During my WFH for COVID this last week, I’ve been rewatching Season 1 of Buffy in the background. I used to rewatch Buffy every year, along with Angel and 30 Rock, but it’s been several years since I’ve actually pulled it off. On top of that, I usually skip Season 1 and jump to Season 2 most times.

But I’ve been pretty hype about the new reboot going into production at Hulu, so watching the origins again seems like the right call. So far, I’m actually loving that it’s been a while. I’m finding myself drawn in to the story all over again.

The one thing that I’ve found most weird: I’m watching it on Tubi because I’ve finally had to go ad-supported on all my services to save money. So, why Tubi when I have Hulu? Because Hulu has been consistently the worst SVOD service when it comes to ad load. So much so that I only really watch it through Disney+ because then at least the Hulu Originals use the < 6 minutes of ads per hour mark that the rest of Disney+ uses–no dice for the acquired/library content like Buffy, though.

I was getting 2 minute ad blocks every 10 minutes no matter what while trying to watch Buffy. Meanwhile, on Tubi, it’s been about 3 ad blocks under a minute each plus a pre-roll 30 second block per hour. And that’s for no monies.

It makes me want to make up a chart comparing ad-load so I have a quick reference for where to watch something when it’s available multiple places.