A word on methodology
As I did with earlier posts, the model here assumes that a TV series runs over the course of a 12 months period. In this case, it’s shows that ran between January 1st, 2011 and December 31st, 2011. This usually encompasses two seasons, unless a show is cancelled. Availability is assumed when all the episodes that ran that year are available. Partial credit is given if some of the episodes are available.
I’ve decided to focus on the top 25 titles as the pattern appears to be the same whether you go deeper into the catalog or not.
For this search, I looked at Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime as subscription services and at Amazon VOD and iTunes as Video-on-Demand (VoD) services. Subscription services generally cost around $7.99 per month for an all-you-can-eat approach. VoD services, when it comes to these offerings, sell episodes for $1.99 per episode or sometimes bundle whole seasons for $35-$45 or roughly the price one might see for a DVD box set for that season.
The list
So now, on to the list
| Rank | Name | Netflix | Hulu | Amazon Prime | Amazon VOD | iTunes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NCIS | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 2 | NCIS: LA | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 3 | The Mentalist | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| 4 | Criminal Minds | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 5 | CSI | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 6 | The Big Bang Theory | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 7 | Body of Proof | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 8 | The Good Wife | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 9 | Two and a Half Men | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 10 | Blue Bloods | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 11 | CSI: Miami | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| 12 | Hawaii Five-0 | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 13 | Modern Family | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 14 | Desperate Housewives | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| 15 | Harry’s Law | No | No | No | No | No |
| 16 | Bones | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 17 | Castle | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 18 | Grey’s Anatomy | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 19 | Mike & Molly | No | No | No | No | No |
| 20 | CSI: NY | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 21 | $#* My Dad Says | No | No | No | No | No |
| 22 | The Defenders | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 23 | Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 24 | House | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 25 | Glee | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
The first thing you may notice is an interesting pattern. For the most part, shows appears widely available on VoD services but the inverse appears true on subscription ones. Of the top 10 TV hits of 2012, none were available on subscription services while iTunes had complete availability and Amazon was missing one.
As you delve deeper into the catalog, things get a little better, with Netflix getting 7 out of the top 25 titles (Hulu manages to carry three titles and Amazon Prime does not seem to offer any of that content).
All and all, it appears the industry has moved to a model where you can get most older TV shows legally on the internet if you’re willing to pay for them. This should help stem some of the piracy around this type of content while creating new revenue sources for content owners.
But what do things look like when you compared to the availability of that content last year?
| Year | Netflix | Hulu | Amazon Prime | Amazon VOD | iTunes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 8 | 2 | 5 | 20 | 22 |
| 2012 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 21 | 22 |
Looking at those numbers, we see that this type of content is still difficult to get on subscription services (and getting progressively worse) but that availability on VoD services is pretty stable. So if you want to catch up on TV, your best best is to pony up and purchase the content. Subscription services like Netflix and Hulu are not the place to go to if you’re looking for broadcast TV hits.
Subscription services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime offer relatively poor back catalog of popular content. Having looked at movie hits from this year and last, as well as TV hits from this year and last, we see that the distribution of popular content is not something they are looking at very seriously. On the other hand, that content is increasingly legally available for purchase online. This is a vast improvement over what we’ve seen in the past and points to hopeful signs in terms of accessibility to legal streams of popular content.
So the great jukebox is the cloud exists but it will cost you a pretty penny for it to sing its sweet song.