I spoke with support about this not long ago. Entire seasons of shows (Con Man Season 1) that I've purchased showing as no longer available in the Canadian store and yet I can search, find and preview it in the Canadian store (can't play it because it says I don't own it).
A related
issues for me... I can't delete the show from my favorites screen because as I said above it doesn't think it exists / I own it.
What I was told is that the content was purchased by some other studio/distributor and because it has a new ID in the App Store (however their backend works)... I no longer have access... it appears as a new product.
So I asked if they could switch my purchase to point to the "NEW" Con Man and was told NO. I did not buy the content from this distributor.
The end result of these games is much messier. I have kids that search the store for shows they know I own and then play from there vs my purchases. This has resulted in them purchasing the exact same show I already own because they've hit play on this picture 1000x times before.
And as much as I know there will be some that say "you should make it ask for a pass every time"... im willing to admit I've gone one step further and purchased duplicates myself thinking "the little screen that says 'you already own this content' will surely come up because I know I own this".
And guess what... Apple will not credit you for being dumb and buying the same show twice even though I feel the way they let this happen is EXTREMELY shady!!!
Might also be worth mentioning I notice during holidays you see this "new distributor" issue in full effect! 2 years ago bought pretty much every Christmas show on iTunes. Last year almost every title I know I bought showed "purchase" vs play when clicking into the show.
Just my 2 cents
Buying a season, getting new episodes weekly and then noticing and abrupt stop followed up with a massive number of new episodes available MONTHS later (when you know new shows had been released on cable during the silent months) is another issue that drives me crazy... but that's a story for another thread.