Well, piracy plus overexposure. If you're hoping to get Time Life or Shout Factory to release a $99 box set of CAPTAIN AND TENILLE, that's likelier to happen of the shows haven't been free on Youtube for a decade.
Figuring out ways to make money off of old IP is difficult and really you can trace the high points of it (Criterion; TCM; Warner Archive) to a handful of mostly anonymous mid-level music, cable, and home video execs who actually cared about old crap, were good at capitalism, AND managed to play corporate politics well.
Someone bought the rights to Jackie Gleason's '60's CBS variety show "The American Scene Magazine." He put segments on YouTube to generate demand for the DVDs or downloads. He pulled them because no one cared about anything Gleason except for "The Honeymooners." I suspect he took quite a loss.
Thing was, the shows from NYC gave a good insight into what a Broadway review of the late '50s was like.
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