lot of bad news for large media companies running streaming services lately. Disney, Netflix, and Warner Brothers are all struggling to make streaming pay. Meanwhile, a large reason for the strike that’s paralyzing Hollywood is the way these streaming services take away the payment system writers and actors used to survive on. But amidst this chaos some smaller streaming platforms, like Dropout, are finding the space to thrive.
Sam Reich was hired to run the team creating YouTube videos for CollegeHumor in 2006, when he was just 22. Back then, he said, “there were a lot of departments marching to the tune of a lot of different drummers.”
CollegeHumor may not have had a clear goal, but people liked what they were creating. Their YouTube channel reached almost 15 million subscribers, and they were good at getting content to go viral.
The problem, Reich said, is “it turns out that has limited monetary significance.”
In the early Internet days, Reich said it was all about capturing the biggest audience. If you could get millions of people to look at and share something, the idea was that money would follow. And they knew what it took to get a lot of views.
“When you’re playing the online game, and you’re trying to make viral content,” Reich said. “You’re thinking about thinking about things like lowest common denominator audience, you’re thinking about shock value, you’re thinking about how to stand out in a sea of hundreds of thousands if not millions of other options.”
CollegeHumor had some successful comedy series like Adam Ruins Everything, but they weren’t making enough money from online video to justify what they were putting into it. By 2018, they decided to take a new approach.
Reich and the CollegeHumor team switched from trying to be widely successful on other platforms to creating their own for a niche audience. They called it Dropout. Reich describes the platform in their first promotional video as “Like Netflix, but worse! And cheaper.”
For $6 a month Dropout offers shows like Make Some Noise, Cartoon Hell, and Dungeons and Drag Queens – where drag queens play Dungeons and Dragons. In a landscape of failed streaming startups, there was a lot of skepticism in the beginning.
“We all thought, well, this feels like a good way to crash and burn,” Reich said, “but on the other hand, a good way to spend some money doing some ambitious things before the house burns down.”
But five years in Dropout is still around and growing steadily. Their approach is different from the old CollegeHumor. No more lowest common denominator audience.
“On subscription it’s just an entirely different ball game where we can focus so much more on creating something that feels special to a small group of people,” said Reich.
Glen Weldon, who hosts NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, said Dropout isn’t trying to create shows to please everyone – its content is niche, and that’s ok. The show’s cast makes the content feel casual and personal to him.
“The reason you show up every week is to see them in this kind of unguarded mode trying to figure things out on the fly,” Weldon says. “You are in the room with them, and they’re inviting you into their world for just a hang.”
Weldon also enjoys getting to see the same improv actors on multiple shows. If you like seeing one person on Um, Actually, where contestants have to correct slightly incorrect statements about books and movies, you’ll likely see them on another Dropout show like Game Changer, where contestants have to figure out the rules to the game they’re playing while they’re playing it.
Kevin Stiller / Dropout
/
Dropout
“You can just watch it without knowing who the hell anybody is and still enjoy it,” said Weldon, “but if you know the personas of this stable of actors, you know that it is geared towards exacerbating some personality quirk of one of the contestants in a way that is so funny, and so satisfying.”
Dropout has not shared their official subscriber count, but Reich says it’s in the mid-hundreds of thousands. He’s very aware that doesn’t come close to the hundreds of millions of subscribers that large media companies have, but, to him, that’s not necessarily a problem.
“If you look at our size relative to Netflix, it’s laughable. But you look at a behemoth like Netflix and you go, ‘well, even if we carve out the tiniest little sliver of that whale, we can live on the blubber for a long time.’”
It’s blubber Reich said Dropout wants to share fairly with the people who make it. Though they’re not required to by unions, he said Dropout is working to become one of the first streamers to pay residuals to their writers, actors, and crew members.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
South-Carolina
How to watch South Carolina vs Iowa State women’s basketball: Time, channel, live streams
The 4th-ranked South Carolina Gamecocks women’s basketball team next ships off to the Sunshine State for a matchup with No. 15 Iowa State at the Fort Myers Tip-off. The game is scheduled to start at 1:30 p.m. ET with TV coverage on FOX and streaming on-demand.
