This Streaming Service Wants You to Veg Out and Channel Surf

Watching Netflix doesn’t seem arduous. You sit down, fire up the app, choose the show you want, and the next thing you know you’ve dedicated seven hours of life to watching Narcos. But Tom Ryan, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Pluto TV, thinks Netflix is too hard. He is specifically bothered that you have to pick a show instead of just flopping down and settling for whatever happens to be playing. “It really does front-load a lot of work,” he said. “People want to work less for their entertainment."

At a time when most Internet video services describe themselves in opposition to cable television, Pluto is trying to build a service that feels like traditional TV. Its app looks like a standard cable television guide. When users open it, whatever channel they watched last begins playing immediately. They can change channels, but they don't have the option—or, as Ryan would put it, the burden—of selecting exactly what show they want to watch, at any time they choose.