“All of the steaming services with the exception of Netflix and possible Amazon are bleeding money.”
I was expecting to have access to thousands of movies at any time. Instead, they have a few dozen available at one time. Really a ripoff when you consider the only overhead is data storage and server capacity.
Evidently those are costing more, think of of how much electricity is used, the cost is a lot more than you think. So Disney+ and others are cutting the amount of content you have access to, mainly older content. Add to that with the fact that subscriber growth is no long fueling their expansion you have a cash squeeze and/or taking on more debt to create more new content.
Streaming is not going to work out without another form of revenue and they only thing is advertising on all platforms and/or higher prices. Disney+ is raising prices again in the 4th quarter and probably again in the first half of 2024.
The streaming companies may not own the rights to the film and have to pay licensing fees. They may have cloud-hosting fees on others' servers. There are also aggregators' fees and song royalties.
Much like broadcast television, the streaming providers end up offering the videos with the lowest fees which means reruns of such shows as "The Honeymooners".