(Sighs)
(Shrugs)
What do you guys want me to tell you, I told you so? Alright, I told you so.
But y'know, who cares now? I mean, I don't feel like bragging about this or anything, and not because I quietly like to rub it in, mainly it's because I stopped banging the drum on this fight years ago, and frankly now, I don't really care about this.
Yeah, that's the thing, everybody else seemed to be really frustrated and annoyed at this, "How dare, HBO Max take off shows all for a tax write-off because Discovery+ plus wanted more room for their shows!" and it was the big thing for awhile and Kenan Thompson made jokes about it at the Emmys and all, and I was like,- (Shrugs) yeah, that's pretty much what I expected.
I tried to warn everybody. I warned about streaming, and how it wasn't gonna be as secure or great a future as it you thought it was, and as long as film, and television were businesses, streaming was never gonna be as secure as actual physical media and it should be a secondary option, but everybody said, "Nah, nah, nah, you don't get it, streaming is the future!" And you know, that future is now; I'm watching Al Michaels commentate the most boring NFL games every Thursday night on Amazon, for some reason, and sounding like a dead relic of what he used to be inside unless he's making a sly reference to sports betting that goes over everyone's heads, but the point I always made when I would go after streaming, with blogs after blogs, starting, with this one, from like, eleven years ago!, was that, streaming was never going to be the ultimate catch-all of media that people thought it was. Especially when you let all the networks and studios themselves cultivate and collect their own exclusively libraries, and have them all charge their own separate fees and control the distributions of their content, then you were gonna to have stuff that slipped through the cracks and wouldn't be available for the most amount of people as possible.
I mean, it's all bullshit that HBO Max and Warner Bros. is get lauded and controlled over by Discovery of all goddamn entities, 'cause that's what I wanted when I got by HBO Max account, more um-, what the hell even is on Magnolia Network...- (Goes to channel's website, clicks on original shows) eenie meanie, miney mo, catch a tiger by the toe, eh, something, something, not that word, eh, let her go, eenie meanie miney mo, more, um "The Garden Chronicles"?! whatever the hell that is. But, it's not like I saw anybody trying to stop it at the time either, or stop any of these bizarre corporate media mergers, that should all basically be illegal, but y'know, even if they weren't working within well-established, well-regulated and well-funded loopholes, if you did manage to legally close them up, good luck enforcing any of that.
So you're losing a bunch of shows now, and yeah, it sucks, but you know what, it's not like shows haven't been going away or never returning to begin with. How often have your favorite shows or movies suddenly went on or fell off all your favorite streaming services? Not to mention that shows that for one reason or another just don't show up on streaming, or don't show up in their complete original forms.
Film has always been a business, from the moment Thomas Edison put patent numbers on his short films, more than any other modern art form the moving picture, was spurned and evolved from a business standpoint, not an artistic one like most other art mediums. Until that's eliminated businesses and business decisions are always gonna get in the way. And no, this is simply not a good look on the business venture to begin with.
I don't know, what bizarre monstrosity combination of HBO and Discovery and what will inevitably become of HBO Max from it, which would be like HBO's what, fifth or sixth separate generation attempt at becoming a streaming service brand now? I mean, I could point out that this deal is just, nonsensical and ridiculous on several levels and that I ultimately would predict that, like say, when AOL and Time Warner combined way back when, that the deal is shortsighted and ultimately is gonna flop, and Warner and Discovery, have way overestimated Discovery+'s actual value in their programming and that the two brands are just not a good clash for each other, and that this forced removal of programming on both sides is the first sign that this is a truly bad combination, but eh, do I need to?
