system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What prevents a television show that no longer airs to sell its rights to Netflix or some other streaming service?

I was just thinking about shows I watched as a kid.  Clone High, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Undergrads, etc. and was wondering what the incentive was to not have them highly accessible.
gpt
It may be stuck in licensing purgatory, or someone else still owns the exclusive rights.

In some cases it's no longer really clear exactly who owns what percentage of the content.  TV shows use licensed music, have multiple actors on different contracts, and have various production houses, publishers, and distributors that may all need to agree on a deal depending on how their original contracts were worded.

This can get cumbersome fast and shows that have multiple organizations with veto power over a new deal can get tied up in licensing talks for years.

It's also possible that a single entity has already taken the steps to consolidate all that into a single deal and is working on their own service or simply is asking too much fron Netflix.