If CBS does currently have exclusive broadcast rights for The Price Is Right, then it makes sense that they would be unwilling to give them up. After all, what would CBS gain? Fremantle/Buzzr isn't going to offer CBS enough money to make it worthwhile. And while any effect on the network's ratings would likely be infinitesimal, right now CBS is the only place where people can watch The Price Is Right. Why give viewers a choice to watch the competition if you don't have to?
This I understand the most, but it sucks.
I definitely think the demand is there. We're in the middle of a big nostalgia boom where a ton of things are being rebooted. Plenty of people have many fond memories of watching Price and plenty who would find a passing interest in revamping their memory with reruns. We've seen revivals of far less popular properties, like To Tell the Truth or the still upcoming Supermarket Sweep.
Not true, they've been copy-striking users recently for uploading Price episodes, especially the Barker episodes.
They haven't really. Imad Khuri has put up what must be at least 100 Barker episodes over the last two years on his channels (a vast majority of which are still up). The only reason he had trouble recently is partly because he was maliciously targeted by randos on the internet. Something I also had a problem with recently. I know there are some cases where they will strike a few things; Carlos' massive collection comes to mind (which IIRC they didn't strike but kindly requested a take down). If there's one thing Fremantle doesn't love is whole episode uploads of very recent shows because that does take away from views on CBS.com or Amazon — which Imad did have quite a few of up. Otherwise, they're the ones who have been mostly content to claiming copyright on episodes/clips, letting them stand, and taking the ad money off of them. I know since I've been uploading clips from Price to YT on and off for 8 years. It's something Sony should take a hint from when it comes to J!/Wheel.
Larger point being, if they were afraid that people circulating the Barker episodes was hurting the Drew version in a significant way, there's a lot more they could currently be doing to stop that. There's, what, currently hundreds of Barker episodes on YT? The majority of which come from a few dozen accounts? They could totally squash that if they wanted with no problem and they would be well within their legal rights to do it.
So I don't think "they're afraid of people seeing how obviously better the Barker version was" holds water.
But I think there's a big difference between random YT channels uploading episodes and a TV network having it publicized on a schedule. I know there's a lot of cord-cutting and people moving towards more online options, but a network like CBS/Buzzr is going to have a better ability to advertise and promote the appearance of episodes online or on TV than a post from, say, Chelsea Thrasher.