Is that Hulu making the decision, or the content owners? I'm guessing they're going to keep making the wrong decisions, while the various services throw up their hands trying to deal with the insanity.
As a customer, I don't care. Tone note: I don't mean that snarkily, sarcastically, or dismissively, I simply mean that, I don't care. Or if you prefer, I can't care; there's nothing I can do to fix it short of what I just did.
It really is bizarre to me how protective the entertainment industry can get of its content, in a context that I am paying for it (in fact I buy the Hulu non-commercial plan, upon which they make much more than they ever could dream of with commercials, especially given I tend to watch at most two shows per season on them, so I'm really paying for it). I assume Hulu has some sort of arrangement where payment is based on viewership. Why would a TV show not want all of its episodes from at least the last season up on Hulu, prior to its distribution in some other format?
I'll be specific. I enjoy Penn and Teller's Fool Us; not necessarily my favorite show ever (and yes, I'm aware of the at-least modest amounts of kayfabe going on) but a fine late-night relax-before-bed show. A quick search suggests that it is not currently legally available in any format, though I welcome corrections. What's the motivation for taking it off Hulu? Now they certainly aren't making any money from it.
I mean, I understand greed in the general sense. I understand the principles of differential pricing for different markets and the way the entertainment complex uses time to do that with movies and such. (i.e., it's why movies come out in theatres, then on expensive pay-per-view, then DVDs, then streaming services) What I don't understand is the motivation for taking down content that is not legally available anywhere and making it impossible to make money off of, especially in light of content not likely to be available in any other way in the future (there does not even seem to be DVD sets or anything, there does not seem to be a "downstream" for this to go in the differential pricing). A similar trajectory has been followed with Good Eats, which is only very spottily available legally. (A quick search to make sure I'm not shooting my mouth off shows that seasons 1 and 2 were available but are now $100+ to buy used, because they're out of print.)
Oh, and while this may be perhaps neither here nor there, huge, huge chunks of the show are readily available on Youtube. (Not the paid part, just normal free Youtube.)
The problem is, the whole way licensing is conceived in this industry is not for any individual property to individually generate an income. That's not good enough for studios or networks. They perceive some tremendous added value in the portfolio of shows or movie properties they have to offer. Consumers, of course, don't give a shit about this, as evidenced by their willingness to jump out of cable-land for anything that offers a modicum of greater purchasing power.
Hulu or the network are likely not making any more money off of you watching Penn & Teller's show. Penn & Teller's show is probably less-profitable per-viewer to the network, because Penn & Teller are stars with great agency who can demand a large cut of the pie. Hulu's and the network's incentives are largely to get away with offering you the properties from their portfolio with the lowest market value, without you deciding to cancel entirely. While you and many other readers here are willing to re-evaluate and cancel your streaming subscriptions on a regular basis, I suspect their average consumer does not behave that way.
