'Mooners Monday #26: Streaming the 'Mooners

In case you missed this week's Streaming Video Power Rankings, I broke the news that someone else broke the news to me that an assortment of Honeymooners Lost Episodes had been available on Amazon Prime Video since mid August. According to my unofficial (and pretty much unexistent) research, this is the first time The Honeymooners, in any incarnation, has streamed on a paid service. It's less than half of the collection, and it seems to consist of the shorter sketches and not the longer episodes, but it's something.

Now, many of the episodes have been uploaded, shall we say, outside official channels, and on some prominent video sites. We don't want subpar copies of our favorite show, though, right? We want to be able to see it on demand, commercial free and uncut, and in good quality. Of course, that's why we buy the DVDs, but stay with me.

The Honeymooners deserves to be on a prominent streaming site, and while MPI apparently controls streaming as well as home video rights for the Lost Episodes, what about the Classic 39? They show up on outlets like ME-TV, but CBS isn't doing anything in the SVOD realm with the classic. Is it because there are only 39 episodes? That shouldn't make a difference. Hulu streams many classic CBS-controlled properties and offers dozens of episodes of them in many cases, not the entire run. Presumably, given the Blu-Ray release and the fact the show is mastered in high-def,  it wouldn't take much work to get nice materials ready for a streaming channel.

Netflix would be the best destination among the pay sites. Everyone has it, and it doesn't show commercials. Hulu is the next best fit. It does pepper us with ads, but at least it runs uncut episodes, and Ralph and Alice and Ed and Trixie would fit in well alongside other classic TV characters like Lucy, Rod, and Mister Ed. Amazon Prime is third because it is so disorganized and because I don't have it. Actually, that's not a big deal to me since I have the discs, and Amazon already streams a bunch of old CBS/Paramount shows, so Honeymooners would look good there, too.

Then there's a fourth option: Remember that pay streaming gimmick CBS unveiled a while ago? Yeah, CBS All Access still exists. Oh, we hear plenty about the forthcoming Star Trek series and Young Sheldon (shudder), but I don't know if CBS has added anything to the "Classics" section since its launch.

Why can't CBS put the 'Mooners up on its own streaming service? At this point, it's not cannibalizing video sales to put it up somewhere. There are only 39 episodes, and they should be ready to go with minimal effort. In this case, I suspect it has little to do with the series and more to do with CBS' cavalier approach to catalog content on All Access.

So we wait for the 'Mooners to show up on streaming, but at least we have the videos. It puzzles me, though, that unlike The Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, The Twilight Zone, and other classic CBS programs--some of which have been on all 3 major SVOD services--The Honeymooners never turns up anywhere