From: YourName@YourISP.com   
      
   Seems like a great way to have your TV set ruined by your pet trying to   
   'catch' on-screen insects and fish ... and insurance companies probably   
   won't pay out for such damage because it isn't an "accident" (you did   
   it on purpose to amuse your pet).  :-\   
      
      
       TV, It's Not Just for Humans Anymore   
       ------------------------------------   
       Videos aimed at pets are drawing millions of views. But who's   
       actually watching?   
      
       Show me your YouTube watch history, and I will tell you who   
       you are.   
      
       In my household, many of the videos on rotation are   
       eye-rollingly on-the-nose for a modern Brooklyn couple in   
       their 40s: deep dives into ancient Roman history, interviews   
       with professional chefs, outtakes from the British comedy   
       show "Taskmaster."   
      
       But the most-viewed video in our apartment is a more curious   
       artifact: footage of a strand of yarn being dragged across the   
       screen. The video, created by the YouTube channel TV BINI,   
       lasts over an hour and is scored with recordings of birdsong.   
       Its devoted viewer? Our 2-year-old cat Goose.   
      
       Once upon a time, back in those young, halcyon days of the   
       internet, cats were the stars of social media, muses for early   
       memes and viral videos. Over the last two decades, however, we   
       have progressed from making videos of cats (still a popular   
       pursuit, of course) to making videos for them.   
      
       YouTube alone offers more content than my own three pets - two   
       cats and a dog - could watch in a lifetime: videos of squeaky   
       toys and squirrels, animated fish and feathered balls, eight   
       hours of British birds and 21 hours of puppies playing. Roku   
       users can download apps like "Happy Dog TV" and "Relax My Cat."   
       And DOGTV, a television channel and streaming service, has   
       cinematographers who shoot original canine content in more than   
       20 countries, said Ron Levi, the company's founder and chief   
       content officer.   
      
       It's a development that seems, somehow, both surprising and   
       inevitable - the product of a society in which pets have become   
       bona fide family members and fragmentation has become a defining   
       feature of the media ecosystem. Media companies now offer niche   
       content designed to satisfy every conceivable kind of viewer.   
       Why not four-legged ones?   
      
       Video 1: (25secs)   
          
      
       Animal audiences   
       When I first heard about DOGTV, more than a decade ago, it was   
       easy for me to dismiss it. The original idea, which came to   
       Mr. Levi in 2006, was to create a television channel that could   
       keep lonely dogs company while their owners were out of the   
       house. "The idea is really to help them feel a little bit more   
       relaxed and not anxious," he told me. At the time, traditional   
       TV was still king, and when DOGTV rolled out across the United   
       States in 2013, it did so primarily as a premium cable channel,   
       available for $4.99 a month.   
      
       I didn't even consider subscribing. Sure, I happened to have my   
       own Velcro dog (highly attached, determined to follow me   
       everywhere), but I was also a freelance writer who spent most   
       of my workdays at home and had a limited budget for cable.   
      
       But television evolved, and pet TV right along with it. DOGTV   
       added a multiplatform streaming service and app, offering   
       videos, many of them free, for seemingly every canine   
       circumstance: videos for playtime or bedtime, breed-specific   
       playlists, collections of dog-free videos for "reactive" dogs   
       and others designed to desensitize nervous dogs to everyday   
       noises.   
      
       At the same time, the rise of social media and streaming video   
       platforms like YouTube meant that content creators didn't need to   
       start a full-fledged television network to get in on the pet TV   
       game.   
      
       I didn't realize how many people had done just that - or how   
       creative their efforts had been - until my husband and I adopted   
       Goose and Juniper, who is also a playful, active 2-year-old.   
       Hoping to find more outlets for their seemingly endless energy,   
       we cycled through some conventional feline fare (birds, mice,   
       fish) before stumbling upon a whole library of videos of string.   
      
       And while our cats seem to enjoy a variety of genres, it's the   
       string videos that they respond to most reliably, jumping up and   
       clawing at the moving strands. Goose, in particular, seems to   
       enjoy the experience so much that whenever he hears the signature   
       bloop of the TV turning on, he gallops into the living room and   
       sits expectantly in front of the screen.   
      
       Pet preference   
       Goose and Juniper appear to have company. Their favorite string   
       video has 3.2 million views, and TV BINI's most popular video -   
       black mice scurrying across a yellow background - has more than   
       150 million views.   
      
       Still, those statistics reveal only how often humans are pressing   
       play. There's vanishingly little data on how pets are actually   
       reacting to and engaging with all of this new content. (Cats are   
       especially understudied, as is typical.)   
      
       One clear finding, however, is that not all animal content is   
       created equal. A recent survey of American dog owners suggested,   
       for instance, that dogs had little interest in videos of vehicles   
       and only moderate interest in videos of people. Instead, dogs   
       seemed to prefer videos of other animals, and one species in   
       particular.   
      
       "Dogs like to watch dogs, just like humans like to watch humans,"   
       said Dr. Freya Mowat, a veterinary ophthalmologist at the   
       University of Wisconsin-Madison and an author of the study, which   
       was published in 2024. "Which is kind of hilarious, if you bring   
       it truly back to basics. It's essentially soap operas for dogs."   
      
       Such parallels only take us so far. A handful of studies have   
       suggested that dogs are not exactly binge watchers, tending to pay   
       attention in very short bursts - on the order of seconds, rather   
       than minutes or hours.   
      
       And while we humans might settle deep into the couch to unwind   
       with our shows, dogs are often activated by theirs, wagging their   
       tails, barking and rushing toward the screen - a behavior that   
       doesn't necessarily indicate enjoyment. "You don't know if that   
       means, 'I was just excited to go greet the thing that was on the   
       TV and sniff its butt,' or whether it was, 'Oh my gosh, that's a   
       predator. I need to go attack it before it attacks me,'"   
       Dr. Mowat said.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)