MAY 8, 2025

Happy almost Mother’s Day (including to my own Mama Adalian), and welcome back to Buffering. I’m on assignment for the next few weeks, but we’ve still got a newsletter for you, thanks to the work of my colleague Eric Vilas-Boas. He’s got the details on Netflix’s decision to revamp its user experience, including why it felt the need to shake up a design that was already best in class. We’ve also got part two of my interview with Disney unscripted chief Rob Mills, plus some revealing new ratings that offer the best-ever comparison of streaming and linear shows. Thanks for reading. 

—Joe Adalian, West Coast editor, Vulture

Time for a “new Netflix TV experience.” Photo: Netflix

As Netflix’s star has burned brighter and brighter over the last 12 years — apart from a few blinks here and there — its industry-leading homepage has stayed pretty much the same. Its competitors copied it, and Netflix mostly focused on its algorithm and scrolling over major UX overhauls, at least when it came to main TV apps. That all changes starting next week. The dominant streaming service is getting a homepage makeover for the first time since Obama was president. “Our redesigned TV homepage is simpler, more intuitive, and better represents the breadth of entertainment on Netflix today,” said Eunice Kim, the company’s chief product officer.

In the coming weeks, expect to see automatic updates to both your Netflix TV and mobile apps that introduce new searching and navigation tools, as well as a redesigned user interface. Also announced are improvements to Netflix’s recommendations engine and a generative-AI-powered beta program. Honestly, the majority of the changes feel long overdue — or at least in line with design trends we’ve seen other streamers deploy as they’ve tried to chase Netflix’s subscriber-vacuuming success. Netflix is a much larger and very different company than it was 12 years ago, a platform that now must support video gaming, live programming, sports, and advertising in addition to films and TV. “Our current TV experience was built for streaming shows and movies,” said Kim. “This one is designed to give us a more flexible canvas now and in the future.”

We’ve seen a demo of all the changes coming, so let’s take each of them one at a time:

➼ A splashier, more fluid homepage. This will feel most immediately obvious: Netflix’s top recommendation, the homepage’s hero module, is now more prominent, with its corners rounded off in a tile instead of inset into the background. Now it floats, and the Netflix team says it can be switched up more dynamically, which makes sense for a company diving deeper into live events and sports; when HBO Max became Max, Warner Bros. Discovery representatives also pointed at flexibility — in that case, being able to quickly swap out content — as a key factor in their platform updates. Given that Netflix serves far more subscribers than HBO Max did a couple years ago, the changes were likely even more imperative.

That floaty, rounded-off design sensibility carries over to the rest of the rows on the Netflix homepage. If you click through tiles, you’ll notice new animation has been added throughout, with vertical posters popping out to reveal horizontal tiles (similar to Prime Video’s most recent layout adjustments). Colors from the selected content tiles will also reflect into the background of the homepage, an attempt to further unify the experience.

➼ Context on the content. A lot more info shows up on every title’s little tile now, with callouts like “Emmy Award Winner,” “#1 in TV Shows,” episode details, and season length. Some of it was already there, but it seems like a clear effort to give users a reason to stop and chew on a given option, instead of falling into the infinite scroll. It also feels like Netflix taking a page out of the playbooks of Peacock or even Plex or other niche streamers, which often include years, runtime, and even Rotten Tomatoes scores in the listing before a user clicks through.

➼ Shortcuts up high. Navigation buttons for movies, shows, games, and “my Netflix” have slid from the left-hand panel to a row at the top of your screen. Max actually made a similar change in its major overhaul in 2023, downplaying its side panel, but nowadays, on its TV app, the side panel has returned.

➼ Allegedly better recommendations. This has always been one of our bigger recurring gripes with the service, but the new homepage promises to be more “responsive” with what it recommends to users. Netflix’s chief technology officer, Elizabeth Stone, acknowledges that while users’ moods are difficult for their algorithm to game, their new recommendations “will pull in more signals.” Shows that you give a thumbs-up, actors you search for, or trailers you watch on Netflix will all go into the algorithmic soup — and possibly quickly wind up as new rows of content that align with your browsing interests. “Everything will happen seamlessly in the background,” Stone promises. “It will just be magically easier to find something to watch.”

We’ll see. The level of speed and sophistication Stone is talking about would represent a rapid acceleration from how the algorithm has functioned in the past, and is “something we’ve been pursuing really for a couple of years now,” the company’s co-CEO Greg Peters explained to the New York Times. Netflix’s earlier version of its algorithm reportedly took a day to shuffle new recommendations into the mix.

