Can FanFare posts have a "where you can see this" field?

December 1, 2019 11:42 AM

Often there are FanFare posts which don't mention where the movie or TV show can be watched - whether it's a streaming service, broadcast TV or only in theaters. A number of times, I've had to do web searches to find where I can watch something. Sometimes, a tag lists where to watch, but it's certainly not done consistently. Can a "Where to watch" field be added to the Show Information?

Where something can be watched does change, but we tend to do posts on new releases, and at least listing where it can seen when the post is first created would be helpful.

Or at the minimum, add to the tag instructions encouraging a tag naming the streaming service, channel, etc. should be added.

(There's also the issue that it could depend on where you live. For example, "His Dark Materials" in on HBO in the US, but in UK it's on the BBC, and GBBO is on Netflix in the US, and on Sky in the UK.)

posted by ShooBoo to Feature Requests at 11:42 AM (24 comments total)

Discussed this briefly with Frimble, and it's not something we can do automatically, unfortunately. The issue is partly that access even on the same service is often region-specific and changes over time. That said, if folks want to discuss tagging conventions, that seems worthwhile!
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 11:44 AM on December 1, 2019 [4 favorites]

It would be a good idea for people posting movies and series premieres to indicate where they can (originally) be found, if only in the poster's jurisdiction.
posted by Etrigan at 2:09 PM on December 1, 2019 [5 favorites]

Automatically doing it is a tall order. But we can make an effort as posters.

I think posting where you saw a TV show, at least when posting the pilot, is good form. We're years past "Check your local listings."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:31 PM on December 1, 2019 [4 favorites]

Don't really know how, though - sounds like a pretty tall order to me. How can I know what you can't see?
posted by Rash at 5:37 PM on December 1, 2019

If you just tell me where you saw it, that’s like 80% of the way there.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:10 PM on December 1, 2019 [7 favorites]

There was some talk about this, I think it was back in a big ol' Fanfare redesign thread. The idea was left at trying to tag posts with streaming sources if the poster remembers, but all pretty informally and definitely not required.
posted by rhizome at 6:15 PM on December 1, 2019

WCityMike: "Seconding JustWatch, as well as canistream.it."

JustWatch is okay, but canistream.it has never worked for me any of the times I've tried it. Painfully long load times that lead to glitchy, empty search results pages. Even their app is broken! I don't know why they bother to host the thing anymore.
posted by Rhaomi at 7:17 PM on December 1, 2019 [5 favorites]

canistream.it has completed its journey from godsend to garbage. It's useless now.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:04 PM on December 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

It might be nice to add this to the new post page under the tags box as a hint. I would be happy to do it but it's never occurred to me. And I never know what to put in the tags otherwise.

(Semi related pony, showing tags on the mobile classic theme?)
posted by bleep at 10:10 PM on December 1, 2019

Letterboxd has a feature "powered by JustWatch" for displaying a subset of films on a list, limited by the service they're available on. This apparently started out for paid members only, but it's working for me unpaid right now when I'm logged in. I don't know if this is a temporary gift/accident for logged-in users, but y'all can try it too: e.g., here's The A.V. Club’s 100 best movies of the 2010s, and here are the 26 films on that list supposedly available on Kanopy.

Anyway, if that works in the long term, Letterboxd removed their limit on list sizes, so every film on Fanfare would fit on one list and maybe offer an interesting way of finding out what things you have available to stream that you might also discuss readily on Fanfare.