Seriously, like, even before this news about the shows going away broke, we all knew this was just weird right? I mean, I wasn't surprised, but I feel like, in a normal world, Warner would've just bought out Discovery+ and incorporated it naturally into their own collection, let them otherwise be on their own and continue to create, produce and distribute their own programming and HBO would I feel, know to stay standoffish enough to let that happen, but instead, they merged and from these depictions, it feels like they're either being treated equally, or possibly the Discovery+ people coming into this, are actually higher up in the corporate structure, which baffles the fuck out of me the most out of this. I mean, obviously, the uproar and the fact that all these programs are getting taken off the air means that there's people who've noticed and care and I suspect either, after the year, they'll either be back on HBO Max/Discovery+-whatever, eventually be included into whatever the weird combination both of them come up with at Warner Bros. Discovery, or some other media distribution outlet will pick them up and have them streaming that way. And if they're not, then, I don't know, they'll join the same in-between media rabbit hole that stuff like, "Dream On", or "1st and 10", or the "If These Walls Could Talk" movies, or a bunch of other programs that HBO has previously lost the rights to or just refuses to air on HBO Max already. (As well as several other programs across all major networks and production and distribution companies; HBO's not alone in this.)
Look, there is commentary to talk about here, but everyone else has talked about it, and frankly, I'm tired of the business minutia of the entertainment world. Until we actually get, some kind of deal where everything that's ever been filmed is easily readily available on a single, legal platform, like the way a video store used to be, this is not gonna end with this deal, or in the near future at all. Everybody has to get together and just come to the conclusion that making sure everybody has equal availability of their content, than none of this matters. It didn't matter to most anybody else either, until the programs starting getting removed and everybody realized too late that maybe streaming has limitations.
But this isn't about streaming either, it's about preservation, and film and television don't have a good history of preserving their arts. And, that's the big problem here, it's not the deal, it's not even the fact that they're doing it for a tax cut, although, yeah, that's bullshit capitalist greed for ya, but like, that loophole isn't the problem itself, the problem is that we don't encourage or enforce media preservation like we should. It seems like we do, because we have all these streaming services, logically you think, "Well, that must mean that anything that's possible to be available to me, surely must be available, right?" NOOOO! and that's really what the big uproar and frustration, that there's a massive amount of people at one time, who are only now realizing that that's not the case. And again, in terms of the big picture, this is minor. Half of Youtube entertainment media now can sometimes seem to be people finding, seeking out, or discussing lost media, and for good reason. There's a lot that's missing, some that seemed to be there for us to always have, and now they're not there. Or not as easy to get to.
Anybody try to find Kevin Smith's "Dogma" on streaming lately? Yeah, it's, not easy. It's copyright's owned by Harvey Weinstein and it, among other titles are being held up while he's being held up, and some copies of the used DVD are priced in the $80 and up range on Amazon now, which is mindboggling to me, 'cause that was a movie when I was growing up, just always seemed to be around; I watched it rerun on cable dozens of times, and borrowed it from video stores and libraries regularly. It's not unavailable or lost or anything, you can find copies and plenty of people have downloaded their copies on Youtube if you have to see it, and most of them haven't been taken down yet, but it's kinda bullshit still that the filmmakers aren't making money on it right now.
I'm using "Dogma" as a recent example but there's so much more out there that we've lost and we're currently losing and the thing is, most of it we might not ever even really know about until or unless things change and it pops up again. To use another famous example, John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate", one of the great American movies was held without being re-released to the public until 25 years after it's release, all because Frank Sinatra didn't realize that he actually owned a majority of the rights to it. There were generations of filmmakers and cinephiles who might've only vaguely recalled seeing that film, or missed decades of possibly being influenced by that film's ever-presence, all because, it wasn't widely present.
That's the thing, I've gone through the lists of the shows that have slipped off HBO Max, and I'll be damned if I know whether or not quality-wise these shows are "worth preserving", but that honestly doesn't matter as much as one might think because we shouldn't just be preserving the absolute elite of stuff, we should be preserving all media and art as best we can and as much of it as possible. Sometimes, we may not know what's important or what we're missing until years later on down the line.
