TV disappears, but HBO Max removing shows feels different

Yes but Westworld started out with a brilliant first season and went downhill from there until the 4th season was nearly unwatchable. The Sopranos was good right up until the end, which is not how I would have ended it. HBO might as well sell Westworld to a less premium outlet.

Disney;s business model for many years was to do just that, they would put popular titles "in the vault" only to re-release them a few years later

it is proven economic model of false scarcity. Just like the McRib, McDs would never put it on the permanent menu because they sell more due to it "limited run" every year.

I suspect these shows will be like that, they will be removed and readded periodically to boost subscriber numbers, probally to align with some exec needing a bonus, or if they are having a bad year and want to hide the bad news from investors

The rest of the video venues (what do we call them now that they're not channels?) caught up. HBO is still high-status, but it hasn't had any kind of singular status in years; FX, AMC, Netflix, Apple, Starz, and Amazon do just as good a job with original programming.

I assume HBO has figured that out for itself, and it no longer makes sense for them to be anything less than ruthless; nothing they ever do is going to vault them back to the status they had in 2004, so why pretend?

> Having the series disappear is like finding out that Disney is jettisoning Toy Story.

A bit of a strange analogy since pulling stuff from shelves to create artificial scarcity has been a signature move of theirs for quite some time.

I agree that HBO's brand has been broken, but that happened independent of the decision to remove canceled titles from the streaming back catalog. It happened first with the initial purchase by AT&T when the strategy 180'd from high-quality boutique productions released in small numbers one at a time to an attempt to emulate the Netflix "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" strategy, then again with the panic reaction to the pandemic releasing all Warners films on HBO Max rather than giving any exclusive theatrical run, pissing off directors and actors, then yet again when AT&T promptly bowed out and Warners merged with Discovery and they seemed to now reverse a bunch of the original decisions, canceling both shows and planned movies left and right and resetting the entire DCEU in the process.

Not even sure where to throw in the weird tendency to release all of these "limited" series they change their minds on and throw out adhoc future seasons that come out of nowhere and make no sense because the initial run generates some buzz. I'm just glad they started doing that after Chernobyl and at least didn't ruin that one.

Also putting aside the confusing launch of HBO Max itself, while also keeping HBO Go and HBO as a channel available for subscription from other streaming services, and all of the bugs the app had within the first few years of release.

They've been a complete shitshow for years now, obviously having no real plan that any set group of leaders consistently believes in. I'm reasonably sure having old titles becoming unavailable unless you bought a physical copy isn't a new thing anyway. What's new here is doing it to titles that were barely canceled just now, not to mention the whole Batgirl thing producing an entire movie and not even releasing it at all anywhere.

Fortunately, there are many such men. And their time is nigh again.

James Bond villain or the Noah of our times?

A decent portion of the article was devoted to the physical disc option and how it's increasingly uncommon for that to even be offered as a choice.

>If you don't have access to the file itself, you don't own it.

This isn't the full story either though. You can be in possession of a file that has a DRM encryption applied. If the service revokes you keys, that encrypted file in your possession is worthless. So, do you really own that file?

The last paragraph wasn't necessary to me; while I'm glad we have "if you can't pay I understand" -- but I also think that "if you can pay you always should" isn't nuanced enough?

I imagine few of us want "cable all over again," but that's what it looks like we're headed toward? Offhand, I'd e.g. like to pay for individual shows. Let me pay $5 for Severance and I literally need nothing else from Apple TV.

Well, a subscription service is literally a subscription access, of course.

If you buy an iTunes movie and keep the downloaded file (there is a single file), it works so long as you retain an iTunes account (it is DRM protected, that DRM is account-specific, NOT media-specific)

It’s hard to take things away from people and charge the same amount of money and not have a consumer friendly reason for doing it. Even casual access to programming content.

Customers don’t care about corporate mergers.

> If you want to own an actual copy of a TV show or movie, buy the physical disc.

For the vast majority of new TV shows, that option simply doesn’t exist anymore. It’s been that way for a couple of years now. You can only hope to find a torrent in good enough quality.

>>If you can't download the file, you don't own it.

I would append that with "If you cant download the file, DRM free, in a format that can be read with OpenSource Software you do not own it

> I really don't understand why people are surprised.

Because this is the first time anything quite like this has happened. Yes I know shows disappear from streaming platforms all the time.

Anyone who says they aren’t surprised is, imho, full of shit. This is surprising because the economics of it seemingly don’t make sense. Which means the contracts must be structured in a way that people didn’t expect. TBH eve after the announcement it still doesn’t make sense to me! The only way it can sense is if you know the contract details. And I’m pretty sure you don’t, which means I think you’re full of shit. I’m not trying to be rude, just honest! However if you do know what the Westworld contract looked like please let us all know!

That's why I only buy shows/movies on Blu-ray or DVD. I'm not paying a similar price to that and risk having it taken away at some point.

EDIT: And if that isn't a reasonable option, I can probably download a DRM-free version of the movie from some "movie preservationist".

Does this actually happen? It was my understanding that they disappear from the store, but if you already bought it, you still have access to it.

I don't think this is necessarily true. Amazon owns the rights to Star Gate and right now SG1 has a warning that it is about to be removed. Rather odd to do when they own the franchise.

