“Fifty-seven channels, and nothin’ on.”
Bruce Springsteen famously said those words during a concert and later in a song in the 1990s about the number of TV channels seemingly growing disproportionately to the availability of enjoyable content.
Within a few years, there would be hundreds of TV channels and still, some would argue in hyperbolic frustration, “nothing to watch.”
The advent of streaming services was poised as a potential solution to this problem. It granted viewers easy, on-demand access to thousands of movies and shows, which, theoretically, could ensure that viewers could always find something to watch.
According to a survey from Nielsen’s Gracenote, though, that’s not exactly the case today.
Gracenote, a Nielsen-owned content data business, surveyed 3,000 video streaming users in the US, Brazil, France, Germany, Mexico, and the UK who were at least 18 years old for its “2026 State of Play: Amid fragmentation frustrations, UX is the future of streaming” report. It found that many struggle to find something to stream. However, this is not necessarily because there’s nothing good on, but rather because they find it difficult to home in on good content on streaming services.
For example, over 51 percent of respondents said that “the abundance of content and [streaming] services is making it harder to find something to watch.”
Further, 19.2 percent of respondents said that, on average, they either “always” or “often” don’t know what to watch, can’t find anything, and then decide to do something else. And 27.4 percent of respondents said that, on average, they either always or often try to watch a specific program but end up not watching it because they couldn’t find it on streaming.
“Through the lens of catalogue size and streaming usage, connecting the 83.4 percent who don’t always know what they want to watch should be fairly straightforward, especially as companies increasingly use customer data to create personalized experiences that foster long-term engagement and loyalty. Audiences, however, aren’t finding what they’re looking for, and content discovery challenges are mounting,” the report reads.
Forty-seven percent of participants said they spend more time looking for something to watch than they did a year ago. The average amount of time spent is 12 minutes.
In recent years, numerous streaming services have paid large sums to air live events, including sports, to grow their advertising businesses. However, “nearly” 52 percent of streaming users that Gracenote surveyed said they “frequently don’t know which channel or service a specific sports event is on.”
“Sports events that are behind subscription paywalls are often hidden from traditional search, which inhibits discovery,” the report notes.
And in an example of streaming users yearning for experiences most closely connected to traditional, broadcast television, Gracenote reported that almost 35 percent of respondents spend more time watching free ad-supported streaming television services, such as Tubi or The Roku Channel, because subscription-based alternatives, such as Netflix and Disney+, have “become overwhelming.”
Streaming viewers yearn for TV listings
The on-demand nature of streaming services has degraded the need for live/virtual and print-out TV listings, such as a TV Guide. But challenges in finding content on streaming services are apparently leading many streaming viewers to yearn for that classic form of guidance.
In Gracenote’s survey, 72.3 percent of respondents said they want “a consolidated guide to the programming available across all of the streaming services that they use.”
Streaming service providers and analysts I’ve spoken with have pointed to content discovery as a streaming challenge for years. Some, like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, have turned to AI to help people search for content by using casual terms or to analyze viewing habits to make new recommendations. Others, such as Tubi, have turned to user-generated content playlists and recommendations.
However, there is apparently still a deficit when it comes to good and accessible streaming recommendations, as 31 percent of survey respondents said they have yet to find a “good”
Despite there being hundreds of streaming services—as analysis this month from research firm Parks and Associatesthis month states—many would agree with Springsteen that it still feels like there’s “nothin’ to watch.”
Scharon HardingSenior Technology Reporter
Scharon HardingSenior Technology Reporter
Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.
Source: arstechnica.com
