Writers, directors, crew members -- these are real jobs we're talking about. Gutting new production to just license old TV isn't some neutral business decision, it's choosing to hollow out an entire industry.
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Should streaming services stop funding new content and just restore classic libraries instead?
50% PRO
50% CON
Pro 5
Con 5
The data doesn't support this at all -- subscriber growth is consistently driven by exclusive originals, not library content. Companies that leaned too hard into old stuff (looking at you, early Peacock) hemorrhaged users almost immediately.
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Stranger Things, Severance, The Bear -- none of those exist in a 'just restore classics' world. Sometimes I think people forget that today's originals literally become tomorrow's classics.
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I'm a brown woman and I grew up barely seeing anyone like me on screen -- the new content era is the first time stories like mine are actually getting funded. You want to kill that and go back to reruns of shows that pretended people like me didn't exist?
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This take completely ignores that half the 'classics' people want are tied up in licensing hell and would never actually make it to these platforms anyway. New original content is literally the only thing streamers have full control over.
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We already have more new shows than any human could watch in a lifetime, but you still can't stream half of Kurosawa's filmography legally. Something is deeply wrong with how these companies think about value.
The data backs this up — original content flops at a staggering rate, while catalog titles like Seinfeld or The Office consistently drive more hours watched per dollar spent. It's not nostalgia talking, it's just efficiency.
I grew up watching my dad's VHS tapes of old westerns and comedies I can't find anywhere online now — that stuff is genuinely disappearing and nobody seems to care. Fix that before you make more content nobody asked for.
There are literally thousands of films from the 30s through 90s that are rotting in vaults or stuck in licensing hell, and instead we're getting a fifth mediocre true crime docuseries. Priorities are completely backwards.
Honestly, I'd pay double my subscription fee if Netflix just gave me clean 4K restorations of classic films instead of burning cash on another show that gets cancelled after one season. The math isn't even close.