Post by wildjackmonroe on Jun 29, 2020 1:11:42 GMT -5
It sucks too because I would be more than happy to spend actual money on an on-demand service for much older episodes of shows like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. A video game site I love following was once talking about the various streaming services and when they heard CBS All Access included The Price is Right, one of them immediately perked up and was like "oh shoot, you mean like the old episodes too?", and when they were told no, they immediately lost interest. There's a market, even if it's just like a handful (IE. five to ten episodes only) of old episodes of Wheel, Price, and J! for people to get their "hey, I remember when *game show* was hosted by *person*" or "hey I remember when Vanna had to actually turn the letters" nostalgia fix in the same way the NES Classic did so well.
But then again, people would complain it's not enough or something so I can see why they wouldn't bother.
Literally the only reason why I have a CBS All Access account right now is because they're putting all of the classic Young and the Restless and Bold and the Beautiful episodes that have been airing on television on the site... all of the '80s, '90s, and early '00s episodes that they're running. When things get back to normal again and they stop running classics, unless they decide to put more vintage episodes on a regular basis online, I'm canceling my account.
Sony should take advantage of what they have more often. That previous Netflix package of Jeopardy episodes was great. They should do something like that again with the next batch of episodes they get, and Pyramid and WoF should be included with it. There are thousands of hours' worth of material with those shows alone and many ways to theme up batches of episodes of what they have in general. The most annoying thing about this to me is that they take uploads down and don't do much of anything with what they have. They even have their own streaming site that they could use for a purpose like this.
Meanwhile Fremantle has Buzzr on TV, they're using other streaming methods like letting viewers see the feed to the network live, they're putting episodes on Amazon Prime Video to stream in high quality. They know a lot of people want to see Price is Right so they don't get bent out of shape when someone uploads episodes to YouTube and at least ended up getting one version to air on Buzzr. And when Fremantle blocked my upload of Arlene Francis' episode of The Price is Right? A couple or so weeks later, Buzzr ran the episode FOUR times in one weekend, and left in the original commercials, and they didn't even give me a strike or try and suspend my account. They just blocked the video. I think if Sony took more pages from them, fans would be more appreciative in general and they'd still make revenue off of fan uploads to a place like YouTube.
The Retro TV Network people don't like it when fans post full episodes of The Doctors, especially the ones they've aired in the last several years, onto YouTube. But their solution to this, especially knowing that RTV airs on a lot of low power affiliates that can't reach people's homes? They have their own official website that streams the show for $2.99 a month. If an obscure soap opera that had never been aired since it last broadcast on NBC in 1982 and found traction on a small digital network can have an official for profit website devoted to nothing but episodes of it, Sony can do something more, especially with some of the most memorable shows in its library on a regular basis. Some of the stuff they've done with Jeopardy has been great and I truly appreciate it, but they could stand to do more, especially with their other properties like Pyramid and WoF.