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| Streaming everywhere! |
If you’re reading
this, you’re probably no stranger to streaming. Hard to believe the concept is
barely a decade old, but it’s managed to radically alter the entertainment
industry within that time. I mean, it basically started with Netflix before Amazon joined in, and then the various studios
and networks saw how much people liked it and said “By golly, we need to get in
on that!” However, for every person cheering on the ability to watch their favorite
stuff on their phones, save space without having to buy physical media or save
money by cutting the cable cord, there are those who were a bit wary.
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| The before times of home media viewing. |
First, you
have the inconvenience factor. Just because something is streaming now, doesn’t
mean it’ll be there later. Outside ones like Netflix basically ran like
television networks that aired reruns: contracted for a set period of time
before the program moved on to its next home. Then you’ve got the first-party
ones who rotate things out regularly, with only originals sticking around for
the long haul (once upon a time, anyway).
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| Sorry, were you watching that? Not anymore! |
But then
there’s the control factor. A factor people are getting to experience
first-hand with the recent HBO Max hoopla.
The owners of the streamers get to decide what plays on that service, when and
where it’s available (foreign versions have considerably different offerings
than the American ones), and when to take it off. Studios have also gotten
smart by progressively ending their physical media output in order to force
people onto those streaming services if they want to see their favorite things
again and again (or into pirating that material, if you’re of dubious
character).
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| Most of the victims. |
Which
brings us back to HBO Max. As part of the merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery, the new head of it all, David Zaslav,
is on a mission to save
the company $3 billion by next year. Part of his plan is to take a dive on almost-complete
projects for a tax break—in particular the upcoming
Batgirl movie—and cancelling a lot of recently green-lit projects.
This week came the sudden removal of 36
titles from the service, 20 of them original to the streamer, and 200
episodes of Sesame Street.
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| Zaslav's preferred tools. |
The worst
recipient of this mass axing has been projects from Warner Bros.' own studios. And
we’re not just talking about obscure stuff, we’re talking raved about hits like
Infinity Train (whose
creator posted
his own comments on the whole ordeal) where their entire official web
presence has been scrubbed in the process. Besides the crappiness of
just up and removing the hard work of thousands of people without any kind of
advanced warning whatsoever, there’s been another consequence folks not in the
industry were previously unaware of: residuals. Apparently, while the shows
stream, the animators get paid residuals into their pensions and health plans. By
pulling the shows and not canceling them outright, Warner Bros. Discovery no
longer has to pay out, thus adding to Zaslav’s big savings plan. And aside from
the monetary loss, there’s also the loss of thousands of hours of hard work
that will never get seen, such
as Summer Camp Island, unless the shows are able to move elsewhere
(which not all of them can). (It should be noted that, as of this writing, some
of those shows are still available on a pay-per-view basis on other services
like iTunes, but there’s a question as to how
long).
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| A tale in two tweets. Summer Camp Island creator hyping up the long-delayed new episodes and her devastation when the show was removed. |
HBO Max
aside, this whole thing is endemic of a couple of larger systemic problems. The
big one is that media is gradually being gobbled up by these gigantic
multi-media entities so that only a handful of companies control everything.
And that number will continue to dwindle as more mergers and acquisitions
happen—and they will happen (“Every restaurant is Taco Bell.” – Demolition Man). But
the other problem is the continued disdain given towards the animation
industry. Animation has gradually been pushed aside like the red-headed
stepchild of studios with little regard given to the material itself or the people
who make it. It’s not unlike my own home industry of comic books, where no
matter how many billion-dollar movies branch out from them they’re still not
regarded as a true artform or given any kind of respect outside of the people
who were already fans.
The perfect stocking suffer for Zaslav this year.
And if this
all turns out to only be temporary house-cleaning before the merging of HBO Max
and Discovery+, then Zaslav clearly
needs to work on his people skills.
*Bit of an update: apparently Cartoon Network is still committed
to airing Summer Camp Island and Victor and Valentino, so at
least that worked out okay to some extent.
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