My wife and I have been bingeing Magnum over the past month or so since the current offerings on network tv don’t excite us. We’re on episode 51. Tonight I turned it on and saw Amazon wanted $2.99 an episode. Ain’t happening.

Lots of changes came at beginning of February. All streaming shows now have commercials as well, unless you want to pay $3/month.

Could be either price gouging or they are known to cycle what is available to stream at any one time with Prime membership. Could be the new month just caught you when they changed availability. They also offer a lot of free first episodes as a way to draw in people for the premium channel subscriptions they offer like Starz and HBO.

We wanted to watch Groundhog Day and Amazon wanted like $3.99 to watch a 30+ year old movie.

There’s way too much other free or otherwise already paid-for streaming content out there for Amazon to be playing these silly games.

 
They made Justified PPV after years of free.

I’m pretty close to livid. I’m been watching Magnum and Hill Street on the treadmill, now they want me to buy seasons of nearly 30 year old show?

Good. I’ve been looking for a reason to drop amazon and pay alacarte.

On a side note, NYPD Blue is ‘freel’ on Hulu, that’s on my watch list so I think I’ll get that started this week.

There's a payment due on the Bezos Boat. GoFundMe turned him down.

I have thousands of unread (by me) books. I can live without whatever without paying extra.

quote:

There's a payment due on the Bezos Boat. GoFundMe turned him down.

^^^^^^^^^^^^
Nah it was for his new main squeeze who dresses like Madonna in the 1970s.

It isn't price gouging, or some dirty cash grab by Jeff Bezos.

Unless a provider owns the content outright (like Netflix owns Stranger Things, or HBO owns Game of Thrones, etc.), their exclusive streaming licenses for individual shows/movies are temporary, and expire after a period of time - typically anywhere from a year to several years.

As the current licenses are coming up for expiration, other providers are allowed to bid on them, often resulting in changes in where you can stream that show/movie. Providers that don't hold that streaming license will only be able to sell/rent it as PPV/On Demand, which is a separate deal. (And shows/movies that nobody has purchased a streaming license for will simply disappear from all subscription streaming services altogether, and only be available to buy/rent, or perhaps not be available at all.)

This is a very common thing you see all the time, with many movies and shows shuffling around between different providers, or disappearing altogether for a while until someone eventually picks up the rights later on.

But the streaming providers will almost always warn you ahead of time, with notations on the show/movie's menu screen like: "This show is leaving Amazon Prime Video on January 31st."

So it sounds like Amazon either simply chose not to renew their streaming license for Magnum PI and let it drop off altogether, or else some other provider outbid them and now holds the new license.