Streamers are paying big bucks for old shows, but nobody knows how much they're really worth

The Washington Post

The hundreds of millions shelled out for streaming rights, respectively, for The Office, Friends, The Big Bang Theory and Seinfeld "will certainly make some studios rich and assure fans the shows will exist online, somewhere, for the foreseeable future. But it ignores a fundamental question: How exactly are these shows valued?" says Steven Zeitchik. "More important, it ignores the fact that nobody seems to know the answer." As experts point out, "the profit-and-loss statement is out the window, being replaced by … nobody knows," says Zeitchik. "The value of classic shows was once easily quantified, via the syndication model. There was practically a formula. A buyer calculated the ratings in first-run and repeats. Then they looked at how much ad money a show thus rated could garner. Then they agreed to prices accordingly. The equation was simple: You wanted to sell enough ads to justify your cost. It didn’t always work out, of course. But there was a road map. Streaming now, though, appears to be a total gamble. How do you measure the value of a show to a streamer? The number of people who signed up for the service specifically because of that show? Well, that’s probably not very many, at least who are documentable. What about the general luster a top-tier comedy hit accrues back to a streaming brand? Sure, but how exactly do you measure that, let alone put a dollar figure on it?"

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