That's kind of the problem, isn't it? Whether you are, or are not, happy shouldn't be the standard. You (or anyone) shouldn't be the individual gatekeeper to all media. What if, for example, someone wanted to do an undergraduate thesis on comedy, and they no longer had access to this material? Your imaginings that it might come back, somewhere, eventually, doesn't really help.
Are you kidding? I ask because this is a really weird argument to try to use.
They'd get them on DVD from a research library, like anyone else!
They're still on DVD mate. They don't magically get deleted. How is it you think people normally do undergraduate theses about radio and TV shows which are long off the air and out of syndication? Do you think they just can't? You have to find recordings. There are whole specialist libraries for this. That's how it works. That's how it's
always worked. It doesn't actually matter if stuff gets pulled "because it's offensive", or "because no-one watches it anymore". Pulled is pulled when it comes to watching it. In fact, the latter is kind of worse, because it's less likely it'll be perfectly preserved.
Do you think there's a duty to make literally every show in history available on streaming? Yes/no? If not, what are you complaining about here with your student example? That you want offensive shows, specifically, to be forced to be made available? But it's okay if a show is just not being shown anywhere (like, say, MTV's Fear, which I tried to find somewhere I could watch recently - bootlegs on YouTube were the only option).
Pulled is pulled, it doesn't matter why, the results are the same. You can't complain about this getting pulled on the basis you're using unless you complain about pretty much everything.
That's great. If you're in the UK. Some of us aren't.
Again, this is not the winning argument you think it is.
There are tons of shows I just cannot watch on streaming in the UK because no-one picked it up here and/or a US network just isn't letting it be shown.
That's not any different in real terms. My wife and I really enjoyed The Amazing Race (yeah yeah), when a few seasons were on UK Amazon Prime for a while. It's not available on any streaming service here, for any price, and extremely hard to even get on DVD. That's "more banned" de facto here than Little Britain is (where the DVDs are still pretty easy to get).
Google is your friend. If you can't find any others than the ones I quickly listed off the top of my head, then you aren't trying very hard. Heck, people are complaining about the Michael Jackson episode missing from the Simpsons ... again, the IP HOLDER is removing a specific episode. But there are a metric TON of them. Whether it's scenes cut, or whole episodes, or entire shows- feel free to research. The more you know!
Sorry Snarf, but you are being unfair and you are wrong.
I did Google - I looked through multiple pages.
I can't find any evidence that there are tons of shows which have been pulled in recent years for racism/blackface/sexism/homophobia. You're saying there's this "general" problem, but I'm not seeing evidence of it beyond the shows you listed.
This is why I asked
you. Telling me to Google
after I already did is just proving my point!
That's what I said. But they usually remove specific episodes. That was entirely what I wrote. Because it's a profit incentive. If you are a company like Netflix (that just has licensing rights) you will usually just remove the whole thing. If you still believe that the money is worth the hassle, you will usually remove specific episodes or otherwise try to rehabilitate it.
Literally your only example here re: entire shows is Netflix pulling two shows that they were renting, and we don't actually know if they pulled them or they just stopped paying for them, do we? They often stop paying for shows I'd like to see. But you're saying the problem is
larger than that, that other networks have pulled entire shows off streaming for being offensive? Like what? This is what I'm asking. You're saying the problem is
generalized, but I can only find the two specific examples, one of which was is still available in full on the main network, the other of which was so offensive it's currently pulled from everywhere (but is available on DVD etc).
As for the Simpsons episode, that's exactly my point, there are two things here:
1) Shows have always through all of history, pulled some episodes. This never hasn't happened. There's nothing new about it.
en.wikipedia.org
As you can see from that Wiki page, the vast majority have little to do with racism/blackface/sexism etc., but more specific reasons like "a celebrity turned out to suck".
2) A bunch of shows, all around 2020 or later, where certain episodes were pulled, or where Netflix stopped carrying them. The only show which actually vanished was Little Britain.
I'm asking if there are more shows in category 2, which you appeared to indicate there were loads more of. I couldn't find any. I could only find the same old same old of single episodes of all sorts of shows being pulled/banned.