Anybody happen to catch Wink Martindale's Facebook page lately. I follow him and FB and Youtube 'cause in terms of classic American game shows, he's a goldmine of rare content and preservation, and recently he posted a link to this amazing find:
For those who might not look at this and see much related here, but this is, currently the only known complete episode recording of the game show "The Wizard of Odds". It's not a particularly important, or even a good game show, it's basically just a low-end "The Price is Right" rip-off, except for this one thing, it marked the first American television appearance of it's host, of Alex Trebek. I had only heard about this for years, and only knew previously of a single sound recording that existed, and possibly one rare episode in an university archive that only existed because an actor Don Defore was on, (DeFore, oh, eh, he was on "Hazel", I think, old time, forgotten actor, more well-known for his work now as a SAG board member and early president of NATAS) and that was it, before somebody just randomly posted this one episode. This was a major piece of American television history, and it had been a lost show. Alex of course would host several game shows over the shows, most famously "Jeopardy!" for over thirty-five years before his sad passing a couple years ago, but this was where his national career in America started. (He had a few hit hosting gigs in Canada before he came here of course too, and not all of that is preserved either) The series only lasted one season, and lost big in it's timeslot to "Gambit" which wasn't even that big of a hit, and NBC just wiped out the series and taped over it. It wasn't just them that did that, a lot of television did that back then, in America and elsewise. BBC for instance, it's almost like, impossible to find any television pre-"Monty Python" from them.
That's really what this is all about the fear of media that we've got now, one day becoming lost in the future. And it is a real fear, especially since we thought, of all things, streaming, as opposed to actual physical media, was the way to go for the future. God help us if we're ever hit a "The Trigger Effect" calamitous event and the internet and electricity ever goes out completely. (Note: It's far-fetched, sure, but it's not as far-fetched as you'd think....)
So, what is there we can do? In terms of what HBO Max and Discovery+ are gonna do, probably very little. If you can do your part to preserve the media they got rid of, in case they don't eventually return it the current or some other streaming or physical platform, be my guest.
As for what really needs to happen. Personally, I'd go to Congress. Seriously, I think there should be laws preventing media producer and distributors requiring them to preserving their media. Once it's released to the public, at least, then, they need to take any efforts possible into preserving that media, in some reasonable amount of form. Now, I'm not gonna tell them, it has to go on a streaming site, or it has to be on DVD, or that it has to be out for the public all the time for anyone to see, that's taking it too far, and for several reasons there are certain pieces of media, that do indeed exist, and are preserved, but don't need to be shown or revealed regularly to the public. To name an extreme example off the top of my head, I know for a fact that there's footage, somewhere in Stamford, Connecticut at WWE headquarters of the night Owen Hart fell from the rafters and was killed, because they have to keep it for their own sake and protection, but it's in a vault and labeled not to be released, and it's evidence, and blah, blah, blah, preservation and public are two different things, and some things need to be preserved, even if they aren't, and in some cases, should never, be seen by the public. And even taking that extreme case out of the equation, there could be other good reasons, legal or not, why some media isn't public. Perhaps there's some other legal copyright claims that are in dispute, perhaps there's some unlicensed uses of footage or music that has to be resolved, or perhaps, people just don't want something to be readily available in the public. That happens too. It's there right not to put something out into the public, however, not preserving it, is something different to me. So, reasonable efforts should be made to preserve media as much as possible, that should be a requirement of any media electronic-based artistic media. We're documenting ourselves and our lives here, we should have notes of it. Once it's out there, it should stay out there. Even recently, if you think about all the old forms of streaming media sites, Vine, Blip, etc. that don't exist anymore, lots of recent media are gone now because there efforts aren't required by the owners and distributors of those sites, you make that a legal requirement, I can't guarantee it won't ever happen where something will become lost, but it's an extra level where it makes material more likely to be preserved and by the people who should be the ones preserving the media. It shouldn't be up to us to do this.
I know, this is a longshot, btw, I seriously doubt that this kind of legislation would get any modern traction and to be frank, there are more important battles politically to have at times, but you know, starting the movement now for media conglomerates to make preservation a requirement is the first start.