- How to watch: Live streams of the South Carolina vs. Iowa State game are available with offers from FuboTV (free trial), SlingTV (low intro rate) and DirecTV Stream (free trial).
- For a limited time, FuboTV is offering $30 off the first month after the free trial period. With the $30 offer, plans start at $49.99.
#4 South Carolina Gamecocks (5-1) vs. #15 Iowa State Cyclones (5-1)
NCAA women’s basketball matchup at a glance
When: Thursday, Nov. 28 at 1:30 p.m. ET
Where: Suncoast Credit Union Arena, Fort Myers, Fla.
TV channel: FOX
Live streams: FuboTV (free trial) | SlingTV (low intro rate) | DirecTV Stream (free trial)
Both South Carolina and Iowa State lost their first games of the 2024-’25 season within the past eight days, with the Gamecocks falling on the road to No. 5 UCLA (77-62) on Sunday and the Cyclones to Northern Iowa (87-75) last Wednesday in Cedar Falls. South Carolina is now 5-1 in its defense of the 2024 NCAA women’s championship with a top-10 win over NC State highlighting the team’s early-season résumé. The Gamecocks will be Iowa State’s first ranked opponent after falling to No. 2 seed Stanford in overtime (87-81) in the second round of last season’s NCAA Tournament
South Carolina Gamecocks vs. Iowa State Cyclones: Know your live streaming options
- FuboTV (free trial) – excellent viewer experience with huge library of live sports content; free trial lengths vary; monthly rate after free trial starts at $59.99 after current $20 discount offer.
- SlingTV (low intro rate) – discounted first month is best if you’ve run out of free trials or you’re in the market for 1+ month of TV
- DirecTV Stream (free trial) – not the same level of viewer experience as FuboTV, but the standard 7-day free trial is still the longest in streaming.
South Carolina and Iowa State are set for a 1:30 p.m. ET start on FOX. Live streams are available from FuboTV (free trial), DirecTV Stream (free trial) and SlingTV (low intro rate).
The 2024 South Carolina high school football season is in high gear and SBLive Sports is the place to follow of the live scoring updates and finals.
Follow the action get the most to date scores by tracking the SBLive South Carolina High School Football Scoreboard. We will have in-game score updates and all of the final scores from every corner of the state. You can also search for full schedules and complete scores from all of your very favorite teams.
Here’s a guide to following all of the South Carolina high school football this week.
STATEWIDE SOUTH CAROLINA FOOTBALL SCOREBOARD
CLASS 5A SCORES | CLASS 4A SCORES
CLASS 3A SCORES | CLASS 2A SCORES
CLASS 1A SCORES
SCISA CLASS AAAA | SCISA CLASS AAA
SCISA CLASS AA | SCISA A
2024 SOUTH CAROLINA FOOTBALL SCHEDULES: FIND YOUR TEAM
Can’t make it to your favorite team’s game but still want to watch them live? You can watch dozens of South Carolina high school football games live on the NFHS Network:
WATCH LIVE ON NFHS NETWORK
We also invite you to visit the brand new South Carolina homepage on High School on SI, powered by SBLive Sports, for the latest news, highlights, analysis, scores, photos and information on South Carolina high school sports. Follow our live game coverage and read our feature stories, breaking news, the latest recruiting news, rankings and much more.
Follow SBLive South Carolina throughout the 2024 high school football season for Live Updates, the most up to date Schedules & Scores and complete coverage from the preseason through the state championships!
Be sure to Bookmark High School on SI for all of the latest high school football news.
To get live updates on your phone – as well as follow your favorite teams and top games – you can download the SBLive Sports app: Download iPhone App | Download Android App
— Mitch Stephens | mitch@scorebooklive.com | @highschoolonsi
South-Carolina
ESPN's College Football Playoff Predictor has updated again. Here's where South Carolina stands
ESPN.com’s College Football Playoff predictor isn’t perfect because it applies analytics to a situation that ultimately will be decided by a committee of humans. But it does provide a nice guide and discussion piece about which teams have the best chance to make this year’s College Football Playoff.
