With streamers culling their libraries, Australia’s TV history is being erased (2024)

It wasn’t long ago that it felt like we were entering a golden age, an unprecedented period of plenty. Spearheaded by the 2015 arrival of Netflix, the streaming revolution promised freedom, flexibility and abundant choice, as well as welcome liberation from the irritating constraints and practices of broadcast networks.

Almost a decade on, that gleaming early impression is looking decidedly tarnished as the dark side of the brave new world has become worryingly evident. That viewers need subscriptions to multiple services to partake fully in this land of plenty. That much of the content being excitedly spruiked in the relentless promotions for the latest must-see productions is actually pretty mediocre. But also, and disturbingly buried quietly beneath the surface, that libraries aren’t forever and that history can be virtually erased.

Over the past couple of years, as streamers have discovered that their business models, built on the shaky foundation of continued growth, are unsustainable, they’ve dramatically reigned in their spending on content and slashed expenses. Among the casualties have been their libraries. The back-catalogues made up of titles that aren’t new but add depth to a service’s offerings are regarded by executives searching for savings as low-hanging fruit, ripe and easy targets as they’re not seen to attract new subscribers or to help retain existing ones.

And they do cost money, in licence fees as well as residual payments. So the streamers have shifted from spending with giddy abandon in order to establish their brands and woo subscribers to being fearful of their future viability, and this type of content is deemed to be expendable.

The titles spared the recent purges are the types of shows that became the unexpected darlings of the DVD age with its box-set boom, the series that draw nostalgic older viewers and younger ones discovering them for the first time. These protected species include comedy classics such as Friends, Seinfeld and the original version of The Office. But they’re the exceptions. As the streamers see it, they’re not public-service organisations and they never promised that their back catalogues would be available in perpetuity.

Loading

The first ominous signs of culling came in the US in 2022 when HBO Max, bizarrely rebranded as Max by its new owners, Warner Bros. Discovery, which is billions of dollars in debt, announced the deletion of 87 titles, among them Westworld, The Time Traveler’sWife, Minx and Mrs Fletcher, as well as a bunch of children’s and animation productions.

Since then, the ever-growing list of deleted series has expanded to include Run, The Nevers, Vinyl, Love Life, K Street, Snowpiercer, Beartown and Here and Now (although, some of them are still available in Australia due to pre-existing licence agreements).

Showtime soon followed, off-loading, among others American Rust and Jordan Peele’s revival of The Twilight Zone. A clear-out at Disney+ dumped more than 50 titles including Willow, Dollface, Turner & Hooch and The World According to Jeff Goldblum. Among many others, Netflix forfeited rights to Scandi crime series such as Nobel and Bordertown as licensing agreements expired and weren’t renewed, and many of its titles now come with a warning about them “leaving soon”.

Some of these shows might be picked up somewhere else and survive, as happened with Minx and American Rust. Or the old episodes could turn up on another platform, or bits of them might: seemingly random seasons can suddenly appear on a different service. The messy business of who owns rights to what is a tangle that’s difficult to unravel, but it’s the reason that a seemingly random season of a series will unexpectedly appear elsewhere, perhaps purchased as part of a bundle obtained at fire-sale prices.

The effect is that a screen landscape that formerly seemed bountiful now appears unreliable and unstable. No wonder there’s an identifiable affliction dubbed “streaming anxiety”, a fear of losing movies, TV shows and music you’ve bought that are stored in the cloud.

Think back to the dawn of the new age and the memory of the joy with which people were able to free up space as they ditched their DVDs and DVD machines, which were thought to be redundant. With streamers, people could enjoy their own video libraries any time without leaving home. And they were easily portable to boot. Even wary, slow adopters who clung to their DVDs soon found that the machines required to play them had become almost impossible to repair or replace.

But if we’ve ditched our physical copies and shows aren’t available on the streaming services, do they exist? If there’s nowhere to access them, it’s as if they don’t. No wonder holding on to a physical copy of a cherished film or TV series, and having a machine that will play it, now seems oddly comforting.

It’s also become clear that there are black holes in this virtual universe, shows that have fallen through the cracks because of the tangle of rights ownership, or because they aren’t deemed to be worthwhile investments. Try, for example, to find Aaron Sorkin’s series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip or Sports Night.

That chasm becomes more disturbing when viewed from a local perspective as a host of shows simply aren’t available: Prisoner, Number 96, The Box and State Coroner. Significant drama series that screened on the ABC: Phoenix, Janus, Blue Murder, Palace of Dreams and The Secret River. Also, the output of Crawford Productions, for decades the sturdy spine of local production with series such as Homicide, Carson’s Law, The Sullivans, The Henderson Kids, Division 4, Matlock Police and The Flying Doctors, as well as miniseries such as All the Rivers Run. Then there’s Rush – not the 1970s gold-rush drama, which isn’t available – but the ambitious cop series that ran for four seasons on Ten. Only one season is available.

Loading

These might not all be masterpieces, but they’re key components of our screen heritage. In this universe, Australian TV history is patchy and incomplete. Meanwhile, more recent casualties of culling include a pair of locally produced 2023 Paramount+ drama series, One Night and Paper Dolls.
Reflecting on a period that seemed to hold so much promise is a chastening experience as a screen landscape that once appeared abundant now looks increasingly depleted.