Google TV is relying on celebrity star power in a new content curation feature intended to make the hunt for what to stream a little less arduous.
The new what-to-watch feature, called Watch With Me, launched Thursday with Emmy-nominated actress and LGBTQ+ advocate Laverne Cox’s curated list of movie and TV recommendations. The spotlight also featured a short video interview with Cox where she discusses her top content picks like “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “Moonlight.” The ongoing recommendation list and video series will reveal more celebrity partnerships over the next few days.
“My watchlist is all of who I am and everything that has shaped me or helped me understand myself better,” Cox said. “Understand humanity better. Understand the craft of acting and filmmaking better. And, it makes me smile.”
Google isn’t the first to try to help its users navigate the tens of thousands of streaming titles, and certainly not the first to deploy celebrities in these types of campaigns.
In 2019, WarnerMedia’s HBO launched a “human-focused” content recommendation approach, a jab at Netflix’s recommendation algorithm. As part of the campaign, HBO Max created the Recommended by Humans website that compiled numerous fan tweets that recommended various HBO movies and TV titles, and later released its own celebrity recommendation lists from stars like Regina King, Bill Hader and Zac Efron.
What’s more, Google TV rival Roku launched its own content recommendation project earlier in June called Roku Recommends, a weekly entertainment show starring two celebrity hosts, Maria Menuounos and Andrew Hawkins, as they inform audiences of the latest Roku titles.
For Google, the launch of Watch With Me is a significant step in strengthening and promoting the relatively new Google TV interface after its recent public dispute with streaming giant Roku.
In April of this year, Google announced it would kill the Play Movies & TV app on Roku and other smart TV platforms from LG, Samsung and Vizio, in an effort to promote Google TV. However, less than a month later, Roku announced it would also remove the YouTube TV app due to a contract dispute, publicly accusing Google of unfair terms that “threaten” Roku’s customers. Google has publicly stated these claims are “baseless and false.”
Google TV is an entertainment interface that aggregates live TV, movies and TV shows from various streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and YouTube, and is accessible through Google’s Chromecast or the Google TV app for Android. Google TV will soon be accessible on Sony and TCL smart TVs.