When Netflix’s ongoing efforts to crack the live streaming event market have run into issues in recent years, they’ve mostly been technical ones: Streaming glitches, server crashes, and other natural consequences of trying to concentrate a subscriber base larger than some small countries into a single window displaying Mike Tyson hitting Jake Paul in the face. But while the streaming company is capable of throwing a lot of resources at these problems—huge promotion budgets, big paydays for participants, Richard Kind—they still can’t overcome the most powerful forces of the universe. (Note to self: Remember to go back and insert a pithy joke here about Larry and David Ellison’s untold billions of Paramount dollars.) All of which is to say that Skyscraper Live, the planned streaming event in which Free Solo subject Alex Honnold was scheduled to climb very tall building Taipei 101 on Friday night, has now been been delayed due to weather conditions in the Taiwanese capital.
Not for very long, mind you, with Deadline reporting that the event has been given a 24-hour delay “due to weather.” But given that the news went out just half an hour before Honnold was scheduled to begin the two-hour rope-free climb, it’s still a pretty big pivot for a company that usually has extremely precise control over when its viewers can watch what. (It also means Honnold’s climb, rescheduled for Saturday night in the United States, will now be going up directly against the streaming premiere of UFC events on the younger Ellison’s Paramount+, in case the corporate pissing contest of this all wasn’t clear enough.)
Honnold announced his intention to climb Taipei 101 back in 2025, with Netflix climbing aboard the event shortly after. Despite taking efforts to put safety first—including, obviously, this—the streamer has taken some flak for engaging in an event where “something goes wrong” doesn’t just mean “nobody gets to watch Bridgerton for a few minutes.” (When it finally goes live, the event will be broadcast with a 10-second live delay for what we imagine are fairly obvious reasons.) Saturday Night Live went hardest on the topic on Saturday night, airing a sketch that ended with a fake Netflix tagline: “We saw your hockey porn and raised you a live death.”
Honnold’s climb is now scheduled to begin on Saturday, January 24 at 8 p.m. Eastern.
