Nowadays, physical media is not the preferred format the audience goes to when thinking about watching something. Be it a movie or series, streaming dominates the current entertainment media landscape, and there is no shortage of options available. Services like Netflix, Prime Video, and HBO Max are among the top players in the business, and it's nearly impossible to find someone who doesn't subscribe to at least one of them. With even just one of them, one will likely never run out of options for that boring Saturday night they're stuck at home, you know? Just log on and choose something - or fall asleep trying.
This doesn't mean they offer everything they could offer, too. It's important to keep in mind that those are still businesses at their core, so revenue will always be their primary focus. For example, HBO Max has just removed two of their most-watched series, Westworld and Raised By Wolves, from their catalog. Under new management from parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, their mandate now is to cut as many costs as possible, and dispatching some of their IP to other platforms is their preferred way, apparently. It doesn't guarantee those shows will find a new home, though, so there should be a way of maybe preserving series like those, right? Movies have the Criterion Collection, but what about TV?
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Preservation Is a Must
In the movie business, the Criterion Collection is one of the most prestigious accolades a piece can receive. It means it has achieved a cultural or artistic impact worthy of preservation, and Criterion does it in the best possible way, providing restored versions of the movies it selects and adding a number of supplemental features, such as commentary tracks, behind-the-scenes footage, making-off and so on.
There are no fixed criteria for a movie to be inducted into the Criterion Collection, so in their catalog, you can find from Hollywood's top blockbusters to indie flicks — it really comes down to the quality of the production and the impact it has had. Fans can even make suggestions about which movies Criterion should release next, but it's not necessarily an easy process. Obtaining a movie's rights can sometimes take years, which goes to show how difficult it still is to negotiate such matters.
Criterion's model is extremely important in the current movie business. They have been active since 1984, when they made their first releases with Citizen Kane and King Kong in the laserdisc format, and have pretty much inaugurated the format of DVDs and Blu-rays bringing additional content in physical releases ever since, and also work together with the filmmakers to ensure their release will be as close as possible to the artist's original vision. Their releases are also made available in the highest possible quality, going so far as even 4K Ultra HD, and they also have their own streaming platform, the Criterion Channel (and their cover art are usually the most beautiful around, too, but that's another story).
More important than that, though, is how the collection makes it easier for movie fans and cinephiles in general to access classics such as these, or less buzzed releases of recent years. Having a Criterion Collection release makes a movie available through a longer period than it usually would have — Citizen Kane, for example, can still be found in the Criterion online shop, and it was literally their first ever release, nearly 40 years ago. Of course, sometimes the rights or even the economical landscape doesn't allow for them to keep a movie available forever, but the Criterion banner does mean that it can still be found. It's also something that collectors and fans of physical media take very seriously, especially due to its quality and the additional features.
Why Is This Important for TV?
Try to think of the last time you had nothing to watch on TV. Not those times when you couldn't decide and ended up watching nothing, but when you actually had nothing to watch. It's been a while, huh? That's because the current offer of programs on TV and on streaming is at an all-time high. According to Nielsen's State of Play Report, there were over 817,000 different programs available to the general audience in the period between February 2021 and February 2022. There's never been this much content before, and most of it comes in the form of TV shows and series. Last year, 559 new original series aired across cable, broadcast TV, and streaming services.
It has never been easier to be entertained — or, if you're the entertainer, to get your series lost in this sea of content. There are always series that stand out in this nearly endless crowd, such as 2022's Severance, Andor, The Bear, and so on. But there are also many other shows that were surely lost to most of the public. An instrument such as the Criterion Collection helped bring many movies to wider audiences, and the same could be done to series and even other formats, like reality TV, and ensure the right audience gets to see some of these shows.
Another important point to be made is how quickly the TV industry is changing. Most of the original programming nowadays airs through streaming, and rarely makes the jump to cable or broadcast TV. For the streaming platforms, keeping their vast catalogs may seem cheap for those outside, but HBO Max's removal of Westworld and others has made it pretty clear that there is a cost to keeping those options available, and sometimes the subscription fee isn't enough to cover it. Isn't Westworld, for example, worthy of a special release to ensure its availability to the public in the long run?
The nature of the streaming business makes it more likely for a series to vanish from the radar, be it due to the cutting of costs or the sheer amount of content there is. An exclusive TV version of Criterion would be important to help the audience separate what actually deserves to be seen from what is mostly there to fill a streaming catalog.
It's All About Access
When a show gets canceled or removed from a streaming platform, accessing them gets a lot harder. Streaming may be a simple enough tool — all you require is internet access and a monthly subscription — but it could be more democratic. Most of any platform's catalogs are filled mostly with new shows, while old ones, like those that were really on TV years or decades ago, are getting harder and harder to find. Most TV shows and limited series don't get a physical release anymore, so it's no surprise some of them remain only in our memories — it's difficult to watch a show that's not streaming anywhere or not on any TV channels.
One way out of that is piracy, of course, but, despite the whole moral debate around it, the fact remains that it's illegal. There is also no assurance the shows we look for will be found, or even of a good enough quality, for that matter. Something like the Criterion Collection would be instrumental in keeping those TV shows and series accessible and in good quality. They do have a few works of television in their catalog, but it's still very limited, and open only to limited series or shows of great cinematic value — don't expect to find things like Friends or Cheers when browsing. Aren't they worthy of preservation too?
