The Monitor is a weekly column dedicated to the whole lot occurring within the WIRED world of tradition, from films to memes, TV to Twitter.

This week, like Dr. Frankenstein earlier than it, Netflix ran round frantically screaming “It’s aliiiiive!” 

Well, it wasn’t precisely like that. But the streamer did begin airing commercials, touting its upcoming Chris Rock stand-up particular, with the tagline “It’s live.” That information once more, in case you missed it: Netflix, the service that disrupted terrestrial tv and cable by streaming the whole lot on-demand, is airing a comedy particular. Live, on Saturday, at 10 pm ET. 

It’s a transfer that feels each ironic and sensible. Rock is a veteran, somebody Netflix’s vp of stand-up and comedy, Robbie Praw, told The Wall Street Journal is “on the Mount Rushmore of comedy.” His comedy specials have been appointment tv again when appointment tv was the one type of tv on the market. 

In phrases of getting folks to look at one thing en masse, giving Rock a stay particular—one which’s airing (for lack of a greater time period) every week earlier than the Academy Awards, the place final yr Rock was slapped on stage by Will Smith—is a daring transfer by Netflix. It’s additionally humorous that their newest try and dominate the discourse comes within the type of, effectively, stay TV—full with a pre-show and after-show. 

As Praw informed WSJ, watching a comedy particular “live on Netflix is a real change in the construct” it has with its 231 million international subscribers. But it’s additionally one which makes an attempt to inject Netflix into the dialog utilizing the strategies it disrupted when it launched its streaming service in 2007. Back then, it shifted the whole dynamic of appointment tv by getting folks to tweet, Facebook publish, and so on., about the truth that they have been binge-watching House of Cards or Orange Is the New Black. Now that streaming has left viewers so overwhelmed with decisions that each present feels prefer it’s at “I’ll get to it when I can” standing, a stay occasion with a comic who hasn’t actually spoken publicly because the Oscars drama seems like the easiest way for Netflix to dominate the group chat. 

This column has already given lots of inches to the notion that streaming services are just TV/cable networks now—even those that weren’t launched by TV/cable networks (Hulu, HBO Max, Disney+). But as Netflix {couples} this transfer into stay TV with its proposed crackdowns on password sharing and introduction of ad-supported subscriptions, it appears to be like as if streaming didn’t disrupt TV a lot as present the established gamers what TV might appear to be in an age of fast-speed web. It took some time, however networks lastly realized from Netflix’s instance and launched their very own providers. Now, Netflix is studying what these firms realized within the years earlier than it even existed. Namely, that typically folks will watch advertisements if it means saving cash, however the firms that may purchase that advert house want assurances that persons are tuned in.