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It’s a mystery fit for Jessica Fletcher herself. All 12 seasons of Murder, She Wrote were removed from Peacock this week, despite the fact that the series is owned and distributed by fellow NBCUniversal studio Universal Television, Vulture reports. The Angela Lansbury-led crime drama, which began airing in 1985, has been housed on the platform since its launch five years ago, per the outlet. It did have a “leaving soon” tag as of a few weeks ago, with a rep confirming that the series had been offed on Monday. They didn’t offer a motive.
Vulture has a hunch the show was murdered because Universal thought it would be more profitable elsewhere. The show is popular enough that the company still regularly licenses it to air on channels it doesn’t own, like Hallmark Mystery. It also operates a MSW FAST channel, which airs random episodes 24/7 on Pluto TV and Roku.
The FAST channel, of course, inserts dozens of ads into Jessica’s process, which is really the key to unraveling this whole affair. Currently, the only place you can stream all 12 seasons of Murder, She Wrote (and its various direct-to-TV movies) is Tubi, which is free for all but also has a ton of ads. Vulture suspects that someone at NBCUniversal did a little math and realized it would be more profitable to license the show to the ad-supported streamer than to continue licensing it for ad-free streaming on Peacock. (Peacock still reportedly has to pay market value for the title, even though it’s owned by its parent company.)
Of course, you can still go old school and buy seasons of Murder, She Wrote on DVD if you don’t want to see it broken up by promos for dog food and eczema cream, or you can purchase it digitally in the usual places. Once again, however, it seems like monetary interests have won over user experience. And that’s all she wrote.