But +1 for direct links to JustWatch and/or Letterboxd, where the "All services ..." link on the left side pulls up the same list of services--and this works without being logged in.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:38 PM on December 1, 2019

JustWatch is only for the US, when I searched for Seven Worlds, One Planet that's on the BBC in the UK at the moment, it doesn't have this.
posted by ellieBOA at 1:42 AM on December 2, 2019

It seems like the Add Recaps function might be closest to what's required. An info box that could be edited over time by more than the OP would seem like it would work. Let people add multiple information lines on where something is available for viewing with information on the region (country, world-wide, world-wide except US, etc) and viewing options in that region.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:22 AM on December 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

JustWatch is only for the US

Here's their UK search portal. If you visit their front page, they display a selection screen with a couple dozen other regions. For purposes of linking from Fanfare, I guess folks would need to set a region, but the links are probably programmatic then, e.g. us vs. uk.
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:13 AM on December 2, 2019

Thanks, they don’t show that on mobile which is how I use fanfare the most.
posted by ellieBOA at 6:28 AM on December 2, 2019

Really odd that they don't seem to have implemented a country switcher from within a search result or actual item (TV series or film) page, given the likelihood of people arriving via a link to one of those. Perhaps it's there and I just can't see it for looking.

Experimentation suggests that swapping the country code in a search URL works fine, at least for US/UK (e.g. https://www.justwatch.com/us/search?q=star-trek-discovery to https://www.justwatch.com/uk/search?q=star-trek-discovery), although it may result in a disappointing "0 titles" result; but trying the same thing with an actual item page doesn't necessarily work, because e.g. the US TV series URL has "tv-show" where the UK one has "tv-series".
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:21 AM on December 2, 2019

Yeah, on justwatch, you have to choose the country first and then run the search so embedding search results from justwatch won't work in that context.
posted by acidnova at 11:32 AM on December 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

That's a bummer. In light of which, I think establishing a cultural convention (maybe supported by some text on the new post page?) to follow Huffy Puffy's suggestion would be a good thing.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:33 PM on December 2, 2019

I think revising the 'New Post' page text would be best. Right now for TV-category posting the description for 'Your Post' says: "This will appear on the front page. Please do not reveal major plot points from the episode or season in this section. Non-spoiling plot descriptions can be found at Wikipedia or the show's network site." That could be tweaked to add something like "Include the current broadcaster - i.e. (Netflix Original, BBC UK, NBC US, etc)"

I think people should be encouraged to put the carrier info in the main post rather than in the 'Extended Post'/More Inside, since it's a pain to expect people to roll the dice on getting spoiled on getting spoiled just to try to peek inside to see if the channel/streaming service is listed in the tags. And for movies, I'd love it if the production year was visible in the title of the post from the main Fanfare page, instead of only once you click through, it would be great to know whether or not something is a new release or not without that extra click.
posted by oh yeah! at 1:41 PM on December 2, 2019 [4 favorites]

Forgot to say - I don't think it's particularly necessary to have a canistreamit/justwatch/letterboxd or whatever link in the Fanfare page that stays up to date -- I think the "where is this airing/streaming?" question is mainly of import when something first shows up on the Fanfare page. Once it scrolls off into the archive, anyone joining the thread is presumably doing it because they just watched/read/listened to/heard about the thing and then found the thread via the search menu.
posted by oh yeah! at 4:33 PM on December 2, 2019 [4 favorites]

Not "implementing this on Metafilter" specific, but could we get a list of similar sites that go beyond the US/UK/Canada? Put them on the Fanfare FAQ or easily accessible spot, maybe?

Searching for the series or movie in Google has been my go-to since it will usually pop up with a box at the top of results for streaming options, but a list of websites would be nice for browsing options.
posted by lesser weasel at 5:24 PM on December 2, 2019

Justwatch does cover 40 countries but I can't say how in-depth they are as I've only used it for the US.
posted by acidnova at 5:35 PM on December 2, 2019

Maybe just add a line of text up front suggesting the poster add the information as a tag?
posted by Thorzdad at 8:05 PM on December 2, 2019

The problem with putting it in just the tags though is that you have to click into the post to see the tags, and the 'Extended Post' could be spoilerific if you're just trying to find out where/if you can watch the thing. Also, tags aren't visible in Classic mobile-format view.
posted by oh yeah! at 8:56 PM on December 2, 2019

Oh yes, this is my most desired fanfare pony! I hope we come to a consensus.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:50 AM on December 3, 2019 [1 favorite]