Personal Preservation

I remain convinced that eventually everything which has ever been broadcast on network television will be available on some kind of website. This is because uploading videos to the internet has become very easy, so anyone can do it and because there is unlimited space on the internet there is no one out there to decide what should or shouldn't make the cut. Without someone to oversee the operation, all it takes is one fan with a little technical know-how and some free time to upload something which will only be watched by two people a year. On top of that every show and special, no matter how forgetful or otherwise pedestrian, has at least one person who thinks it should be forever saved for the world to see. Thus, there are simply too many fans of too many shows with too much time on their hands to let their favorite episode from a show no one else watched drift into oblivion. Now, it makes sense that the networks want to be the ones uploading these programs themselves to not only control the content, but make any money they can off it. That is why I was hardly surprised when I learned that Hulu had reached a deal to start making older CBS programs available starting in January. However, it was the selection of shows which were included in the deal that have me confused.

Obviously there is no rush to make current shows available because the most recent episodes are usually available on a number of sites almost as soon as the credits roll. And with networks still trying to figure out how to translate on-Demand views into ratings, the last thing they wanted was more numbers from sites across the internet to have to add to the mix. That is why if you have Hulu Plus you won't be able to watch any episodes from CBS shows which are still on the air, but soon you will have access to old episodes of "Frasier", "CSI: Miami", "Family Ties", "MacGyver", "Medium", "Numb3rs", "Star Trek", "Sabrina, The Teenage Witch" and "The Twilight Zone" and "I Love Lucy." Go ahead and give that list a second read-through - it may be the most bizarre collection of shows I have ever seen. The gold mind for Hulu is obviously "I Love Lucy" and I'm sure there are plenty of people excited to be able to watch the original "MacGyver" series again. But, the rest are not what I would call Hall of Fame shows. Some of them haven't even been gone long enough for you to get nostalgic about them. I'm pretty sure "Frasier" is still in syndication on a couple networks and if you were hankering for "CSI: Miami" between the USA Network and SpikeTV I'm pretty sure you can watch about 10 episodes a day.

But, I find the inclusion of shows like "Medium" and "Numb3rs" to be the most puzzling. No one watched these shows when they were on the first time around, so what makes the people at Hulu convinced there will be a sudden rush of subscribers now that they are available online? I know that when "Medium" was originally cancelled from NBC there was enough of an outcry from fans for CBS to give it a second life, but when they gave up on it after two more seasons everyone agreed then that enough was enough. You can't exactly claim they had a rabid legion of fans demanding more, a la "Arrested Development". And while "Numb3rs" may have been on for six season it certainly never made an impact during that time. (As evidenced by the fact that before I looked it up on Wikipedia I would have said it was on 3 seasons, tops.) The only conclusion I can draw is that, much like a basketball team which will trade you a star player only as long as you also take one of their bad contracts, CBS wasn't only going to let Hulu pick from the most popular shows in its archives.

This news just proves to me that even though we have the technology to put every show ever online, that doesn't mean we have to. There should be some kind of system in place because I certainly don't see the point of clogging up websites for shows that have either been gone so long that true fans would already own all the episodes (Honestly, think about Star Trek conventions for a second. Do you think any of those people don't already have the complete series on VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray?) or was just a run-of-the-mill show that was entertaining for a while, but not exactly worthy of immortality. All I'm saying is that not every series needs to be preserved for history. The standard is that you have to have 100 episodes to be syndicated. That seems like a nice round number to be worthy of being uploaded. (Due to the increased quality of cable shows, where a season is typically 13 episodes, there have been plenty of worthy shows which never made it close to that number, so I say instead they should have the slightly lower standard of 5 seasons, which would be 65 episodes.) Either way, unless there is a tremendous outcry for one specific show, that should cut down on the number of shows which will be uploaded and then only watched by people related to the cast and crew. If you love a cancelled show feel free to save the episodes on your own computer, but don't feel as though you have to share it with us all. We assume the internet has an infinite amount of space, but it would be a real shame if one day the world found out there was only so much data to go around and we wasted some of it on two seasons worth of "Joan of Arcadia."