Ready to scroll Netflix’s version of TikTok?  Photo: Netflix

➼ On phones, a vertical video feed. Finally? And yes, you can thank TikTok and Instagram for this. In the coming weeks, Netflix is going to be testing a new browsing experience for clips and trailers that users can scroll through on mobile devices. It’ll be accessible from the mobile homepage and labeled “Top Picks for You.”

“Ask for vibes.” Photo: Netflix

➼ Generative-AI searches. If you want to search for stuff on Netflix the same way you’d search for stuff on ChatGPT (or Google, or … Vulture), this may interest you. In the new beta Netflix is testing and rolling out to members this week, making prompts like “I want something funny and upbeat” or “I want something scary but not too scary and also maybe a little funny but not too funny” will apparently “actually yield results,” Stone says. This feature will still be in beta (and opt-in-only for now) on its iOS app.

It’s worth noting that Netflix has been hard at work on this redesign, referred to internally as “Eclipse,” since late 2022, and testing the new homepage since last year. It was only a matter of when and what shape the new look would take. But in aggregate, the changes feel almost safe for streaming’s erstwhile great disruptor. They’re either logical evolutions (a shinier and nimbler homepage, faster recommendation times), lessons learned from their competitors (content-tile details, nav-bar hopscotch), or obvious plays in 2025 (vertical video, a ChatGPT clone).

It may be the streamer’s first big overhaul in over a decade, but it’s not radical for a fully mature streaming company now competing against the likes of Amazon’s Prime Video and Google’s YouTube for streaming dominance and working to sell ads, spotlight games, and air marquee live events that don’t break down. Netflix executives call the new homepage “snappier,” but the specific changes reveal themselves as necessary, at least in their eyes — a bet on the company’s long-term future.

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Last week, Buffering brought you our deep-dive Q&A with Walt Disney Television alternative TV chief Rob Mills, the reality guru in charge of shows such as ABC’s The Bachelor and Hulu’s The Kardashians and Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. But in addition to those soapy franchises, Mills’s portfolio includes ABC’s vast collection of live events, including iconic competition series American Idol, the Oscars, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. In part two of our conversation, Mills talks about the importance of these programs to Disney’s overall offering and why he’s looking forward to the addition of another big event to his calendar: the Grammys. 

So ABC took a big risk by picking up American Idol in 2017 after it left Fox. The show’s ratings had faded, and NBC’s The Voice was on the rise. Eight years later, Idol is a cornerstone of the network’s spring schedule. Even though it’s a pretty expensive show to make, I’m assuming you’re happy with it? 

Well, yes, they're definitely not cheap. I have to give a lot of credit to people who've been there since the days of the Fox franchise, like Fremantle CEO Jenn Mullin. As much as everybody was like, "Gosh, they're picking up a show that Fox canceled," there were a lot of suitors for that show. And Fremantle was looking for the right home and somebody who really was going to treat it as the asset that it is. 

What do you think explains the show’s longevity and the fact that it’s still outdrawing competition like The Voice in key younger demos? At least so far this spring, it’s even bringing in slightly more total viewers.

Putting these big stars in these chairs — and I think our judges are the best on television — as great as that is, it is really about the contestants and making you care about their stories. We will continue to do that, and the way to ensure the longevity of the show is to evolve: How are we telling those stories, leaning into social media, making people care about this competition? Idol was at its peak not when it was Simon, Paula, and Randy on the magazine covers, but when you had an Entertainment Weekly cover that had nine squares, like The Brady Bunch, filled with the finalists, and people wanting to know who was going to win. That's really what's important. If you're an aspiring musician, you realize Idol is the one that can really launch careers. Even Benson Boone … 

… Who was only on for one episode!

Exactly. But somebody like Benson Boone chose Idol. And look, Benson Boone would be a star no matter what; he is absolutely phenomenal. But that exposure certainly helped people sit up and take notice. So, the fact that we've had that, we've had Gabby Barrett — the fact we still have stars coming from that show says this is still the real deal. 

Any chance Benson Boone will return to Idol now that he’s a massive star?

We would love it. I'm sure he's reading Buffering, so if I can use this column space to appeal to him: Benson, we'd love to have you come on any episode you want.

Idol also works for ABC and Disney as part of the company’s broader universe of music programming. Disney+ and ABC are now home to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and it recently used Idol to announce its new inductees. This is more of that Disney synergy at play, right? 

