Fair, that makes sense too, but that part of "now stuff will be black holed" is what I think wasn't particularly anticipated from either side. Especially from the streamer's side: now you've spent money on shows that aren't even gaining you "niche back catalog size" benefits.
It’s the streamers making the black holing decision I think? Like the studios aren’t saying “remove this”, but the streamers deciding to not pay residuals. My guess is the higher profile removals are for shows that had special residual deals but most of it is probably just trying to save cash
That seems to be a distinction without a difference?
Sure, you can say the studios are not demanding that shows be removed. But, they are demanding that shows get paid for on each stream. And the streamers have done the math to see that it is cheaper to stop streaming them.
This kind of thing didn't happen at your old rental spots, as they specifically did not have to pay back to studios on each rental out. Just as your library doesn't have to pay on each lend. Moving the streaming into that world is very different.
Broadcast is /almost/ comparable. But there they don't give viewers a choice of what to see. It is them paying a much smaller subset of shows for the right to broadcast them. It is a payment model that doesn't scale up to on demand streaming capabilities.
To be fair, I suspect that the deal was actually on the right to be able to stream. Not per active stream, as that you could probably still find a way to make work. But if I have to pay for the right just to offer a show, and the number of people watching it are low, I can fully understand just not bothering.
Of course, it gets further complicated when you consider it a broadcast, as that also requires some considerations on the music rights that have to constantly be redone, as well. Truly a very baroque system that is exceedingly complicated.
