Why Hasn’t Somebody Done This?

If you subscribe to a streaming service, you know that stuff comes and goes. New movies and television shows get added all the time and older things vanish when the licensing runs out, possibly moving to a different streaming service. More confusingly, there are cases where some seasons of a show are on one service and other seasons are on a different service. Sure, there are some sites that try to keep track of it all, but it’s something of a losing battle.

This started to bug me after reading a BBC article (Withnail and I: The ultimate cult film?). I went to see if Netflix carried it. No luck. Struck out at Hulu. Maybe Amazon, where I subscribe to Amazon Prime? Well, sort of. It’s got a Prime Video page with the helpful notice This video is currently unavailable. There’s a link to a used Blu-Ray version for $97.95 and a couple of Region 2 DVD’s (um, I live in Region 1). By the way, who’s the Satanist who came up with the idea of Regions for DVD’s?

And then there’s a used VHS copy for sale. What, no Betamax?

So I asked myself a stupid question. Why isn’t everything always available?

With most streaming services, you get access to some ungodly number of movies and shows for a flat monthly fee. Easy peasy.

But you can do various add-ons. Right now during the pandemic, movies aren’t even being released in theaters, they’re available for various premium prices depending on the studio. But even before the coronapocylypse I’d occasionally rent a streaming movie from Amazon. I haven’t paid close attention to the pricing but I think I’ve passed on a few newer movies that were something like $6 or $7 bucks but I have watched a few $1.99 movies. But why isn’t renting lots of older flicks or shows available, perhaps at a variety of price points? Studios and other copyright holders could earn a steady stream of small royalty payments. What’s not to like? Some might be priced at $2.99, some at $1.99, some at $0.99, maybe even less. An old Boston Blackie flick for $0.29? Tamil-language flicks from the 1940’s for $0.34 a pop?

Surely, smart people running these streaming services and media companies have read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. Amazon and iTunes are essentially sample cases of such a business model.

Why haven’t streaming services extended their tails?

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