Roku's New Free Channels For August Will Have You Laughing All Day
Roku continues to shovel new free channels out to its free Roku Channel. So far, the company has released close to 80 new channels, all of which you can enjoy without spending a single penny. This month, the company is adding even more to the lineup, including three comedy-based channels and one that will likely leave you laughing for other reasons (via Cord Cutters News).
The new channels will make it possible for you to jump into episodes of "Mad TV", a sketch comedy series that ran from 1995 to 2016. During its heyday, "Mad TV" featured original characters, satirical takes on pop culture, and even its fair share of celebrity impressions and appearances. But if that isn't your cup of tea, you'll also be able to jump into iconic television and comedy specials from past decades focused on Black voices and culture with the new Retro Black Laughs channel. Additionally, the third channel in the lineup will focus entirely on reruns of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?", a popular sketch-comedy show hosted by Drew Carey for its original run and later by Aisha Tyler.
Finally, the fourth channel to join the listings is the most likely to earn itself a few side glances. That's because this new channel, called Fairground AI, is exactly what it sounds like: a 24/7 stream of AI-generated content, including films, short series, and other works.
Hiding the slop with what you really want
Roku's move to add more free channels to its lineup is a smart one, especially considering Roku recently raised prices of its streaming devices pretty extensively. Additionally, "Mad TV," "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" and the Retro Black Laughs channel all feel like content that users might actually care to watch. It's the addition of the Fairground AI channel that has left some reporters questioning why Roku made this move, especially since most see the content as "slop" in a trough for viewers to eat up.
Fairground launched its new channel at the end of July this year, with support from a slew of content creators and studios, including Ryan Phillips, Phantom X Studio, Machine Cinema, and Kelly Boesch. Each of these creators and studios has been pushing hard for the inclusion of AI in entertainment media, and Fairground AI looks like a way to help bring the content to a mainstream audience. And this isn't the first time AI has come for mainstream media, either. Last year we saw the "Netflix of AI" making claims it could generate the shows you wanted to see.
However, with options like "Mad TV" and other free channels already available on the Roku Channel, Fairground AI has a lot of real, human-made content to compete with. And considering the general populace's stance on AI content, and the overall quality of the snippets that we watched of Fairground AI's programming while writing up this report, let's just say that AI has a long way to go before it can truly stand up to the iconic performances that humanity has been putting on since the birth of the moving picture in the 1880s.