inside amy schumer – Techdirt (original) (raw)

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Paramount The Latest To Pull Titles From Paramount Plus Streaming Catalog For A Tax Cut And To Skimp On Paying Residuals

from the too-cheap-to-function dept

One of the benefits of the shift to streaming music and video was supposed to be (and often is), convenience. As in, you’d have access to any show you’d like, at any time, without having to go hunting and pecking through old VHS archives. And while streaming delivered on many of its original promises, as the sector grows and consolidates at the hands of predatory, fail-upward VC bros, things are getting… stupid.

We’ve already documented the pointless horror of the Warner Brothers Discovery merger, in which “acquisition for acquisition’s sake” nitwits spent billions of dollars on numerous properties only to turn around and fire oodles of employees, pull numerous popular programs from their streaming catalogs to avoid paying residuals, and generally creating a worse product than when they began.

But it’s not just happening at Warner Brothers Discovery (Max). Disney, which generally has more money than it knows what to do with, recently stopped hosting a slate of its content (like its recently produced and relatively popular show Willow) because, again, it was too cheap to pay artists’ residuals and it wanted to nab a big fat tax cut.

Same thing with CBS and Paramount owned streaming platform Paramount Plus, which is being criticized for also pulling a long list of shows that were still popular with consumers. Again, because it was too cheap to pay residuals and wanted a nice tax cut:

The reason behind the removals, here and elsewhere, is a tax write-down that streaming services can get by Thanos-snapping their own original series. Why such a tax loophole exists for content that has been written, produced, and platformed (even for only a short time) is something that Hollywood might want to look into, as this increasingly popular move from streamers has introduced a new level of instability to the industry. Getting canceled is bad enough; now creatives have to worry that their work will disappear forever, often without any way to access it ever again.

Often, when these decisions are explained to the public in major outlets, it’s framed as essential, cold calculus. Rarely do outlets share the context that these same companies see no problem paying incompetent executives comically bloated compensation packages. Nor do they note how these companies spend untold billions on completely pointless mergers that set vast piles of money on fire.

Incompetence, a mindless obsession with consolidation, and slash-and-burn VC brain worms have come to streaming in a big way, triggering a major wave of the kind of enshitification Cory Doctorow routinely warns about in most sectors.

These are folks who genuinely don’t care about the actual health of the company, brand, or service being provided. They’re here to make quick money up front by any means necessary, then run to the exits in total disregard for anybody else as they fail upward to the next opportunity. And it’s completely undermining a core benefit of streaming and on demand technology:

Increasingly, the streaming companies that disrupted predatory cable TV giants are behaving more and more like the companies they disrupted. Asking more and more money for ever-degrading services that keep seeing greater and greater restrictions. Guess we’ll all have to head back to libraries, for however long those are allowed to exist.

Filed Under: inside amy schumer, max, mergers, missing shows, paramount plus, star trek prodigy, streaming
Companies: cbs, paramount