• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, May 7, 2013

You can’t always get what you want was the name of a classic Rolling Stones song and once had a semblance of truth in the marketplace. It’s not very true, or true at all anymore. You can get everything you want. Or you think you can and you become frustrated, or more likely amazed, when you find out you can’t.

The video market is now online. What you want to stream is streamable.  You can put a period on that sentence.

But it’s not true, of course. Netflix proved that earlier this month when it told customers that many of its older, more obscure films and titles (but also 15 years of “South Park”) were no longer available—about 1,794 of them. On some Web sites, this event became known as Streamageddon.

The reason for the absence of those titles isn’t very exotic. Netflix did not renew contracts with Warner Bros, MGM and Universal. But the response was telling. Netflix was crucified among videophiles, especially when the streaming video company softly suggested that it could act as a kind of gatekeeper, curating the best video for its customers.                

“First of all, the notion that we, as 21st-century viewers, want Netflix to be an “expert programmer” rather than a “broad distributor” shows a pretty remarkable misunderstanding of their clientele,” said a complaining scribe on Flavorwire.com. in a piece delicately titled, “Why Do Streaming Video Services Still Suck? ”

“We don’t want a third party to decide for us what we’re going to watch; if we wanted that, we’d drop Netflix altogether, renew that cable subscription, and spend our days watching HBO or TCM,” wrote Jason Bailey. 

He goes on to write about something I was mentioning in this space yesterday when I was commenting on YouTube’s likely move to charging for some special channels. In short, I said, with more online video available, content providers will split up more and more material, requiring consumers to pony up to buy more and more services. And at some point, consumers will resist. Or might.

Because, up to now, we thought we did have it all, at a manageable price. 

“At risk of sounding bratty, this is supposed to be the future,” Bailey complains. “We’re supposed to have all of this stuff at the click of a mouse, but instead, online viewing seems to be moving backwards — into a landscape of fewer choices, of blockbuster homogeny, ease of use, and availability stifled by the business framework of old media and the indifference of bean-counters to titles that aren’t watched enough.” 

I don’t think Bailey is missing the boat. The Internet’s content providers have done a pretty masterful job of creating the illusion they’re in a different business than conventional TV content providers with “revolutionary” programming stunts like “House of Cards” and an ever flowing mountain of content that exists regardless of its actual broad commercial appeal. As online video matures, though, it may become apparent that online video venues, like every other content player, are most interested in getting the biggest, fattest audience possible.  How online audience react to that fact when it’s made plainer to them, will be a financial, marketing and sociological drama worth watching.

pj@mediapost.com