As Netflix Pivots From Classic TV, Smaller Services Are Picking Up the Torch

It was the last call heard by every classic TV fan: Cheers was leaving Netflix on July 1. Sure there were other watering holes that Cheers fans could frequent—like Hulu, CBS All Access, or the recently-launched Peacock. But that’s beside the point; Netflix introduced a new generation to Cheers, and it was Cheers‘ streaming home for as long as we can remember.

Cheers closing up shop on Netflix was only the latest major classic TV departure for the streaming giant. Frasier and Friends left Netflix in the past year, and The Office is packing for a 2021 move to Peacock. Scroll through other services, like Hulu and Amazon’s Prime Video, and you’ll see show after show that once streamed on Netflix: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, Mad Men, 3rd Rock from the Sun, NewsRadio, 30 Rock—it’s a lengthy list. Some of the final retro TV holdouts, Cheers and The Andy Griffith Show, both disappeared from Netflix in the past month, leaving the Star Trek franchise and That ’70s Show as quite possibly the most classic shows on the streaming service—and the latter debuted in 1998.

“Classic television is a bingeing staple,” Ryan Pirozzi, Co-Head of Content and Programming at IMDb TV—the channel that provides Prime subscribers with rotating lineups that include everything from classics like I Dream of Jeannie to modern masterpieces like Mad Men told Decider. Scott Reich, SVP of Programming for Pluto TV, echoed Pirozzi’s statement: “Something that was made 30 or more years ago can still be incredibly entertaining today. In my opinion, the best TV shows and movies stand the test of time and always find new loyal viewers as time goes on.”

To be fair, Netflix has been focusing on original content for the past few years, quadrupling their output to great success (160 Emmy nominations in a single year is nothing to complain about). But as the dramas and comedies many of us grew up with slink off Netflix, other streaming services and distributors are stepping up. For example, Hulu has spent the past few years snatching up seemingly every show Netflix dropped, and they’ve made major moves by adding shows like Designing Women and ER. Prime Video, thanks to deals with distributors like FilmRise, has a robust lineup of TV shows stretching back almost 70 years. New platforms like HBO Max and Peacock debuted, headlined with A-list favorites. And that’s not even mentioning innovators like Pluto TV or fast-growing streamers like IMDb TV, Tubi, Shout! Factory TV, or FilmRise.

Classic content plays a huge part in the streaming ecosystem—but it’s easy to overlook it since it is such a huge part. We love these shows because they’re reliable and there when we need them—until they’re not. That’s why people flip out when a fave—like Friends or The Office—disappears from one service for another.

But it’s not just nostalgia that powers this trend. Gene Pao, SVP of Digital Enterprises at Shout! Factory TV, was surprised when he looked at the age breakdown of who was bingeing their stable of classics. “We originally believed that classic TV fans watched for the nostalgia—that is, they wanted to relive that part of their life. However, we found that the majority of those audiences weren’t even alive when the shows aired!”

FilmRise CEO Danny Fisher came up with his company’s secret sauce after filing for bankruptcy in 2012. He had nothing to lose, and he ended up with a winning formula that cracked the consumer code. “I created a proprietary data analytics methodology where we measure what people want to see,” explained Fisher. “We don’t care what Netflix thinks they want to see, or what somebody else thinks they want to see. By doing that, we uncovered content that was just so below the radar.” FilmRise’s current lineup includes old favorites like 21 Jump Street, The Greatest American Hero, Cybill, Roseanne, and Green Acres.

This isn’t unique to independent platforms like FilmRise, either. Big streaming services with big launches require big favorites; just look at HBO Max. They launched with Friends, the show whose impending departure caused millions of Netflix subscribers to panic for all of 2019. They also dropped dollars to acquire two major firsts for streaming: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The Big Bang Theory. “Beloved library titles like Friends and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air are iconic, timeless series that are as culturally relevant now decades after their premieres,” an HBO Max representative told Decider via email.

While Friends‘ headline status wasn’t surprising, one can’t overlook the importance of Fresh Prince finally making its streaming debut. It’s a show whose cable reruns still draw millions of viewers, and it’s long been at the top of fan wishlists when it comes to shows they want to see on Netflix. It’s not on Netflix, but it is on HBO Max.

Also on HBO Max: The Big Bang Theory. “Big Bang Theory was a key acquisition for HBO Max because it’s a fan favorite that was a number one broadcast primetime TV comedy for eight seasons. It’s never been available on SVOD before now.”

Not to be outdone, Peacock launched with a few similarly notable TV standouts—like The Munsters, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Murder She Wrote, Leave It to Beaver, Punky Brewster, Cheers, and Everybody Loves Raymond.

And it’s not just the major platforms that make major deals. Deals can be as niche as one distributor making a deal for a few shows on just a few platforms. For example, if you want to watch the 1966 campy cult favorite live-action Batman series, you have to do so via the FilmRise app or on the Roku channel and not any of the other platforms that house FilmRise titles.

“It was a peculiar deal, because it was very narrow,” said FilmRise CEO Danny Fisher. “You can’t put it on Netflix, you can’t put it on Tubi or Pluto.”

Those deals, no matter how big, play a huge part in a distributor like FilmRise’s growth as a destination streaming service in their own right. As Fisher explained, FilmRise’s streaming service audience has doubled in size over the past year, hitting around three to five million active users. And since Tubi TV was acquired by Fox earlier this year, that leaves FilmRise as the biggest, independently-owned AVOD (advertising-based video on demand) platform.

And there are a lot of platforms: Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Peacock, HBO Max, Tubi, FilmRise—how does one stand out from the crowd? Gene Pao of Shout! Factory TV explained how they were able to add The Johnny Carson Show and The Carol Burnett Show to their lineup.

