Our world, one with an endless supply of streaming on-demand video content, is a magnificent place. Between Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and dozens of niche platforms, it often feels like we can fire up whatever we want, whenever we want, on whichever device we want it. But if you listen very closely you can hear them—the faint cries of people tweeting one important question into the abyss, desperately hoping to be heard:
Our world, one with an endless supply of streaming on-demand video content, is a magnificent place. Between Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and dozens of niche platforms, it often feels like we can fire up whatever we want, whenever we want, on whichever device we want it. But if you listen very closely you can hear them—the faint cries of people tweeting one important question into the abyss, desperately hoping to be heard:
That’s right, it’s 2015 and you can watch every episode of Criminal Minds on Netflix (Oh look, another white woman is being tortured!) or click over to Amazon Prime to dig into four seasons of Suits to try to determine what it’s actually about, but you cannot legally stream episodes of The O.C., one of the crowning televisual achievements of the 21st century. (You can, however, pay for individual episodes/season passes on the iTunes and Amazon stores.) And the people of the Internet, they’re not happy about it. Even the quickest of searches returns numerous social media posts, listicles, and of course, Change.org petitions asking for the Fox teen drama to be added to Netflix Instant.
Hyperbolic petitions aside, The O.C.’s absence from streaming platforms is surprising because it’s tailor-made for the binge-watching era. The show’s rapid pacing and willingness to burn through seasons’ worth of story in a dozen episodes might have caused it to burn out quickly by 2007, but that formula would serve as the perfect fix for viewers who have binged their way through Pretty Little Liars, Revenge, or any other primetime soap currently online. Likewise, the show’s lasting cultural footprint is such that its arrival on any streaming site (it was briefly on Netflix Canada) would produce the same kind of euphoria that followed the news of Gilmore Girls’ arrival to Netflix in 2014.
But instead of simply bemoaning the show’s absence, I’m here to try to answer the question at the center of all those damn tweets: Why, exactly, isn’t The O.C. on Netflix?
Creator Josh Schwartz has only spoken about the issue once, in a 2013 tweet at the time of the show’s 10-year anniversary, where he encouraged people to seek it out on iTunes instead. Similarly, inquiries to The O.C.’s home studio, Warner Bros. Television, were not returned. But as I see it, there are three potential reasons, all of which are likely playing some role in keeping Ryan Atwood and his leather bracelet out of your queue.
Warner Bros. Television Isn't Down With the Internet
Though The O.C. aired for four glorious seasons on Fox, it was produced by Warner Bros. Television (along with creator Josh Schwartz’s College Hill Pictures, which became Fake Empire, and McG’s Wonderland Sound and Vision). WBTV owns the distribution rights to the show and therefore controls exactly where it lands, on television, home video, and now online. Unfortunately for those of us still crushing on Taylor Townsend, WBTV has been very slow to embrace Netflix, Amazon, and the rest of the streaming marketplace as distribution partners.
This is because as one of, if not the, most profitable studios, WBTV still makes millions and millions of dollars annually selling its shows into traditional syndication, meaning they auction it off to cable channels and local broadcast network affiliates hoping to surround their originals and local news telecasts with someone else’s popular programming, and to numerous countries around the world. Take a quick look at some of the studio’s current holdings and you’ll find the likes of Friends, ER, and The Big Bang Theory, shows that are absolutely airing somewhere in the world as you read this. More to the point, The O.C. was sold into syndication to SoapNet in 2007, where it aired pretty regularly until the channel folded in 2012.
With these heavy hitters in its library, WBTV has historically tried to protect its more traditional—and still extremely profitable—distribution windows over streaming distribution. However, it probably doesn’t help that negotiations over streaming video licenses and/or who gets what cut have become increasingly tenuous now that studios see how much money Netflix is raking in, or that WBTV’s parent company, Time Warner, also owns HBO, the sworn public enemy of Netflix.
Only recently has WBTV warmed the chilly relationship with Netflix, cutting an important deal to attempt to draw eyeballs to currently airing shows like Arrow, The Vampire Diaries, and others on The CW, as well as offering up some high-profile library shows such as the aforementioned Gilmore Girls, The West Wing, Fringe, and the biggest of them all, Friends. Meanwhile, an O.C. contemporary, Veronica Mars, moved from Netflix to Amazon Prime in early 2014.
Still, these deals didn’t include every relevant WBTV-owned show; Big Bang, Person of Interest, 2 Broke Girls, and The Middle are notably absent—because they’re perfect candidates for more traditional syndication on cable or local affiliates—as are concluded shows like Two and a Half Men, Everwood, Smallville, and of course, The O.C.
