I presume because the IP owner thinks the extra royalties they'd make off the streaming would be less than the cost of digitizing, metadata creation, etc.
I have some record albums from the 1950's. A few years ago, I checked around and they weren't available anywhere, even used, not no-how not no-way.
But recently I noticed them showing up on Amazon as mp3 downloads. Evidently, record companies are finally going through their back catalogs and making this stuff available again.
It's happening more and more with old paperback books, too, showing up as kindle books or collections on a dvd.
It hasn't happened yet for, say, made-for-TV movies produced in the 1970s.
I also think there'd be money to be made in simply producing an online archive of Channel 7 News broadcasts from 1975. Wouldn't that be fun to look at now and then?
> I also think there'd be money to be made in simply producing an online archive of Channel 7 News broadcasts from 1975. Wouldn't that be fun to look at now and then?
Probably, but often this just plain doesn't exist. I tried to get footage from a news station back in the 90s and they basically said they only keep the really notable days and otherwise recycle the tape after a few years.
Which news station? I know public broadcasters across Europe generally keep very extensive archives (that are generally now being, or have recently been, digitized).
The television series Perfect Strangers is probably never, ever going to be rereleased, and you can blame the Bibbi-Babka Ditty.
See, the series makes use of a few licensed popular songs -- not as background or incidental music, but as songs sung by the main characters, often in Balki's native language or as a part of his culture, making them central to the show's jokes. (The Bibbi-Babka Ditty was one such, a version of Chubby Checker's "Limbo Rock" that must be sung while baking delicious Myposian pastries known as Bibbi-Babkas.)
So editing them out or replacing them with generic music, as was done for example with the rerelease of Daria which had all its popular background music removed, isn't an option.
It's kind of sad because perhaps the purest exemplar of "80s sitcom" will be lost to history.