This is the greatest job in the world because I touch so many things, but I was incredibly excited about the prospect of bringing the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction here. I think one of the things we really were able to entice them with was synergy. I remember talking to Hall of Fame chief John Sykes and saying, "We can absolutely livestream this on Disney+, but we have a broadcaster that will bring an entirely different audience." I thought it was incredibly smartly scheduled by Ari Goldman, our scheduler, to put it on ABC on New Year's Day, because one of our biggest nights of the year is New Year's Rockin' Eve, hosted by Ryan Seacrest. So we have that to use as a promotional thing for the Hall of Fame. So, yes, this was the best of what we can do synergy-wise.

And then in 2027, Mickey’s musical empire grows even bigger when the Grammys move to ABC. How big was it for you when your boss Dana Walden landed that show, which had been at CBS for decades? 

It's sort of a “pinch me” moment. Those things come along once a career, so this was incredibly exciting. Again, our big sell was, "Here's what we can do on Disney.” What was important to them was, how do you keep the Grammy brand in the consciousness throughout the year? So we can do Grammy winner night on Idol. We can do a Grammy night on Dancing With the Stars. We could do a date on The Bachelor where they go to the Grammy Museum and a musical artist performs. And, of course, we have Jimmy Kimmel Live and Good Morning America. 

What we're really excited about is what we’re referring to as the biggest event period in television history, and I don't think that's hyperbole. In the span of four or five months, we will have the 60th CMA Music Awards, we'll have the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, we’ll have New Year's Rockin' Eve, we’ll have the Grammys, we'll have the Super Bowl, and then we'll have the Oscars. That's in 2027, but we're already thinking about how we can make all of these things work together? It's hard to get more powerful than that in the big-event space.

Some folks saw Disney stepping up for the rights to the Grammys as sort of an insurance policy against the possibility that ABC will lose the Oscars after its deal expires in 2027. Do you think that was part of the company’s thinking? And how optimistic are you about striking a new agreement for the Academy Awards?

 We have a couple years, and I obviously hope the Oscars stay here forever, right? Both as a viewer and as an executive, I’ve only ever known the Oscars on ABC. So I certainly hope there's a path forward. I don't think the Grammys were in any way, shape, or form bought as an insurance policy. A company our size absolutely should be making investments in things as great as the Grammys, but it's amazing that those two will exist on the same network, at least for a couple years and hopefully more. We will see what happens.

This year’s Oscars did decently well in the ratings, and creatively, they really seemed to pop. Conan O’Brien got great reviews, and he’s already been locked up for next year, which makes a lot of sense. But I’m curious whether Conan doing two Oscars in a row means Jimmy Kimmel has decided he’s done hosting the show. Have we seen our last Kimmel-hosted Academy Awards? 

I certainly hope that we did not see his last Oscars two years ago. He said he needed a little break. And, I mean, the privilege of having done Oscars with Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O'Brien, who are two faces on late night's Mount Rushmore, is amazing. When you do the job that Conan did, it's worth asking, "Would he be interested in doing it again?" And we were lucky. I hope Jimmy’s hosting the Oscars, or something else, down the line. We have a litany of awards shows.

There's always the Grammys.

That's right.

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Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo: Colin Bentley/CBS

Every spring for most of this century — including every one of the past 17 years — CBS has been able to put out a press release declaring itself TV’s most-watched broadcast network while also touting its dominance of Nielsen’s list of the most-watched linear TV series for the season. This year, however, CBS’s (well-earned) bragging came with a twist. It declared victory in the linear battle last month, while this week it claimed another win in a newer Nielsen metric: multi-platform ratings. These numbers include viewing that takes place via both traditional TV and streaming within the first five weeks a show (or episode of a show) is available to watch. By that measure, CBS is averaging 9.1 million prime-time viewers each week, well ahead of main rivals NBC (7.2 million), ABC (6.9 million), and Fox (4.3 million). 

That’s great news for CBS, but as part of its victory lap this year, the network also included a look at where things stand using season-to-date numbers from Nielsen’s new combined streaming and broadcast-program ratings, which measure average episode viewership of linear network shows right alongside that of streaming originals. And not just with the “minutes viewed” metric it reports in its weekly streaming ratings: This dataset estimates average total viewers. CBS did well here, too, claiming six of the top 20 shows released between September 15, 2024, and March 15 of this year.