Ads on IMDbTV are pretty much like old-school broadcast TV, but the breaks themselves are usually shorter, with only one or two commercials per break. For former broadcast TV shows, they use the built-in breaks, so it’s not much different. For movies or shows that weren’t made for those kinds of breaks, it can be jarring - they don’t seem to have editors like broadcast networks, and they don’t seem to make much effort to fit the commercials into scene breaks. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a character interrupted mid-sentence, but I have seen a character interrupted in between sentences in the midst of speaking, and other jarring breaks in the middle of a scene.
I know, right? They even have original programming. There’s one season of “Alex Ryder” (adapted from a YA book series, about basically James Bond, Jr. with the serial numbers filed off.) They clearly don’t have the budget of Amazon Originals. It’s not quite YouTube semi-pro production quality, but it’s not much better.
I don’t know the exact relationship between Amazon and IMDbTV, but if you have Amazon Prime, IMDbTV is a featured channel in Prime Video, and if you look for “Free to Me” videos on Prime, IMDbTV videos will be mixed in. If you look carefully, they have an “ADS” tag in the corner of the thumbnail.
Due South is one of my favorite TV series, ever. It is not and never has been on any streaming service*. I think musical rights have been an issue. I have the DVD collection, which had a short print run, so I’m glad I got it when I did. I recently re-binged them, and discovered a couple of discs had scratches, so I was only able to watch parts of three of the episodes.
*The series is actually unofficially available on YouTube. A fan apparently uploaded the episodes, and the rights holders haven’t objected. From what I’ve read elsewhere, the producers have kind of knowingly turned a blind eye, because the series isn’t likely to ever make it to streaming or have a re-release of the DVDs, due to those musical rights issues. The episodes have all of the sound (including dialogue and sound effects) edited out during sequences when licensed music was used, which is apparently keeping the copyright police at bay. Unfortunately, the musical design of the series was tightly woven into the production, and pretty much every episode has at least one key scene with licensed music. Just editing out the music significantly alters the way a lot of pivotal scenes play. And without audible dialogue…
The comments in that article mention that it’s all on YouTube. I looked - it is. But it’s clearly posted by someone who transferred everything from their VCR or something. How does that stay up so long? There are a couple episodes that are deleted - I’m guessing YouTube scrubs for copyrighted music or something?
Music rights holders scour YouTube for violations (infamously, random snippets of music barely audible in the background of videos of random ordinary people doing random unrelated things get subjected to takedown notices).
If a series incorporated licensed music, it can be difficult to work out all of the rights issues to release it, either to DVD or streaming. It’s also relatively expensive to re-master it with different music, and depending on how integral that music is to the scenes, it may not be worth it. Either way, it can be more expensive than it’s worth. Unfortunately, it’s likely some series are never going to make it to streaming or even a DVD release under the current digital copyright structure.
Under those circumstances, series with a small but loyal following will sometimes get uploaded to YouTube with the music edited or with specific episodes left out, and the producers and series rights owners will turn a blind eye. It actually can help keep the series alive for secondary marketing and merchandising, even if that’s a tiny revenue stream. And it’s a minimal gesture of goodwill to enthusiastic fans.
Yeah, I know that “The Wonder Years” has been in secondary market hell because of all the music rights to deal with. It’s a fun source of good-natured trolling in my digital movie code group on Facebook.
Seeing several “Masterpiece Theater 50th Anniversary” notices lately, which prompted me that I’d love to see I, Claudius, Upstairs Downstairs, or All Creatures Great and Small again. I could probably get them on BritBox or Acorn but I don’t want to see them that much.
