Fifteen years ago, the world of streaming used to be a simple place. You could pay $9.99 a month to Netflix or Hulu and open the door to a vast array of primarily archival content. At the time, this was a veritable Library of Alexandria of licensed content in which the original rights holders had lost interest, given that scheduled television programming and theatrical screenings were still the way that most people consumed content. Then, new programming such as Netflix’s Kevin Spacey-fronted House of Cards, exclusive to the streaming services, began to appear. Much of the old licensed content, such as reruns of Frasier, disappeared — reverting back to the original rights-holders, many of which were now launching their own streaming sites, each of which charged upwards of $9.99 a month for access.
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