​Over the past few years, WHS students have been fortunate enough to access some of TV’s greatest shows through Netflix. However, certain prominent shows, most notably How I Met Your Mother and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, are being removed from the popular streaming service, leaving students heartbroken.

Senior Alex Campbell, a fan of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, said: “I’m angry about the show leaving. This is one of the funniest shows on TV and the fact that it is leaving makes no sense to me; I am going to miss it.”

Junior Nick Chermak feels similarly to Campbell. “I really didn’t like [How I Met Your Mother] leaving because it was my favorite show,” said Chermak. “It’s only 20 minutes per episode and it is generally a funny show.”

However, the reason that these  shows get removed is not necessarily a decision made by Netflix. According to Netflix, the popular streaming service makes licensing agreements with TV and movie studios that allow it to run these shows for a set period of time. If a show is being removed, that means the agreement is about to expire.

Additionally, competition from other streaming services  (such as Hulu and Amazon Prime) makes it difficult to conduct and renew licensing agreements. For example, according to Hulu, the company’s deal with 20th Century Fox brings several of the Fox series over to Hulu, including How I Met Your Mother and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. As a result, Netflix was unable to renew its licenses with those shows.

In another event, according to CNBC, Walt Disney Pictures is creating its own streaming service in 2019, so the process of removing Disney content from Netflix has begun.
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“I feel sad about How I Met Your Mother leaving because I was in the middle of watching it,” said senior Angelina Greco. “However, I look forward to watching other shows now, like Friends.”