read a news story about crunchyroll opening up a linear streaming channel, and that made me realize those exist and start looking into it out of curiosity
in the case of CR, it mostly exists as a place to dump their middle-of-the-road content into an automated TV programming schedule while playing commercials and occasional ads for their actual streaming service (though they still have trouble filling in those ad slots and will just put in a "hey there's supposed to be a commercial here" thing for 90 seconds instead)
it's neat for a free service. this is probably because I grew up in the era of TV, where you just watched whatever was on because it's not like you had much choice in the matter, but there's a quaint nostalgia to this format. not enough to pay out the ass for a cable plan, but enough to leave on this live service and see shows I likely wouldn't actively decide to watch via an on-demand service. younger people would probably find the whole thing to be arbitrary and annoying, because yes it is
(there's a video of someone setting up their own live vintage TV system using old VHS recordings and a raspberry pi, it's really cool)
I kind of wish they would do more active things like "hey we're gonna premiere the new jujutsu kaisen episode here about an hour before it gets posted on our platform" to fully emulate that classic experience of everybody tuning in and watching the same time simultaneously. this is part of why I do the weekly anime night, after all
