Midway through 2022, as Netflix experienced a series of blows that led to crumbling stock prices and significant layoffs, it was easy to point to HBO Max as a streaming service that had things figured out. Its original series were winning Emmys, reality shows like Fboy Island had buzz, Sesame Street anchored a robust lineup of kids and family programming, and its movie library was strengthened by TCM’s deep well of classic offerings.
A year later, the newly-rebranded Max has added some existential bleakness to the streaming landscape, becoming a trendsetter for what’s become a deeply upsetting trend: Streaming services dumping their original films in the trash, or not just canceling shows, but full-on removing them, never to be streamed again.
WarnerMedia kicked off this “cost-saving initiative” a year ago with the bombshell announcement that its upcoming Batgirl film would be permanently shelved before ever premiering on the service. That, plus the removal of series like Westworld and Raised by Wolves (to later appear on FAST — free ad-supported streaming television — platforms) kicked off an ongoing wave of similar moves from other studios, using the same playbook to bolster their own profits.
Having ready access to a vast, seemingly infinite amount of entertainment is a relatively new development in human history. Yet, thanks to Max, Disney+, and Paramount+, it’s starting to feel like it’s coming to a close. Oh, there’s still more content available to watch than one person could ever watch in a lifetime. But consumer trust is built on these platforms being a reliable home for the stories we love — something which crumbles every time a new film or TV show is permanently removed from streaming.
Some Historical Perspective
Shows and films bounce back and forth between platforms all the time these days (as one example, Harry Potter is in constant flux between Peacock and Max). It’s different when a platform-owned original is just gone.
Prior to the advent of home video, the idea of preserving film and television so it could be watched again by consumers wasn’t a priority, to the point where a great deal of content from those early decades has been lost to eternity. The Library of Congress estimates that 75% of all silent films made before 1929 are gone forever. In the world of television, a disinterest in archiving already-aired material infamously affected the long-running sci-fi series Doctor Who: 97 of 253 episodes aired from 1963 to 1969 are missing, because of the BBC’s then-policies regarding deleting material.
Doctor Who (BBC)
Those BBC policies also nearly led to the unthinkable loss of Monty Python’s Flying Circus — in 1971, Python member Terry Jones was informed that tapes containing the first season of the seminal comedy series were set to be erased, and he and his fellow Pythons were able to rescue them. This phenomenon isn’t exclusive to Britain, either: As just one example, the only footage that remains of the original Star Trek is the negative copies of the aired episodes — all outtakes, deleted scenes, and other auxiliary footage were thrown out once the show was canceled.
Major streaming platforms removing original content, with no indication that this content will ever be available for viewing again, could be seen as not that different from the loss of those early Doctor Who episodes… Except those Doctor Who episodes were lost due to the lack of foresight on the BBC’s part, a mistake. All of these removals happening today are willful choices, cost-cutting measures made to appease shareholders.
Artificial scarcity is hardly new in this space — Disney in fact popularized it by introducing the concept of “the Disney Vault” in the 1980s, only offering its classic animated films for sale on VHS for a limited time, at which point they would be returned to said metaphorical vault. But the difference here is that we’re not talking about a finite amount of physical objects on sale, and also, the Disney Vault as a concept ended up serving the studio as a marketing tactic, promising that those titles weren’t gone forever — just, gone for now. Meanwhile, there’s no promise that a film like Crater (removed from Disney+ after just 48 days) will be available again anytime soon.
“It’s So Incredibly Discouraging”
The decision to remove series, as heartless as it might seem from the outside, isn’t something done out of pure spite: Streaming services have yet to establish themselves as profit generators for their parent companies, some of which are struggling with shareholder concerns over massive debt. Though that debt doesn’t keep these companies from paying their executives enormous amounts of money, and while the strategy does have a financial advantage for the studios, it negatively impacts not just consumer trust, but the studio’s relationships with the talent behind their projects.
Since last summer, some creators have been very vocal about the removal of their shows — Infinity Train creator Owen Dennis wrote that:
“I think the way that Discovery went about this is incredibly unprofessional, rude, and just straight up slimy… I can’t think of a single person who works in animation and entertainment that, when you bring this all up, doesn’t say ‘What the fuck are they doing? How do they plan to have anyone ever want to work with them again?’
“Because why would we? What is the point of making something, spending years working on it, putting in nights and weekends doing their terrible notes, losing sleep and not seeing our families, if it’s just going to be taken away and shot in the backyard? It’s so incredibly discouraging and they’re definitely not going to be getting their best work out of whoever decides to stay.”