“We were able to demonstrate how we could make it worthwhile for [the owners] to distribute their titles through Shout! Factory TV not only because we could generate a reasonable amount of revenue, but also because we would package them in a way that makes them compelling for today’s viewers,” Pao explained. “We primarily do that through themed releases and programming stunts.”

Stunts are becoming a bigger deal in the streaming landscape, especially as services become tied to major corporations. For example, Pluto TV–owned by ViacomCBS—added a channel devoted to the classic One Day at a Time just in time to promote the new One Day at a Time (airing on ViacomCBS cable network Pop). “It’s a priority across all of our brands to find ways to support each other,” said Pluto’s Scott Reich. “We hope to do more [promotional events] like [the One Day at a Time channel].”

In the past, streaming services have used TV libraries to pad out their offerings — what Netflix, given the exodus of older content, was seemingly doing until they could launch their spate of streaming originals. This level of synergy is a completely new way for old shows to interact with streaming platforms, and it ties in with the target audience these streamers are trying to reach. “Unlike classic digit-nets like Antenna TV and MeTV, we’re not going after the older audience, but instead finding ways to make classic TV enticing to the younger generations,” said Shout! Factory’s Pao.

This is why classic TV is the backbone of services like Shout! Factory TV and Pluto TV—especially the latter, whose linear streaming model is shaking up the industry.

While Pluto TV has select titles available on demand, their model looks almost identical to the cable model of yore: there are a bunch of channels devoted to networks (Buzzr,, Logo, Game Show Central, CNN, etc.) and others devoted to specific shows (The Addams Family, American Gladiators, Baywatch, and so many more). You generally don’t hunt for a series or specific episode; you turn on the channel and just watch what’s on. When it comes to deciding which shows are worth devoting a whole channel to, Pluto’s programming team takes into account a series’ volume of content and, as Reich said, “audience appetite.”

“We recently launched a Star Trek channel with an enormous amount of early seasons of The Next Generation as well as a good selection of the Star Trek movies,” said Reich. “Given that we have access to a wide variety of content from across the Star Trek franchise and that it is one of the most popular entertainment franchises in history, it definitely warranted its own channel.”

Since Star Trek and Pluto TV are part of the same ViacomCBS family, the rights are a little easier to navigate. That’s not the case with some shows on Pluto TV, where the service is only able to stream a show linearly and not on-demand. Shout! Factory TV— which pulls triple duty as a distributor of content, a channel on linear streaming services like Pluto, and its own independent streaming service—has another wrinkle to consider: DVDs.

Shout! Factory long ago made a name for itself with its almost archival preservation of classic shows like Hart to Hart and The Bob Newhart Show , released to fans via well-designed DVD sets. However, just because Shout! Factory has the rights to drop a show on DVD doesn’t mean they can also add it to streaming. “While we have been able to secure physical rights at reasonable terms for many years, studios have been holding digital rights close to the vest,” explained Shout! Factory’s Pao. “We suspect part of the reason is that licensing to broadcasts is still a lucrative business and the studios feel that selling at a lower rate to a digital outlet will reduce the value to a broadcaster.”

If all of this feels tangled up—Shout! Factory streaming on Pluto which also streams Star Trek which is still streaming on Netflix and Hulu and CBS All Access and… Well, that’s a feature and not a bug. “We’re talking to all the major platforms every day,” said Fisher, whose FilmRise provides content to platforms ranging from Prime Video to Tubi. “[FilmRise’s] business model, in general, is a not exclusive model. We’d like to have content play everywhere.” By playing a show on every streaming service possible, FilmRise is able to raise awareness—and interest—in that show.

One surprising example of this: The Rifleman, a 1958 black and white western that Fisher’s mysterious data analytics metrics targeted as a potential streaming hit. He was right.

“It’s our number two show on the Roku Channel right now, and we have 5,000 hours of content on the Roku Channel,” said Fisher. “It’s one of the top shows on Tubi. For IMDbTV, I think it’s our number one or number two… It’s definitely out-performing shows that are much better known and better performing shows that are currently broadcast. Again, it all comes down to our ability to identify these. This is the secret sauce.”

The Rifleman being a mover and shaker in 2020 is far from the only example of classic shows making waves today. IMDb TV learned from adding Leverage to its lineup that there was still plenty of life left in that series. Now a Leverage revival is in production—as an IMDB TV original series. And if you enjoyed Netflix’s recent relaunch of Unsolved Mysteries? Well, you might just have FilmRise to thank for reigniting interest in the original series a few years ago.

“No one really wanted to buy [Unsolved Mysteries],” said Fisher. “We picked it up a few years ago. It’s become so popular that now Netflix rebooted it. I’d like to think we had a lot to do with it… It’s a feature channel on Peacock. It’s a feature channel on the Roku channel, on Pluto TV, on Tubi. Everywhere.”

No matter what the “leaving at the end of the month” lists may indicate, classic TV remains a vital part of the streaming landscape—and platforms aren’t getting out of the classics business anytime soon. “Now that Pluto TV is part of the ViacomCBS family, we have an amazing opportunity to continue to expand our library with more celebrated titles,” said Reich. “And we’re currently in the process of rolling out 40 new titles from CBS and Comedy Central across multiple genres and formats.”

“Classic TV in and of itself has proven its ability to stand the test of time,” continued Reich. “And I think we will only continue to see that play out in the ever-expanding streaming TV landscape as we introduce these timeless classics to new generations of viewers.”

And wouldn’t ya know it—Netflix just announced that seven, Black-led classics like Sister Sister and Moesha are coming to its platform this fall in response to persistent fan demand. Even Netflix, king of original content, can’t deny that sometimes people still just want to cuddle up with the classics.

Stream The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on HBO Max

Stream Cheers on Peacock