HBO Max's Purging Of Animation Is A Sad Sign Of Things To Come

thegamer.com:

Animation can’t catch a break these days, and neither can the talented creators responsible for bringing our favourite shows and films to life. Idiotic executives and out-of-touch big wigs sitting atop the food chain are happy to cancel shows and make them unavailable to the majority of audiences if it means saving a few pennies. Media is being wiped from existence like their artistic merit means nothing, giving the public little recourse other than piracy. Lost media used to be a term thrown around for long-since-abandoned shows of the early 20th century, but we’re seeing it happen in real-time, faster than ever before.

It shouldn’t have to be this way, but our continued reliance on streaming services as the landscape changes means we are subject to harsh business practices and the sad reality that the things we love can be taken away with little to no explanation. This is exactly what happened on HBO Max this past week, with the merger of Warner and Discovery seeing an avalanche of content being removed from the service for seemingly no reason. Well - no good reason beyond wiping away debt and helping the company’s bottom line.

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Here’s the short version: 68 films and shows were removed from HBO Max with no explanation this past week. Creators weren’t warned ahead of time that this was going to happen with some even finding out as we did, and HBO hasn’t come forward to provide worthwhile reasoning either. It has told some users that this cycling of content is apparently a normal part of business, but never have we seen it carried out on such a scale with this much of a blunt attitude. It was done with purpose, and the recent merger has