![]() The high-minded ideal of endless content and creative freedom was nice, but it was always tethered to the notion that it would ultimately turn out to be profitable. As we’ve seen on multiple occasions throughout this year, the streaming renaissance seems to have been premised on a vision of the future that has not quite come to pass. In some cases, not even the people who made the show have their own copy. If a massive conglomerate decided one of these shows was no longer profitable on their streaming services but also not worth the hassle to bundle and sell off elsewhere, it might well and truly be gone. There’s no Blu-ray, no DVD, no VHS tape in a dusty attic. ![]() Specifically, many of the series WBD has decided to remove do not exist on physical media. Because few of these titles were huge hits, the backlash has been simmering rather than spectacular, but these moves portend a bleak future for streaming, or at least one that’s far away from the naïve hope that streaming platforms could serve as a forever archive, preserving our classics and holding on to the others for discovery. Most of the series, it seems, will be bundled and sold to third-party FAST (free, ad-supported television) streamers-think Tubi or Pluto-but, for the moment, the shows are just gone. Even Westworld, a show that had once been a tentpole for HBO, took the hit. ![]() The gutting began this summer with a handful of children’s shows (hundreds of episodes of Sesame Street, as well as series like the adorable Esme and Roy, developed through HBO’s much-ballyhooed partnership with Sesame Workshop), but continued on through the fall and winter, vanishing series like Made for Love, The Nevers, Love Life, The Gordita Chronicles, and The Time Traveler’s Wife. For a variety of reasons, most relating to the burden of streaming-content payment obligations, WBD has been removing movies and original series from its streaming library, and even canceling series currently in production. ![]() One of the most significant, if least spectacular, media news stories of the past year has been the quiet dismantling of the HBO Max streaming catalog. Sam Adams Station Eleven’s Creator Explains Why He Changed the Book’s Ending Read More ![]()
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