WBTV has embraced streaming platforms, but only partially. It could very easily be looking to leverage something valuable such as The O.C. into a more profitable partnership or enterprise. Or maybe it tried to include the show in some of the previous deals with Netflix or Amazon and neither platform wanted the show at that particular asking price (unlikely, but possible).
WBTV Is Just Hoarding Their Best Content
As late as 2013, episodes of The O.C. were available on thewb.com, WBTV’s streaming portal for a number of its popular series from the 1990s and 2000s. Launched in 2008 as a Hulu-like free ad-supported service, thewb.com cycled through full seasons of The O.C., Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, Everwood, and more, and occasionally offered cheapish original programming like the McG-produced Sorority Fever.
Despite serving as a clearinghouse for some of the Internet’s favorite shows, thewb.com never really caught on, as a nostalgia trip or as a real competitor to Netflix and Hulu. WBTV shuttered the site at the end of 2013 and moved all its digital content to The CW Seed, a site that’s mostly known for mediocre shorts and the vast Whose Line Is It Anyway? archive. Recently though, older dramas—including the original Flash series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and the forgotten gem Hellcats—have popped up on Seed.
So could The O.C. show up there too? Maybe. But if I could speculate just a bit, I could see a world where WBTV, having seen the success of HBO Now as a standalone service and the little-talked-about but still crucial Warner Archive streaming service (which houses rare films and shows), reconstitutes thewb.com as a kind of monthly subscription service that offers access to some of the studio’s shows not found elsewhere online, like The O.C.
Of course, this doesn’t solve the potential music rights issues (more on that in a second), and it would likely cool the already fraught Time Warner-Netflix relationship even more. Yet if there’s one thing to know about the world of on-demand streaming video it’s that all stakeholders (studios, networks, platforms, whatever) want as much control over where their content goes before this gold rush is over.
It's All About the Music (Rights)
One of The O.C.’s greatest strengths as a show was its use of music, both in the soundtrack and in bringing bands like The Killers, Death Cab For Cutie, and Rooney onto the show to perform “live.” Like many a great show, O.C. fans can identify countless seminal scenes from its four seasons that are so memorable at least in part because of the music, from Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” when Ryan leaves Newport (and Marissa befriends a bottle of vodka) at the end of Season 1, to the infamous employment of Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” in the final scene of Season 2. (By the way, if you click those links, you’re going to lose an afternoon; shout out to the person who put together a massive playlist of the show’s best music moments.)
However, having great music on your show can come with a cost, particularly in any subsequent distribution windows. Music rights holders (whoever they are) might be willing to approve usage for a given episode, but they’re not always as accommodating for additional airings, or in many cases, conversations about future distribution never come up in the first place. This has been especially true for much older shows like WKRP in Cincinnati and The Wonder Years, both of which relied heavily on music that rights holders weren’t willing to approve for reruns or DVD box sets—The Wonder Years famously took years and years to hit DVD, and even then, some of the music had to be changed—but has also affected more recent shows like Dawson’s Creek and Roswell just the same.
As we’ve moved to the world of streaming, the music rights issues are even stickier. Even for shows that began in the 2000s, few bigwigs could have predicted a world with such plentiful on-demand access points and as a result, music rights issues are more common than ever. At best, shows like The Wonder Years and Scrubs either hit Netflix with a bunch of the key music swapped out for cheaper, nondescript tracks, and at worst, they never make it to streaming platforms at all.
Nothing is for sure, but this could be another hurdle keeping The O.C. off of Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu. Not only does The O.C. feature a load of great music that might be difficult to clear in its soundtrack, but it also has those in-episode performances that create entirely different clearance and legal hurdles. There’s a chance that WBTV was able to clear all the music rights for thewb.com streams because of an ownership wrinkle, or due to a particular window the studio negotiated with the artists—it is curious that the show was available to stream up until roughly its 10-year anniversary, so perhaps the initial agreement was for that period of time—and that as time goes on and streaming video becomes more lucrative, those clearances are harder to negotiate.
Welcome to 'The O.C.' Wasteland, Bitch
So there you have it. Given the complicated streaming environment in which we live, these are as good of reasons as any why you cannot access The O.C. on any legal streaming platform. And despite the focus on this one particular show, these are often going to be common reasons why any of your favorite shows doesn’t end up on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Crackle, or whatever else. The O.C. isn’t the first show to be kept away from a particular distribution channel due to savvy/stringent business practices, a studio’s desire to make the most of its asset, or wonky music rights, and by no means will it be the last. So remember this the next time you think about tweeting into the void and maybe one day, you’ll be able to binge-watch your way through the best television love story of the new millennium, Marissa Cooper and Oliver Trask.