A complete multi-generational back-catalog that is always available to stream.
Netflix’s irrevocable back-catalog can only go as far back as their first Netflix original. Everything else is licensed.
Netflix hasn’t needed much of a back catalog to out-earn the competition.
The truth is that back catalogs have the potential to be basically worthless except for a select few “best of the best” classics.
The majority of Disney back catalog content is most certainly not at the level of Snow White or Cinderella. I think about many of their package (anthology) films as a great example of near-unwatchable garbage that only has non-profit historical value.
Media companies quite literally let their back catalogs rot (like the neglect and disinvestment that led to the Universal masters fire of 20008).
What’s the convincing reason for Disney to not simply do nothing? Sell me on Disney digitizing and releasing old cartoons with the salary of at least one person versus doing absolutely nothing.
You also have to sell me on that employee working on the Donald Duck smoking cigars and speaking in a Mid-Atlantic accent archive project versus working on something else. Why is that employee not instead working on The Avengers Versus Guardians of the Galaxy 2: Hulk We Groot Again!”