Netflix is using live comedy as a warmup for live sports—and it’s working

Paid subscribers are used to watching things on demand, but with buzzy live specials like the Tom Brady roast, Netflix is reintroducing them to the idea of FOMO.

Netflix once foreshadowed the death of appointment television. When the streamer dropped all 10 episodes of its first high-profile original series, House of Cards, at once, it forever changed traditional viewing habits. Just over a decade later, the company now appears set on remaking appointment television in its own image.