Media preservation: two words that are so often pushed but is so rarely put into true practice. With entertainment being the business it is, often times they view films and series that are made as meant to entertain audiences of this generation, with any later audiences generally being afterthoughts - regardless if the creatives making the content want their work to last and be enjoyed always. And as technology advances, as the quantity of entertainment produced increases, and as the overall consumption of the media evolves, this concept has only become much more prominent. There's entire communities dedicated to dig up lost media of the past that hasn't been publicly archived before. But just because we're keeping a watch now doesn't mean we're in a great place nowadays. However, I think it's important to discuss what got us to this point in the first place to put the current situations into context
To go through history; most entertainment - sitcom, drama, cartoon, etc - was almost purely a current consumption sort of thing. A lot of the time, each episode would only air a few times - maybe with a new life in local syndication if you're lucky - and its purpose is over and done. In the days of Saturday morning cartoons, many shows from the likes of Hanna-Barbera would only last one season, so there ultimately was only a year or two of shelf life for the likes of "Hong Kong Phooey". It makes it no wonder they were all working with such little budget. Things got considerably better when weekday syndication became more commonplace in the mid-80s, which worked off a weekday schedule and often remained on a schedule for multiple years at a time. Still, one would have to be persistent with a VHS or some earlier form of recording (which were expensive as hell at the start) to preserve the stuff they'd really want to revisit in the long run.
Home video as we know it began in the late 70s, with a bunch of theatrical movies being available for rent and purchase. It started as an experiment by Fox, and then some other companies like Disney stepped in to major success. Sometime around the middle of the 80s, TV shows started getting official volume releases of their own, often with about 2-3 episodes a pop. It wasn't much in hindsight, but it was a convenient means of getting to watch some highlights of your favorite shows whenever you wanted, even if it was only a fraction of the full series - and this blew up by the end of the decade. Of course, anyone who wanted to more rigorously follow this stuff could record the show themselves on VHS, which became much more accessible by then but again, that was relying on you following its airing schedule. In a way, home media was trying to cut out the middleman in a manner that gave them control over what the public could watch at home.
Jumping back a bit in the timeline, in the early years of public VTRs, major entertainment studios like Universal actually sued the manufacturers of these devices (namely Sony) on the grounds of copyright infringement and taking potential profits away from them. As the technology rapidly evolved and became more commonplace, this went from the US District Court in 1979 to the Supreme Court in 1983, becoming known as case 464 U.S. 417 (1984). At the time, the justices were indeed conflicted on whether or not recording these materials for personal home use could constitute as infringing on the studios' rights. Ultimately, they ruled 5-4 in favor of Sony because of the technology providing significant non-infringing uses that could not be countered, along with the non-commercial, non-profit nature of time shifting. Even Mr. Rogers spoke up in favor of this position, which is cited to have factored into this decision. So right from the beginning, the business higher-ups were heavily against this form of media preservation to begin with, and it almost was stopped dead in the tracks right from the start. Consider this as we go forward.
Things changed with the rise of cable in the early 90s and especially when DVD came around in the 2000s. Many secondary channels became sort of a hub for reruns of old, often nostalgic shows, seen with Nicktoons Network, Boomerang, and Toon Disney. On top of that, the digital discs were able to carry more episodes of both current and past shows, which made season sets a somewhat commonplace thing by the 2000s. The young folks of this generations were able to be introduced to old favorites in multiple forms, arguably as much as the current stuff, which was able to regularly get reruns. And of course, with the rise of the internet, fandoms became more accessible and plentiful than ever before. For the first time, it seemed truly feasible for your average cartoon to get properly documented and archived.
Then came the early 2010s, where streaming services like Netflix and Hulu began to take off. These were carrying a wide variety of different programs from a multitude of companies, making them feel like nice one-stop shops of sorts. They weren't comprehensive by any stretch, and there was a wide mix between cheap, shovelware-type content and proven big boys, but they proved nice and convenient for those who wanted to watch their favorite programs wherever and whenever. But DVDs and Blu-Rays of many of these popular shows were still getting made. But video-on-demand services on most cable providers and digital stores like iTunes also provided a means to catch up on whatever show you wanted without having to rely on catching the TV airing. Things were looking more consumer-friendly than ever.
However, people seemed to get a little too carried away with the convenience, and so when some of these starts began to expire off the service, it would inevitably sting for any consumers who have become attached to it. One of the more dramatic early examples was when a large variety of Viacom-owned content was all taken off Netflix. But these were generally shows that were still available on either physical media or current VOD, so it generally didn't sting too hard. But sometime around the mid-2010s, the market for physical media seemed to fizzle out; why should I pay extra for discs I have to carry around when my show is available for digital purchase or on a streaming service, was the general opinion. This mentality unfortunately caught up with the corporate bodies and led to unforeseen consequences in the long run.
