Nitrate tapes, VHS, and streaming. Behind the looming world of Australia's lost media

In 2013, television watchers found themselves in a self-proclaimed "golden age" of streaming.

Primed with possibility, shows like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black proved audience hits and critical darlings.

Then in 2016, one headline rang out like a harbinger: Bloodline Cancelled By Netflix, And There's More Bad News.

The thriller's cancellation was labelled the first high-profile original Netflix series to be axed by the streaming giant.

And, it turned out, a sign of things to come.

At that point, streaming services had made watchers aware that due to a complex web of licensing deals, titles could change from month to month on platforms.

But when it came to original programming created by the streamers themselves? They were in uncharted territory.

By 2022 and 2023 — propelled by over saturation and Hollywood strikes — the same influx of television and films that had once inundated the platforms slowly disappeared.

For some, it didn't matter.

For preservationists of lost media, it signalled a new threat.

The 'forbidden fruit' of media

Lost media is broadly defined as any media believed to no longer exist in any format, or for which no copies can be located in public.

Some estimates from the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) suggest that more than 90 per cent of films made before 1929 are now lost.

But chief curator Meagan Loader says the exact total remains unknown.

"We don't know what we don't know," she says.

The curator says there's "millions and millions" of pieces of content the archive has only now been able to access due to advances in technology.

Still, highly-flammable old nitrate film can be "like TNT" and the lifeline on magnetic tapes is running out.

"The industry has grown and evolved really quickly and I don't think that people really understood the need to archive," Ms Loader adds.

"So, we've lost a lot of content just because of the nature of the medium that the work was captured on in the first place."

Others invested in the phenomenon fear lost media's prevalence is only increasing.

Neil, who asked to be referred to by his first name, runs the YouTube channel Strange Australian.

His channel is dedicated to rediscovering Australian lost media, and says the fascination surrounding the subject is akin to "forbidden fruit".

While Australian classics such as Number 96 or Young Talent Time feature in his channel, it is often the more recent additions that people seek out

Neil points to the Canadian-Australian 2002 series Guinevere Jones that starred Chris Hemsworth in his first credited role.

"You can't legally watch that show anywhere in Australia," he says.

"You can get the Russian version before you can watch Australian versions.

"It's just nuts."

Another example is the surprising cult interest in internationally co-produced medieval-themed game show Splatalot.

"People don't realise until someone highlights it that all this stuff that they may have watched as a kid or in recent memory, you just cannot watch anymore," he says.

Ms Loader notes digital media is "equally fragile in its own way".

"Machines evolve, things like cloud services run out of storage … it's hard to take stock and and keep track of it all across the world," she adds.

The result is a game of global surveillance that only got more difficult when streamers entered the arena.

The elusive streaming vault

Two decades on from the inception of streaming, viewers are staring down a decidedly less golden outlook.

Last year alone marked the premature deaths of several critically acclaimed shows, including Schimigadoon, Girls5Eva, and Our Flag Means Death.

Meanwhile, Disney+ pulled more than 120 original titles across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Netflix too ditched most of its own interactive library, once promised as a new way to push "the boundaries of storytelling".

Now Max — a platform castigated for its removal of original works — has become another contender in the Australian market.

As associate professor of Screen Media at Victoria University Marc Scott puts it, streamers soon found out it was "just as expensive to create content, regardless of which platform it goes onto".

"The other reason for pulling content for the streaming services is they can write it off," he adds.

"So they're not effectively paying royalties for having that content as part of their library."

While they may not be tossed into the trash, he say these works are still ostensibly lost.

Neil agrees that the streamers' transparency casts doubts onto preservation efforts.

"If somebody doesn't screen capture it all, then it's effectively out of the public view if it vanishes from a streaming service," he says.

"The actual production company itself might not have properly archived the stuff that they've done and then that's just that.

NFSA liaises with screen funding bodies, meaning that any government-funded production will be brought into the collection, Ms Loader says.

Similarly, the ABC Archives team, which manages a collection of more than 2 million audio, video and image files, liaises with the National Archives of Australia.

