Streaming Television, Safe Haven No Longer

 Remember when streaming services were an alternative to traditional broadcast television? A safe haven from commercials, gimmicks, limitations. Well, the idealistic world that sites such as Netflix has accustomed many of us to has now gone to the wayside before the new year hit, ending the fantasy that streaming companies were vastly different from their predecessor companies within the field.

Up until almost a year ago, streaming giants such as Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max were defined by the concept of having no commercials, an ever-growing library of content, and would be home to bundles of original content, both past in present. Furthermore, these sites, primarily Netflix, stood out as ones that would save content from its death on linear television, ensuring each story is told to its fullest extent and is given a proper conclusion.

However, these concepts met its end within the past couple months, with HBO Max and Disney+ launching ad-friendly versions of their platforms, cumulating with Netflix doing the same, despite being the very critic of the movement to begin with.

What's more is that now it is commonplace for series to be axed off of networks prematurely, ringing the bell of an era that these companies claimed to bring an end to just years ago. In fact, even series produced for these services are now seeing their way off the online networks, with the likes of Head of the Class (2021) being removed off of HBO Max, just shy of a year after being released on the platform.

Why is this? Well, while streaming services may be new, this phenomenon is nowhere near new, and is practically as old as the modern era of television itself.

During the time of the first official television season from 1946 to 1947, there were only two primary television networks, DuMont and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), with broadcast networks CBS and ABC to later join the group to become the "Big Four." Just a decade later, DuMont Television Network met its demise, leaving just ABC, NBC, and CBS.

With only three nationwide television networks at the time, despite it being a new field, it began to become predictable, with many affiliate stations to come airing their network's choices of programs and nothing more. Given the surplus of television shows that existed within their early years, many were recorded on disposable kinescope film, if at all, and are mostly lost to history. It wasn't until the 1960s that many networks became serious about preserving television shows.

While it was not the first, it is the most popular early example of a show being fully preserved was Desilu's I Love Lucy (1951-1957), starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, becoming one of the most successful shows to have reruns, which would air on CBS for decades to come.

By the early 1970s, syndication was born, with new federal regulations requiring non-network programming to be part of each television schedule before primetime. There are primarily two types of syndication, off-network and first-run, the former consisting of rerun shows and the latter was a newer concept that allowed shows to be shopped directly to the television stations individually.

Despite taking a few years to take off, the concept of syndication grew rapidly, and changed the landscape of television. While television networks were typically in charge of canceling shows, due in part thanks to scheduling limits and advertiser support, the growth of syndication allowed for practically any show to return and theoretically live forever.

Within the 1980s, shows such as sitcoms Charles in Charge, Punky Brewster, and Mama's Family moved to first-run syndicated after being retooled following their network cancelations. For other shows, such as Small Wonder, it served its entire time in syndication. In fact, even Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune resumed production during this time to benefit off of the syndication surge, launching them into the television staples they are today.

The benefits of syndication just decades ago can be seen as akin to that of streaming today. With syndication, by the late 1980s, many shows had run their course, and syndication died down significantly, with the programming style now featuring almost exclusively talk shows and game shows.

This was not the only example of this within media, as the rise of independent stations (not affiliated with any network) took place around the same time, showing that large networks were not necessarily needed to show quality content. However, with the gradual demise of first-run syndication, the popularity of many independent stations dipped as well. Some of the most popular independent stations even were featured on a nationwide level, such as WTBS and WGN, thanks to their superstation status.

By the 1990s, a similar occurrence happened, with new networks Fox, The WB, and UPN. These networks joined the ranks of being large television networks, though they were not subject to many of the regulations the larger networks had. Initially, they built their successes on continuing shows canceled from the "Big Three," allowing them to grow creatively without as much pressure to hit high viewership rankings.

While the newly founded networks enjoyed underdog status for a while, they gradually began adopting the more common-practice network practices over time, leading up to the merger of The WB and UPN into The CW, canceling practically all their shows produced to that point. While Fox is still an underdog in their own right, they are practically a major network in itself, and is no longer operating in the same fashion they initially had.

Even with the expansion of linear television to include cable and satellite services, they went through the same predicament as well, though to a varyingly different extent, with there now being an oversaturation of cable content.

This leads back into my bigger argument, that streaming television is just simply the latest trend to to become normalized within the industry. No longer are Netflix and competitors able to be the saving grace for your favorite shows. Instead, they are just like every other part of the industry.

Perhaps we have to wait for virtual reality television to finally have the shows we want to watch?