In the late 2010s, new competition arise in the streaming age, as the prospect caught on more and more with mass audiences. WarnerMedia had HBO Max, Viacom had Paramount+, and of course, Disney had Disney+. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie, and some parties obviously fared better than others. And it didn't take longer for each one to generate content produced specifically for that service, live-action and animated alike. Unfortunately, due to the segmentation of the content, as well as a lot of it being given little marketing, the majority of what came out failed to find the audience it needed to take off. With services like Netflix, any originals they ever made (regardless of longevity or audience) would stay on the service seemingly permanently, but with a few parties, it would unfortunately not prove as easily.
While HBO Max's catalog was never by any means comprehensive of Cartoon Network and Warner Bros' library, there was a lot of the classics and a ton of new content, several of which were artificially turned into Max originals - "Infinity Train" being the most notable entry, but also the likes of "Tig n' Seek" and "The Fungies". Granted, most of these got screwed over in some capacity, and half of them barely got viewed at all, but eh, they were very much available on the service so it seemed to even out a little bit. Unfortunately, as you know, this all changed upon Discovery's buyout of WarnerMedia from AT&T - this seemed like a somewhat promising shift at first, given an entertainment company would look like a better owner than a tech company, but unfortunately we were all too unaware of the kind of leadership we would soon have to cope with.
David Zaslav, head of Discovery since 2005, took control of the new merged company - and known for being a notorious cost-cutter and expecting instant results. And with having $3 billion in acquired debt to take care of each year, cost cutting was indeed a priority in his plan. Of course, you had the typical crap like layoffs and consolidating certain branches, but then came announcements like the near-complete "Batgirl" film and Scoob spin-off "Holiday Haunt" being completely cancelled, as they were mid-budget features deemed not suitable for the vision he had in mind. Needless to say, this was a tragic enough situation by itself, with how many people's hard work will go forever unseen (barring leaks), but this isn't what this editorial is ultimately about, so I won't go in any more depth here. But it does demonstrate perfectly how much the new Discovery regime did not care a lick about the art of film-making. And it would only get worse from there...
In early August of this year, it was reported that a bunch of content was set to leave HBO Max to prep for the upcoming consolidation with Discovery+... two days later. One show of which is keeping the creator in the dark about the delayed final season (which only after getting a viral tweet and press attention did an answer get pushed out), others were downright adored by animation enthusiasts like "OK KO", "Mao Mao", and, of course, "Infinity Train". It didn't help that with those aforementioned programs, official traces of the show from social media to YouTube uploads were being taken down, very much pointing to the possibility of them being writing off for taxes, which would leave them unable to be profited off forever - a big loss for not just the fans, but also the staff who just want their work to be seen by the public. Granted, as of this writing they all remain available for a la carte digital purchase, and very recently at least one creator was assured there are no current plans for write-offs - but given a few slightly earlier removals soon being purged from those places, same may easily apply here too - effectively removing all legal sources.
Of course, the main takeaway in all this is that: nothing is safe, even original content within streaming services owned by the parent company. It's proven quite a danger in regard to giving union workers some much-needed residuals for healthcare (which is yet another can of worms I don't have the time to cover), and overall downplaying the value of what they've tirelessly made. It makes it that much more difficult for such a complicated, expensive art form to feel at all sustainable and how maliciously corporate bodies can act under the wrong circumstances. And of course there's the obvious matter in giving consumers less choice, along with how a service like Netflix could easily do the same if they wanted to. Discussions on this have lasted forever in regard to mediums such as video games, but it seems only recently have the public really started to take the matter seriously in regard to television and film.
Now, in the world we live in today, nothing is ever truly lost to us. There's always people backing up and archiving every show that comes out to free streaming and torrent sites. Most dedicated fans know very well about these, and if they happen to have copies of their own, they'd be more than happy to pass them along through MEGA or Google Drive lists. That said, the quality isn't always up to par with the master source, and it's generally argued that one shouldn't have to rely on illegal means just to access any show of interest; especially not young audiences which the majority of animation is for. It just drives home further how mistreated the creative teams were and how out of reach they now are to the kids of today. Plus, these habits make the lack of official support all the more egregious, especially in an era where companies love to pride themselves on their back catalogs. But know that there was always a fight against letting this come to be by the big Hollywood studios, and that the public desires have consistently pulled through in the end - with enough of a direct push, we can make things better for the future like the past did for us.