There's one minor thing that I think we could do right now, that won't help out this immediately, but something that really needs to get done. I've talked about this before occasionally, but in America, we do have the Film Preservation Board, which works with the Library of Congress every year to name films for preservation as apart of the National Film Registry. They compile a list of 25 culturally, historically or aesthetically important films in order to preserve America's film heritage. Whatever happens from here on in, these are the pieces of film that are of the greatest significance to evoking America. They've been doing this every year since 1989, a year after the National Film Preservation Act was passed into law as apart of an Appropriations Bill, and it's been renewed and refunded multiple times ever since, and it's gathered a huge collection of the history of American film. Not just the big films and titles you would expect either, on top of several feature films, there's lots of experimental films, documentaries, short subjects, even advertisement material, industry films, old shorts they'd only used to show in classrooms, home movies even, there's even a music video that's apart of the collection. What's not included in the registry are television productions. Nothing that's made exclusively and intently for television at least.
There's no equivalent Television Preservation Board and there's no National Television Registry, which is really kinda insane at this point, 'cause let's face it, television is a dying medium. A dying medium that you might think would get preserved through the advent of streaming but frankly it's a medium already missing a lot of it's media and as it continues to slowly die, it might continue to lose more, and more quickly than you think.
I don't really know why we don't have a National Television Registry, but there should be one. I doubt one that's equivalent would've now or later would have saved any of these shows but, it's a start. I recommended this years ago, even gave a list on Facebook of what I would recommend be the first television programs inducted.
"The $64,000 Question" (1955-'58)
"The $64,000 Question" (1955-'58)
"All in the Family" (1971-79)
"American Bandstand (1952-'88)
"An American Family (1973)
"Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1949-'55)
"The Ed Sullivan Show (oka Toast of the Town" (1948-'71)
"Experiment TV Broadcast with Milton Berle (1929)
"Guiding Light" (1952-2009)
"Gunsmoke (1955-1975)
"The Honeymooners (1955-'56)
"The Jack Benny Program" (1950-'65)
"Life is Worth Living" (1952-'57)
"I Love Lucy (1951-'57)
"M*A*S*H" (1972-'83)
"Meet the Press" (1947-Present)
"RCA Felix the Cat Test Patterns (1928-'39)
"Roots" (1977)
"Saturday Night Live" (1975-Present)
"See It Now" (1951-'58)
"Sesame Street" (1969-Present)
"Star Trek" (1966-'69)
"Star Trek" (1966-'69)
"Streets of New York" (1939)
"Texaco Star Theater" (1948-1956)
"The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" (1962-'92)
"The Twilight Zone" (1959-'64)
"Your Show of Shows (aka Caesar's Hour)" (1950-1954)
I thought it was a pretty decent start list, that includes something from just about but even this is hard to preserve. The Original Felix the Cat tests, they only exist now in recreations and a few photos, and that's more than I can say for the original Milton Berle tests, of which nothing exists now. "American Bandstand", much of their old programs before 1964 were destroyed in a fire, including a lot of pretty historic and important television moments, especially for regarding documenting the history of early rock'n'roll. "Captain Video and His Video Rangers", only about 24 episodes of the estimated 1,500+ of the series is known to still exist; the rest are all long lost. "Streets of New York", one of the first dramatic productions made specifically for television, a 60-minute TV movie, it's reported that only eleven minutes of it still exists. Hell, we're still finding old episodes of "Sesame Street". Literally.
Yeah, we're finding old episodes of "Sesame Street", but were losing Elmo's HBO Now talk show. I didn't care for his talk show admittedly, but how does that make any sense at all?
If there's a time to stress again that we need this, it's now. And this shouldn't just be an American thing, every country should have their own preservation boards for film and television and have registries like the NFR. I think they need a TV registry as well, and there should genuinely be a serious push for that. Make it a national to preserve the most important pieces of all media we have, and we do for film. We do for even recordings, there's a National Recording Registry as well, but we don't for television. I don't know what the hold up is or why we don't, but we really should.
So if you're frustrated or annoyed at HBO and Discovery, these are the steps I would be channeling your anger towards. Creating and promoting legislation, not to prevent this from ever happening again, but to mitigate the loss of media when it does, and start calling Congressmen and those who might be influential to them and start the processes of getting these preservation regulations into law and to creating a real National Television Preservation Board and Registry. This is what the future can hold, and if we start using these weird HBO/Discovery decisions as the catalyst for it to come to pass, then by all means, perhaps the frustrations we have now will not be in vain.
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