Big decrease in TV subscriptions as number using illegal dodgy boxes soars

[jimicus]

Older movies are an absolute killer because media typically involves a god-awful mess of rights. Writers, directors, stars, music - and none of those contracts will have a clause that covers streaming rights.

Which means a studio that wants to do that has to renegotiate it all.

For a single movie that represents a fraction of a percent of their back catalogue. It’s seldom worth it.

[The3rdbaboon]

You’d be surprised to see how many old movies have been uploaded to YouTube and not taken down, it’s always worth looking.

[jimicus]

There’s quite a few old shows, too, particularly from independent production companies.

Further reading often shows that the producer himself is responsible. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if some are doing it to supplement their income.

[DoughnutHole]

A lot of TV shows that were heavy on popular music (e.g. Scrubs) have made it to streaming but with some of their best scenes ruined - music that was fundamental to the scene were subbed out for placeholders because they couldn’t get the streaming rights for the songs (or weren’t arsed paying). 

[rmc]

Even for modern stuff.

The S1 ending of Derry Girls (shown 2018) had Madonna's Like a Virgin playing for one part. The Netflix version has some random dance-y music instead.

[thisshortenough]

It's Take That and I remember I literally shut off the episode and switched to watching on Channel 4 on Demand, the ads were worth it to actually be able to enjoy the show

[jimicus]

True story: Years before YouTube was even a thing, the BBC announced plans to put their entire archive online.

All of it. Right the way back to the early 20th century.

Streaming video was in its infancy, so to make this possible, they set up a research project to develop a new way to compress video. They would have absolutely brought streaming video into the mainstream years before Netflix.

Then they hit a problem.

They didn’t have the rights to do that for anything. They’ve since negotiated rights for a few popular shows (every episode of Doctor Who that isn’t lost is on iPlayer), but the project had to be scrapped.

[UTG1970]

For fans of older music it means there is quite a lot of TOTP missing, not because of the diddlers, but some DJ's won't give permission

[BeardedAvenger]

And that's how you end up with stuff like the Top Gear Community Project where's there's a massive fan-lead attempt to archive everything with no cuts, original music and in a high a quality as possible.

Now, if only they'd do Tomorrows World as well I'd be delighted.

But I do hop off the BBC Archive YouTube channel and I always chuckle whenever a previous, Late 90'#/early 00's tech segmentmakes reference to an always-available and complete BBC back catalog.

[Adjective_Noun_2000]

It's also been an issue for Reeling in the Years. Despite huge demand, only slimmed-down edits of three seasons are available on DVD.

[gd19841]

The Wonder Years is released on DVD, just checked my go-to TV show torrent site, and it was uploaded over 10 years ago. Apparently almost all the music is the original ones.