internet appears to be a deadweight for audiovisual documentary, a ‘gender’ in crisis and threatened according to its supporters. The purpose of this memory is to understand how new video-on-demand offers dedicated to documentaries on the Internet intend to respond to this crisis. Based on the analysis of the discourse of companies in this emerging market (speeches in various settings: qualitative semi-directive interviews, websites, social media communications), cross-referencing with a range of other heterogeneous sources to put them into context, creates a world of promises, the bulk of which is based on the combination of the terms ‘on demand’ and ‘by subscription’ and which we are trying to identify. The full realisation of these promises, the strongest of which is to emancipate the documentary from the dominance of the television model (funding and formats), remains conditional, but could be encouraged by the identification of ‘values’ coincident by the internet and the documentary, and by the self-developer and performance potential of certain forms of speech. The nature of the economic model chosen is the basis for a tension between two conceptions of the social order by assigning a different place to the spectator, and the debate that existed at the time of the birth of the modern press. The choice of a targeted, fee-paying offer, presented as the key to this emancipation, presupposes the existence of a spectator who has been acquired as a “causedocument.The construction of a public is therefore conditioned on the development of communities on the Internet and on the establishment of a affinitation-emotional relationship between the media and viewers, who are repeatedly invited to go beyond their status as “mere” viewers to take action. However, an analysis of the specific characteristics of companies, examined on the basis of their rhetoric, shows that, despite the announced disruption, they are a continuation and defence of historical traditions, reflected in their benchmark models, and which give rise to forms of continuity, including: divergent visions helping to perpetuate the polysemic nature of the term ‘documentary’; ‘professionalised’ and ‘institutionalised’ gender visions; a relative permanence of forms and formats; the continued prescriptive role of the media company in the face of an ever-growing audience. Between break and continuity, the advent of these offers is therefore a development rather than a revolution. The success of companies, whose offers convey a certain vision of what is or should be the documentary, an ideal built from the personal history of the company/entrepreneur, and putting their project at the midpoint between political struggle and economic opportunity, will depend on their ability to know and understand their institutional environment, and if possible, if necessary, influence it.