Hi Gizmodo, I am a Stan user. I had a series in my list that I had not finished, and found it has disappeared out of my list! How can this happen? Please help. Cheers, Helena.
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Dear Helena,
I suspect you may have been at the worst place and time you can end up while marathoning a series on a streaming service — the refresh.
Although not widely advertised, content on streaming services such as Stan is, unfortunately, not there forever. A periodic “refresh” of the catalogue does occur on a regular basis, and this means that some shows are scrapped from the service.
This isn’t isolated to Stan — Netflix, Presto and other major streaming services all do the same thing.
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When asked about its refresh policy, Stan told Lifehacker Australia:
“The vast majority of the content we have is on long term licenses, including Stan’s first-run shows such as Better Call Saul and Transparent,” said Stan’s Content & Product Director, Nick Forward. “Our first-run shows will remain on the platform for a minimum of 24 months so subscribers can watch anytime.”
“We have also licensed ‘life of series’ for our most popular first-run shows, which means new seasons will also be returning exclusively to Stan year after year.”
So while there is a guaranteed two years the first-run shows will be available to watch, the rest is up in the air — and it looks like your series may have been one of the ones that were cut.
To keep tabs on this so it doesn’t happen again, you can check OzStream’s “expires soon” list.
To check that this is indeed the case, and nothing more worrying is occurring with your account, Stan’s online help service is actually really fast at getting back to customers.
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