The paradise of eternal series is over: if you don’t see it soon, they can delete it

Streaming platforms promised to be the definitive solution to our needs as consumers of audiovisual content. And although they have improved our access to many film titles and series in a simple way, They are far from being that El Dorado that we imagined a few years ago, that promised land with almost infinite catalogs and where the works would exist forever when we wanted to get closer to them. The reality that we are seeing is different: as much as VOD facilitates consumption without time pressure, such as the appointment with the broadcast of traditional linear channels, the truth is that time is still an important factor and runs against the user. In other words, if you don’t see a certain series or movie now, perhaps in a few days it may no longer be there.

And we are not just talking about third-party products whose rights had been licensed and which expire at a certain time. We were aware of that a long time ago and we were used to it; you could stay halfway through a series if the exhibition time on a platform ran out. The most recent script twist is that it also the original contents, those that we thought would always be tied to the platform that produced them, are also susceptible to disappearing. We saw it with ‘Westworld’ and other HBO Max series months ago and now it has been Disney+ who has started to touch the “delete” buttons. In his case, the deletion of ‘Willow’ (at the moment in the US) is the most striking: released just five months ago, it was one of Disney+’s biggest bets apart from the ‘Star Wars’ and Marvel franchises, but its Poor performance has led to it not only being cancelled, running out of a second season, but also to decide to eliminate it, which makes it impossible for viewers who have not yet seen it to give it a chance and for the platform to somehow make the cost of producing it profitable. But why is this happening? The short answer is: to save.

The key: original fiction

When Netflix set out to be number one in the video-on-demand market, it had a clear objective: forge a very extensive catalog of original series so as not to have to depend on purchases from third parties and, therefore, not be at the mercy of studios that, to a certain extent, were their own rivals. And from there came million-dollar budgets to produce their own series and films. Then, the other platforms that came after followed similar strategies, although some like Disney or HBO Max had the advantage of decanting over Netflix, that is, they could fill their catalogs with the titles that their studios had produced in past decades. Each one pulled from her closet bottom and It seemed that more was always more and that having in the ranks of streaming even the last forgotten eighties movie was a weapon to convince the user to sign up.

However, it seems that time is revealing a reality: except for specific and very powerful cases of old titles that are still being seen (think of ‘Friends’, ‘The Office’ and the like), the viewer usually pulls for the novelty. And no matter how much a title released months ago continues to be available (or theoretically its useful life is eternal), perhaps those who did not see it at its peak promotion moment will never do so because there will always be something new to steal from it. the attention. Somehow, that illusion of eternity that we had comes face to face with a situation that is not so different from that of usual television: what has just been broadcast, the moment, matters. That is why Netflix usually decides whether to renew a series based on the performance of the first 28 days of life, or less, or that certain titles do not contribute to the platforms more than a cover spinning their options carousels without anyone arriving. to click on it.

Save with FAST platforms

It would be easy to think that a produced series is a paid series and, therefore, its cost of stay on the platform is equal to zero, but it is not so.. The original series and films that have already been finished are subject to a series of royalties and copyrights that the platforms have to continue paying as long as they remain in the catalogue; and it’s not a lot of money in individual terms (in fact, they’re lower on streaming than on traditional TV and that will be a workhorse both in the writers’ strike and in the coming deals with the directors’ and actors’ unions), but if there are hundreds of titles that are on the platform collecting dust at a certain cost, the sum can be significant. And hence the savings are sought. In this way, Disney+ and Hulu will eliminate in the US (and possibly later also in other territories), fairly recent fictions such as ‘The Mister’, ‘The Mysterious Benedict Society’, ‘Diary of a Future President’, ‘Stargirl’, ‘Artemis Fowl’ or ‘Y: The Last Man’, which are not profitable to keep available.

Then, there is another workhorse and it is that of amortize in other scenarios those contents that do not work too well on the platform. The Hollywood industry has had its eye on FAST platforms (free but with ads) such as Pluto TV or Tubi for a couple of years, and many companies see in them the way to give a new life to those content that are not so attractive. for a payment platform but perhaps for free they would be consumed; That was, for example, Warner Bros. Discovery’s move towards ‘Westworld’, ‘The Nevers’ and other titles. And again the audiovisual giants must decide whether to sell their content to others or if the panacea will be to set up their own FAST. Or have a paid version and another with ads, with similar or different catalogs. Nothing is as easy as it seems and no series will last forever.