Because of that human element, the predictor has been updating twice each week, once on Sunday to account for Saturday’s games and again after the latest CFP rankings are released.
[More for subscribers: What latest rankings mean for South Carolina’s College Football Playoff chances]
While the Gamecocks won their game on Saturday and got a lot of help from the teams around them last week, the logjam of SEC teams ahead of them in Tuesday’s rankings is still limiting their upside at this time.
With the committee putting South Carolina behind fellow three-loss SEC teams Alabama and Ole Miss, the predictor currently gives South Carolina a 20 percent chance of making the 12-team field, which is three percentage points lower than its chances in Sunday’s update.
The Gamecocks do, of course, have one more huge opportunity to pad their resume when they travel to Clemson this weekend to renew the annual rivalry in what may be the biggest game in the matchup’s history.
Beat the Tigers, who are currently No. 12 in the CFP Top 25, and South Carolina’s chances of making the playoff jump to 46 percent, according to the predictor.
While that’s just under a coin flip, it’s also 12 percentage points lower than it was in Sunday’s update.
South Carolina is still very much in the hunt but is going to need to win and play very well against Clemson and get more help around it.
[GamecockCentral: $1 for 7 days]
As a reminder, the CFP committee’s top 12 teams won’t correlate exactly with the 12-team field.
The CFP will consist of the top five highest-ranked conference champions and the next seven highest-ranked at-large schools. The top four conference champions will receive the top four seeds and a first-round bye. The fifth conference champion will be seeded by its CFP ranking. If that ranking is outside of the top 12 it will be seeded 12th as the final team in the field.
The teams seeded 5 through 12 will fight it out in the first round with the winners advancing to the quarterfinal round to face the top four seeds.
The Gamecocks and Tigers are set for a noon showdown Saturday in Clemson.
ESPN Analytics uses FPI to simulate the entire college football season 200,000 times. A committee model is applied to mimic College Football Playoff selections and seeding in order to generate a 12-team bracket for each simulation. The most likely CFP teams are provided for user selections. After user inputs, a likely bracket is generated and randomly simulated using FPI.
No new detections of avian flu in New Mexico cows, poultry, people despite rising U.S. cases • Source New Mexico
Applications for NC heating bill assistance program open in December
West Fargo harbors D-I hockey talent in growing pool of North Dakota prospects
Michigan vs. Ohio State: How much pressure is on Ryan Day and the Buckeyes? | Joel Klatt Show
Three Takeaways From Oklahoma City’s Enthralling Win Over Golden State
Colorado Rockies game no. 116 thread: Zac Gallen vs José Ureña
See it: Tesla crashes into Columbus convention center at 70 mph
Fox News Politics: Georgia the whole day through
Why Marjorie Taylor Greene was ‘kicked out’ of the Freedom Caucus according to Rep. Buck
Death of missing Oregon girl found in stream ruled homicide
What is Evacuation Day? The forgotten holiday that predates Thanksgiving
At least 13 killed, many more feared dead as landslides bury Uganda homes
'Tired. Damn tired.' Some Black women are processing the grief of a Kamala Harris loss
Appeals court rules Texas has right to build razor wire border wall to deter illegal immigration: 'Huge win'
Vote on new Commission signals EU Parliament instability and ambiguity
-
Science1 week agoTrump nominates Dr. Oz to head Medicare and Medicaid and help take on 'illness industrial complex'
-
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25739950/247386_Elon_Musk_Open_AI_CVirginia.jpg "Inside Elon Musk’s messy breakup with OpenAI")
Technology1 week agoInside Elon Musk’s messy breakup with OpenAI
-
Health5 days agoHoliday gatherings can lead to stress eating: Try these 5 tips to control it
-
Health3 days agoCheekyMD Offers Needle-Free GLP-1s | Woman's World
-
Science2 days agoDespite warnings from bird flu experts, it's business as usual in California dairy country
-
Technology1 day agoLost access? Here’s how to reclaim your Facebook account
-
Science1 week agoAlameda County child believed to be latest case of bird flu; source unknown
-
Sports1 week agoBehind Comcast's big TV deal: a bleak picture for once mighty cable industry