By Jennifer Asencio
| Published 1 minute ago
In today’s modern streaming environment, companies are paywalling content that was once free on other streaming sites and syndication. The most recent victim of this tactic is the much-loved sci-fi space opera Babylon 5.
A show that was once free on Tubi, Amazon Prime, and other services is now locked behind the YouTube/Google Play paywall. The series can only be bought on YouTube and is not available for subscription streaming.
If this were not bad enough, long-known technical issues with the old program interfere with the integrity of its YouTube presentation. It was shot originally in the 4:3 aspect ratio when it was aired in the 1990s. The aspect ratio came from that earlier era of recording and broadcasting technology and its inherent limitations.
YouTube and Google have not maintained this as saliently as they could have. Many fans of the series have commented on the quality of the picture being inconsistent. Whether that was due to using the original 4:3 programming alongside remastered scenes or to using scenes from other recording services, fans have complained about distorted visuals and cropped framing.
There’s also the glaring issue of parts of the show being erased. The season 1, episode 20 installment, “Babylon Squared,” has missing scenes in the versions available on YouTube and Google Play. This known technical issue was resolved by streaming services HBO Max, iTunes, and Tubi, which aired it before Google’s acquisition of the series.
Practices like these are raising larger questions about the content that gets siloed by these streaming services. More content that was once widely available has either been hidden behind Internet paywalls or plans are in the works. The NFL infamously put its Christmas Day games, a staple in most family homes, on Netflix, a subscription service. After 2029, the Oscars will also be limited to YouTube subscribers.
As the number of streaming services increases almost daily, the reasons for the cord-cutting of prior decades are being replaced by the prohibitive cost of maintaining so many services. People moved to streaming because cable was limited to only what was airing at the time, and streaming was on demand.
Now, consumers have to have not just cable but also a streaming service to access content that is decades old or once on broadcast television. What once served as a primary source of news, entertainment, and culture is now hidden online, accessible only to those willing to follow the Balkanization. Now every movie is a rental, and to access media, one must have the right combination of expensive subscriptions. It’s like having to pay for each individual cable channel instead of getting a package.
Streamers have even been known to delete movies and shows from their own libraries, cutting off access to people who actually paid for them, as happened to the Adult Swim cartoon Final Space in 2022. Warner Bros, which owns HBO and Discovery, is infamous for doing this by writing off its less popular properties for tax purposes, regardless of who spent money to acquire the content. They couldn’t do that with physical media, but it is something all streamers can do and have even quietly done.
Most streamers also don’t carry many older movies. A recent perusal of Paramount Plus’s “all movies” menu showed classics like To Catch a Thief, but they were few and far between among more modern fare from the studio, like the Smile movies. Paramount has a long history of producing some of Hollywood’s classics, but they can’t be accessed on their streaming service.
These are all consequences of siloing away entertainment and limiting it to streaming apps and computer screens. It not only wreaks havoc on the integrity of the shows as it did for Babylon 5, but it also dictates which parts of culture people are allowed to access. In a previous world, anyone could see Babylon 5 in all its glory on syndication or get the series on DVD. Now, we all have to add yet another subscription to see it, and we’re not even getting all of what we paid for.