If I buy something on Prime, it’s exclusively with those “thanks for using slow shipping” credits they provide during the holidays. I have about $30 of credits this year.

The ephemerality seems like a side effect of the underlying “problem”: Media consumers want what’s new and hot, that’s where the audience and money are.

Prestige TV imported the creative standards and financing levels of Hollywood films into dramatic television. Now, just like the movies, it’s become hit-driven.

Yeah, that doesn't make me feel any better. Generally I have zero interest in watching quality shows with interruptions by ads, but on streaming networks they're especially bad. It's not like they bother putting them in at scene changes, they just jam them in anywhere.

At least HBO releases their shows on disc. Other services that only offer streaming are more concerning.

Westworld was cancelled without an ending as were some of the other shows on this list like Vinyl which was cancelled after 1 season. Personally I liked both shows at times but I kind of get why you'd not want to steer viewers to dead end shows.

On that pan, are you able to filter your search by Blu-ray vs DVD?

I'm not sure if you're mis-reading the quote, or don't have the implied context for the quote, which is that television broadcast did not originally pass through any persistence layer. It went from the camera to the television, never to be seen again.

I'd expect that there's a fair amount of local-release content that might not have surviving recordings. Individual episodes of things like local newscasts, public affairs shows, those weird weekend "lifestyle" shows where all the guests are local advertisers basically paying for a 10-minute ad spot. There might be a representative episode floating around, but does anyone necessarily have the December 16, 2007 episode of the Channel 83 Action News at Noon? If they do, is it publically accessible, or sitting in some dusty records room at Channel 83, on decaying tape?

Also the excellent early 90s HBO show Dream On is a lost relic never likely to be resurrected.

It’s funny because I actually watched an episode or two of Real Sex on my iPhone several years ago. I don’t recall whether it was off of their website or through their app, though.

If only that were true. Sometimes it disappears while you’re downloading it.

Yes, physical media.

Is there? How much music was lost when oink (and what.cd) was shut down? We will never know but I suspect quite a bit. It can get awfully hard to get hold of obscure records even if they did exist on physical media.

This also happened with the TV show Northern Exposure, which had a notably great soundtrack. They couldn't get rights to a lot of the music, so it was replaced with more mediocre stuff on the hardcopy releases.

Apparently, it's happened to other shows, too: https://www.vox.com/2014/11/3/7145231/shows-not-on-dvd-music...

I was gonna watch west world the other day but found out it’s cancelled? :(

> The content is just too good.

Considering the new bosses have a reputation for producing pure garbage media, I would expect this to change in the near future.

Usenet too, old as the hills, continues to archive via NZB/NNTP.

If you want prestige, Amazon did spend $1 billion on their middling-earth multi-ring documentary about tory political infighting or whatever it is.

The Criterion Channel.

> The problem then is that not enough people were watching it. That makes sense given it was also cancelled recently.

Ouch, apparently the writers were even planning on the next season being the final one.

First of all this move is enough for me to never subscribe to HBO Max so don't take my defense as positive, just explanatory.

> If that were the case, there'd be no reason to remove it

If the deep parts of the catalog don't generate subscriptions they are a money hole.

Remember you don't want to supply users with everything they want when paying residuals. You want to give them exactly enough content to justify the subscription cost and nothing more.

The ideal user is one that only watches a single show and nothing else.

Of course the problem with this perspective is it assumes users ignore such actions. Hopefully the user base proves them wrong.

> Given that though, HBO might be removing Westworld while residuals are the most expensive and it could come back in a couple of years.

That isn't necessarily true, it could be that by pulling the content the residuals are frozen or even worse (as someone suggested on an article on the topic) reset when you begin streaming again.

> I agree it does feel like HBO is breaking their viewer expectations by removing one of their own originals.

Honestly I would bet a lot of money viewers were ignored for this discussion. It is exactly the kind of "short term profit at all costs" play that has become more popular.

residuals for streaming are not based on viewership (because the streamers won’t release actual streaming numbers to the unions)

Yep, but I can see the day coming when the major studios stop releasing DVDs and Blu-rays altogether to clear a path for their streaming offerings.

Yes, many people watch shows and n streaming services. Why would cable be preferred? With streaming you can watch any time you want not on a fixed schedule.

Do you watch OTA live? I am shocked by the number/length of commercials on OTA broadcasts. Even when I watch network television from NBC/CBS/etc. on their websites, it's much easier to switch to a different window, mute the volume, and check back in a minute or two (and rewind if needed).

The most likely theory is that HBO (under the former ownership) signed deals on streaming residuals for these shows that make them more expensive to keep available than they’re worth.

They expected Westworld, for example, to do Game of Thrones-class numbers and continue to draw subscribers for years as a catalog title. It didn’t sustain that level of interest. And the new ownership doesn’t seem to believe in the value of catalog titles in the first place: I wouldn’t be surprised if The Wire and The Sopranos eventually get moved or sold elsewhere.

Some shows are permanently canned as a tax write-off.

Final space for instance https://gamerant.com/final-space-warner-bros-discovery-tax-w...

In the short term, you are probably right. In the long term, people will move to the most convenient option. That means the experience has to be better than bit torrent.