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Cultural criticism is not investment advice. But investors with emerging concerns about the future of streaming business models will find their echo in a criticism of streaming services’ vast content libraries from journalist and author Chuck Klosterman.

Klosterman gave a must-listen interview to the “Longform” podcast on his recently released book, “The Nineties,” in which he mused on “the slow cancellation of the future.” Movies in the 1980s looked dramatically different from movies in the 1960s, he claimed, whereas movies today are all but indistinguishable from movies in the aughts. The same goes for music.

“Maybe there’s nothing inherently bad about it,” Klosterman said. But the consequence is that “because we have such immediate access to the entire history of all art, all political thought, all literature, all of that, it’s very difficult to come up with something that is sort of a move beyond what is already there.”

And the culprit? “It’s got to be the internet. That’s the only explanation.” Culture has become “a very shallow ocean,” vast but eminently searchable. While the internet originally “seemed like the ultimate accelerant of culture,” when it became ubiquitous, “it made it so difficult to get beyond the present moment in a creative way,” he said.

Klosterman is implying that streaming services—both audio and video—are ultimately more valuable to subscribers for consuming “retro” content than for accessing present-day content. This was briefly on display in the Paramount Global (née ViacomCBS) investor day presentation on Tuesday, as Ben Bowman of The Streamable noticed: “Company leaders didn’t draw special attention to one slide in their presentation—their list of most-consumed titles by hours viewed. The image briefly appeared behind Chief Programming Officer of Streaming, Tanya Giles. The list of the 10 most-watched programs on Paramount+ is notable because of the sheer age of the programs. Only two of the 10 debuted within the last decade (‘PAW Patrol’ and ‘Star Trek: Discovery’). Other shows like ‘Survivor,’ ‘NCIS,’ ‘Big Brother’ and ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ have been on the air for 20 years.”

Through Klosterman’s lens, more spending (Paramount is aiming for $6 billion in 2024, up from $2.2 billion in 2021) won’t lead to more hits because that new content will always be competing with the past.

The same was evident for Disney: According to Nielsen, in 2021, older releases such as “Frozen” (2013), “Frozen II” (2019) and “Moana” (2016) all performed better with U.S. streaming audiences than 2021 releases “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “Black Widow,” “Luca,” “Raya and The Last Dragon” or “Jungle Cruise.” In other words, Disney spent more than $25 billion in 2021 on new titles to compete with—and lose to—its own library.

Something similar happened on Netflix: After actor Charlie Cox appeared in 2021’s hit “Spider-Man: No Way Home” as protagonist Matt Murdock from Netflix’s “Daredevil,” the show—which had its premiere in 2015 and hasn’t posted a new season in more than three years—spiked to the top of Netflix’s Top 10 and trending charts, as well as to No. 8 on Nielsen’s weekly U.S. originals streaming chart for the period of Dec. 20 to 26. Disney apparently took notice, because last week it announced that all of Netflix’s co-produced Marvel shows—including “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones,” “Luke Cage,” “The Punisher,” “Iron Fist” and “The Defenders,” which teamed up characters from all of the above—will move exclusively to Disney platforms after March 1.

If we assume that Top 10 charts are reliable indicators in an otherwise opaque streaming marketplace, then “a very shallow ocean” seems like an apt description of what’s going on here.

That said, all of those old movies and series could also be evidence that Klosterman is wrong. “The Defenders” productions weren’t feasible in 2005 because Marvel hadn’t yet proven the demand for its long tail of intellectual property. Nor was “Moana”: Distribution models had to change (that is, Netflix had yet to solve for streaming), and culture had to evolve to a place where a movie about Pacific Islanders could (rightly) be considered to have mass-market appeal. Plus, in 2005, “Moana” writer Lin-Manuel Miranda was still working on his Broadway debut, “In the Heights.” That a movie version of “In the Heights” was then released on HBO Max in 2021, however, counts in favor of Klosterman’s thesis.

Above all, it’s the timing of his critique that is worth considering. Investors have been asking legacy media companies to spend more to compete with Netflix on streaming. So far, those legacy media companies have done so—and have been rewarded with punishing declines in stock price over the past six months:

• Paramount Global: -23%
• Disney: -12%
• AT&T/WarnerMedia: -16%
• AMC Networks: -23%
• Lionsgate/Starz: -22% over the past month alone

The problem is, after the “pull-forward impact” of the pandemic, investors have realized that the unit economics of increased content spending on streaming are unappealing. Disney announced 12 million new Disney+ subscribers in its Q1 2022 earnings, but the majority of those came from Disney+ Hotstar subscribers in India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand paying $1 per month. Paramount Global announced a path to 100 million subscribers by 2025, but one that requires $1 billion each year in operating income losses through 2024 and declining average revenue per user—a problem Disney also faces.

It all points to two looming questions: What value will shareholders get from increased content spending? And, more important, what value will consumers get from increased content spending?

The problem lies in the general market reliance on the Sumner Redstone adage, “Content is king.” That was true when the wholesale model reigned, and Viacom and CBS needed to figure out which content to produce to pump into the pipes of cable distributors and movie theaters. If the content attracted valuable demographics at scale, everyone won because the economics were great.

But Netflix has solved for the retail model: that is, how to distribute the right content to the right audiences at scale across multiple platforms. In marketing terms, Netflix’s solution is “ubiquitous access,” the ability to make newly produced content available to its subscribers on a one-click basis both on platform and off platform, online and offline. The Netflix homepage can market content at no additional cost to 220 million subscribers, plus whoever else may be using their accounts.

Netflix has also figured out how to cost-effectively market content digitally, seeing a year-over-year decrease in marketing spend in 2020. In other words, both Netflix’s content distribution and content marketing models are fundamentally different from those of any other legacy media-streaming platform. Even Netflix fumbles, though: Its stock tumbled nearly 50% after its Q4 2021 earnings reported a miss on subscriber targets. Notably, it also reported a 14% year-over-year increase in marketing expenses, mostly driven by higher advertising costs.

This brings us back to Klosterman’s point. It may be that retail-first Netflix has figured out something wholesale-first legacy media companies are still trying to solve: that the purpose of spending on new content is to feed the distribution and marketing engine. And if the distribution and marketing engine isn’t strong enough, the present ends up losing to the past.