New Year's Resolutions for Streamers

I have yet to see any of the major streaming video services offer up public resolutions for 2025, so I am stepping in to make some for them. I'll focus on those that bother with vintage television, meaning Netflix is off the hook.

AMAZON PRIME: License shows for a little longer. Recently they get some classic shows--that's good--but then lose them fairly quickly--that's bad--without notice. A recent example is My Three Sons, which left at the end of December, making a run of about 13 months.

In the real world, 13 months is a long time, but in vintage TV world, that's not much time for a program that ran for 12 seasons and aired 380 episodes.

TUBI: Pick up the pace a little. Tubi, you had a great year, continuing to pick up shows and movies and continuing to offer them free with reasonable ad interruption. It does seem like you tailed off a bit the last couple months as far as adding vintage television. There is a lot of stuff out there to be had since Warners and Sony in particular seem to be giving everything away.

PEACOCK: Don't let the old WWE stuff get away. Netflix is paying a lot of dough to WWE for Raw and other programming, but no one seems to have a firm grasp on what is going to happen to the lesser-viewed material like the 70s and 80s territory footage. Peacock, how about keeping a toe in with WWE by retaining the stuff you already have on there. Oh, there should be a ton more, but I'd be happy if you didn't just delete hundreds of hours of video that may not make its way to Netflix.

PARAMOUNT PLUS/PLUTO: Less Pluto, more Paramount Plus, please, for catalog shows. Actually, no, let me amend that. There is nothing wrong with putting The Fugitive, Cannon, and Barnaby Jones (Another show that came and went after a year or so on Prime) on Pluto. Free TV for everyone! Yay!

Yet why not put the same programs on Paramount Plus, the service that fans are actually paying for so they can watch quality television? It ain't all about Tulsa King; give subscribers more access to that vast CBS/Paramount library. Oh, I'm sure there is A reason devised by some number crunchers to justify being so stingy on Plus, but I ain't buying it. If a show is on Pluto, put it on Paramount Plus, too.

ROKU CHANNEL: Be more transparent. Why is it so difficult to find out what is going to be added to your channel? Does everything get added at the last minute? Every other significant streamer issues a press release ahead of the coming month listing programming that is coming (and often but not always what is going). You get some interesting material, but it always comes as a surprise. It's often difficult to find what's newly added. Brag about it when you get something new!

DISNEY PLUS/HULU: Do something, anything, to get back in the game. Moonlighting was great. Maybe you can dig up something else that has been on the shelf for years. I'd settle for just putting some of the MTM library back on--shows like St. Elsewhere and The White Shadow.

BRITBOX: Pretty much keep doing what you're doing. Don't change unless it means adding more library shows.