Last June, fans of Comedy Central – the long-running channel behind beloved programmes such as The Daily Show and South Park – received an unwelcome surprise. Paramount Global, Comedy Central’s parent company, unceremoniously purged the vast repository of video content on the channel’s website, which dated back to the late 1990s.
Every Daily Show episode since Jon Stewart took over as host in 1999? Disappeared. The historic remains of The Colbert Report? Disappeared. Presumably, one hopes, those materials remain archived internally somewhere, but for the general masses, they’re kaput. Instead, the links redirect visitors to Paramount+, a streaming service whose offerings pale in comparison. (The service offers recent seasons of the Daily Show to paying subscribers, but only a fraction of the prior archive.)
Such digital demolitions are becoming routine. For fans and scholars of pop culture, 2024 may go down as the year the internet shrank. Despite the immense archiving capabilities of the internet, we’re living through an age of mass deletion, a moment when entertainment and media corporations see themselves not as custodians of valuable cultural history, once freely available, but as ruthless maximisers of profit. Those of us who believe in the historical value of accessing media from the past are paying the price.
The studios! Think of the studios! Their execs couldn’t live off merch sales and shitty reboots anymore! They might even have to - gasp - develop original IP if they want to milk an exclusive license. Some other execs would make money off some of last century’s licenses! The horror! The tragedy!
That can’t be. Clearly the best thing about Indiana Jones and Jurrasic Park is the death grip the studios have on those IPs. Ever since Steamboat Willie fell into the public domain I’ve been unable to enjoy the Disney Classics. All joy has been snuffed out from my life.
The silliest part is, they could absolutely keep milking nonsense forever. All they’d lose is exclusivity. Star Wars would be a genre, the way zombies are, thanks to George Romero’s incompetent producers. And every new detail would still be in that vice-grip for another thirty years! Winnie The Pooh is public-domain and Disney’s still gonna slit throats if anyone depicts him wearing red.