"The ABC has also invested in the digitisation or our content held on film, video and audio tape ensuring our rich archive is preserved for future generations," ABC Archives manager Janelle Mikkelsen said.

Netflix also works with production companies to ensure local original titles are archived with NFSA once they are released on the service, the ABC understands.

Currently, all of its commissioned Australian titles are still available on the platform.

Still, Ms Loader says the back-and-forth existence of TikTok is the perfect demonstration of digital instability.

"There is some work being done but it is a worry, the streamers I think," she says.

'It's a whole climate of devaluing'

Last month, star of Fire Island Joel Kim Booster jokingly told fans to "bootleg" his film.

Green-lit by defunct streamer Quibi, the 2022 movie eventually found a home on Disney+ but Booster remained nervous about its longevity.

"The way it's living on streaming at the whims of Disney and whatever tax breaks they may be looking for at any given moment is so scary to me that I need you all to disseminate," he told listeners of the Las Culturistas podcast.

It's a less hypothetical scenario for American creator Eliza Skinner whose show Earth to Ned was scrapped by Disney+ without warning and she was left without a physical copy of her work.

"It's a whole climate of devaluing," she later told The Hollywood Reporter.

Similarly, actor Kristen Schaal turned to social media for help to "burn a DVD" when Disney+ pulled her show.

Disney+ has been contacted by the ABC for comment, but Dr Scott says it is not just the artists who suffer when media is shelved.

"I grew up at a time when we had video stores … we had that content always there, and if we purchased it, it was sitting in our library unless we scratched the DVD," he says.

"But with digital content, we no longer own the content as such — we're just paying for access rather than owning the physical item."

Neil says it's "especially concerning" that these decisions are coming from billion-dollar companies.

"That's the call of a company that says this isn't making money, we're just going to remove it."

The rationale between a cultural institution like NFSA and a private archive are intrinsically different, Ms Loader notes.

"They have different drivers for keeping content or not, and different budget issues and commercial imperatives."

A fight for the right to watch

For many, the fight continues even if they do bootleg a copy.

Neil says stringent copyright laws "hamstrings" many amateur Australian archivists from sharing their findings with the public.

"You can go into a library, they preserve and they'll let you copy stuff, but when it comes to TV we don't have that same deal," he says.

Dr Scott agrees the burden of preservation shouldn't be left up to those with a "love for the content".

"We've got these issues where we're going against copyright, but it's the only archival aspect that we genuinely have of these programmes."

He also fears an underfunded globalisation of media leaves Australia without an "archival backbone".

"I think the problem in media more broadly is, we have so much content. So how do you store and archive that?" Dr Scott says.

"We've got 24 news channels, sport is constantly on.

Ms Loader's main concern relates to knowledge and money.

As the machines that can read outdated media become "obsolete", the need for those who can work them becomes critical, she says.

"There's less and less people who were brought up around those machines and know how to operate them, or know how to maintain them or fix them."

And equally important is a "hugely expensive" investment.

"We need to upgrade the digital files to new formats every few years so that the digital files don't become obsolete," Ms Loader adds.

Preserving Australia's cultural voice

Cannes-selected 1971 film Wake In Fright, which was also the debut of Jack Thompson, disappeared for decades.

It took years and a taxing campaign but the original negatives were eventually found in the US where they were marked "for destruction".

In a similar way, NFSA is still finding snippets of film from 90 years ago.

It's proof lost media doesn't have to stay lost.

"I think that's part of why I like to do what I do, because of that hope that somebody might have something," Neil says.

Look to Bluey or Heartbreak High and you'll see Australian stories do have a place on streaming services, Dr Scott adds.

"That's an example where you can produce local content for a global audience on a streaming platform and it be successful," he says.

But as we continue to turn to streamers, it's also about protecting Australia's cultural voice for future generations.

Ms Loader quotes musician Nick Cave when she talks about archiving's importance.

"He says his biggest fear is to lose his memory because he says, 'It is what we are,'" she says.

"It's memories and where we've been that create a sense of identity.