I think you are vastly overrating how much Netflix must pay to have old shows. To many content owners the choice is between not monetizing their IP, or licensin

I think you are vastly overrating how much Netflix must pay to have old shows. To many content owners the choice is between not monetizing their IP, or licensing it to Netflix. That's a pretty weak position from which to negotiate price. Also, content is usually licensed in bundles, which is win-win for content owners and Netflix: The content owners get to monetize their low value content (which Netflix would have otherwise declined to pay for), and Netflix gets a lot of content by paying only a little bit more.