In Memoriam, Streaming Edition
Now that I’m at the ripe old age of mumble-grumble-mumble-grumble-grump, I’m facing the boring-yet-devastating realization that time and the question, “Hey, do you remember…?” make historians of us all. And since I’m an indoor human, I ended up with media history as my specialization.
And in my expert opinion, as weird as streaming services are right now, getting here was even weirder. So, today I honor some of the best shows brought to us by dead streaming services.
Yahoo! Screen - Community Season 6: I was a Community fan from Day One. Literally. I watched the first episode on its premiere date, which used to mean something. And as a fan, I saw the ups and downs: the will-they-or-won’t-they-cancel discussions, the fan-letter campaigns begging Subway (yeah, the sandwich place) to save the show, the ousting of the creator, the return of the creator and departure of main cast members… But in hindsight, nothing was quite so weird as Yahoo! picking Community up for a surprisingly well-funded final season. Yeah, Yahoo!: Google for Boomers. I had to look it up, but apparently Yahoo! Screen somehow lasted for five years (2011-2016) and had the rights to stream SNL for a few years. But hey, I owe them for saving one of my favorite shows, so here’s to you, service no one remembers.
Seeso/VRV - My Brother, My Brother, and Me: Seeso is one of those weird services that I didn’t even hear about until after it had died, and it, too, inexplicably, also had the rights to SNL for a while. But they were onto something with the My Brother, My Brother, and Me show, which ran for six episodes and let the McElroy brothers run around their hometown doing nonsense for our entertainment. They had an episode where each brother tried to connect with the youth of Huntington, West Virginia that lives on fondly in my memory. I saw it on VRV, which has also since shut down. The McElroy empire is going strong, but I consider it a real loss that this only lasted one season.
DC Universe - Young Justice Season 3: Yeah, it was hard to justify an entire streaming service for DC Comics, especially during peak MCU years, but it did rescue one of the best DC shows from a Cartoon Network cancellation. And luckily, Warner Brothers did the smart thing and let DC’s content be absorbed by its more popular services, which is why there’s a whole DC tab on Max. So, hey, happy ending?
Special Mention Quibi - #FreeRayshawn: Quibi was a video streaming services specializing in short content, mostly around the ten-minute mark. It raised a billion dollars to get started, then failed in six months (credit where its due, it lasted longer than CNN+). In hindsight, shorter content wasn’t a bad idea; it probably would have worked if spliced into an existing streaming service. But despite the business going belly-up in then record time, it won two Emmy awards back in 2020 for #FreeRayshawn, a crime show starring Laurence Fishburne.