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Netflix is creating a problem by cancelling TV shows too soon

• ThePadawan 6y ago
  YMMV based on what's "interesting" to you. Personally, this year Netflix has renewed shows like Carmen Sandiego for another season (despite the current season being cut short due to COVID) and The Dragon Prince for another four (yes, 4.) after only running for 3 so far.
  • yazaddaruvala 6y ago
    I do love both of these shows, and I believe Netflix will be the animated tv powerhouse. Likely even buying Dreamworks animation. However, there are a ton of good live action shows that were canceled like Hasan Minaj’s, Altered Carbon. Just too expensive and not worth the money? But in comparison to animation no live action will be.
    • alexgmcm 6y ago
      IMO the first season of Altered Carbon was good - the second one? Not so much... and it seems like the viewing stats reflected that. I'd read the first book and it was interesting that despite the first season changing so much from the book it still ended up good (even improved in some aspects).
      • magicalhippo 6y ago
        The second season of Altered Carbon felt really rushed. Which seems to be an issue with several shows, like "oh crap it became really popular we need another season ASAP". Which almost invariably leads to a weak followup.
• Thorrez 6y ago
  >In 2018, the "Hollywood" creator Ryan Murphy landed a reported $300 million contract with Netflix. And Benioff and Weiss reportedly closed a $200 million deal last year; the news of that contract came two days after "The OA" was canceled. Shonda Rhimes and Kenya Barris are also in the six-figure-Netflix-deal club. Those are nine-figure, not six-figure.
  • Marciplan 6y ago
    Being in the Forbes 100 doesnt make you not part of the Forbes 500 thou
    • Thorrez 6y ago
      Sure, but those mean "in the top 100" and "in the top 500". I've always heard six-figure to mean exactly six figures, so a nine-figure deal wouldn't be six figures. But for a non-club example of the same error, see the very next line: > The way Netflix accounts for these six-figure deals is complicated,
      • techdragon 6y ago
        The majority of Hollywood (and to a lesser extent general entertainment/media) accounting for money is “complicated”. It’s a known issue whereby producers and other people in a position of financial power deliberately shape the deal structures to be deceptively appealing in order to basically keep more of the money for themselves. Google “Hollywood accounting” if you’re curious for more details. The six figures reference may be a reflection of what the person in question is likely to be walking away from the deal with in terms of “money in their own pockets” as opposed to total money made available to them by Netflix for the purpose of making shows.
        • Thorrez 6y ago
          >The six figures reference may be a reflection of what the person in question is likely to be walking away from the deal with in terms of “money in their own pockets” as opposed to total money made available to them by Netflix for the purpose of making shows. When I click the link "also in the six-figure-Netflix-deal club" it takes me to an article[1] titled "$100 MILLION CLUB: 7 Hollywood titans that Netflix, HBO, and others have signed 9-figure deals with during the battle for talent". So that second article correctly matches 9-figure with $100M. This tells me that the first article just has a typo, not that there's some sort of 1/1000 conversion factor for salaries. I have a hard time believing in a 1/1000 conversion factor for salaries without some source clearly explaining that. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-deals-netflix-hbo-jj-abrams-shonda-rhimes-ryan-murphy-2019-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-deals-netflix-hbo-jj...
• grenoire 6y ago
  Isn't Netflix effectively doing VC, but for TV shows? They seem to be shotgunning money around to people who want to make shows, and if the RoI is not at an arbitrary threshold, they stop feeding money. Seems like it generates horrible perverse incentives on what kind of (generic) content is created, though.
  • ignoramous 6y ago
    The way I look at it is Netflix genuinely believes this a necessary strategy given there's so many other creatives they could instead be funding.
  • ldoughty 6y ago
    VC is a bad comparison ... Maybe VC with the intent to sell all ownership to the first person that offers them a 20% ROI... Netflix wants to bring in NEW customers... Existing customers are unlikely to unsubscribe, but getting new customers is hard at this point. Best way to get new customers is to throw new shows at people, lots of them, get them hooked. If people join, again, unlikely to leave -- they will find other cool things to watch. For Netflix, the value if a new hot show is way higher than season 4 of a very hot show... Nothing short of GOT (mid seasons) would be good enough to make it to season 5-6... I'm shocked some if these Netflix original series are making a 3rd season, since 2 is usually all it takes to milk a franchise
    • deleted 6y ago
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• DrBazza 6y ago
  Jumping the shark, and growing the beard. Netflix don't seem to want to get to that inflection point any more which is a shame. Santa Clarita Diet was a personal favourite (don't hate me), and it had just hit its stride. And Daredevil too. There's a big after-market in shows too. I've watched many shows on DVD (and now on Netflix/Amazon) long after they aired because I never saw them the first time round.
• musicale 6y ago
  Isn't canceling your favorite show what TV networks always do? ;-p I agree that it discourages you from investing time in a show that is likely to be canceled before it finishes any of its story arcs. It may be more of an issue now that many shows can easily be watched sequentially from episode one independent of the broadcast or release schedule.
  • m463 6y ago
    I think it's nicer to watch a show that has shot all seasons rather than one that is in the middle. Then if you choose not to watch all seasons it's your choice.
    • mszcz 6y ago
      That's what I gravitate toward to recently. I can vet the show before I'm 4 seasons in and it turns out, that the show's writers are Lost ;)
  • TulliusCicero 6y ago
    Yeah, while the kind of thing can definitely suck, I'm not sure Netflix is actually worse at this than the regular TV networks.
• MattGaiser 6y ago
  The problem with Netflix is that if a show doesn’t bring new subscribers/retain current ones, the show is worthless. It doesn’t matter if a lot of people watch a show. It only matters if that show is a deal maker. So it basically needs to become a cultural phenomenon or attract a hardcore base of fans. Anything else just wastes bandwidth. I doubt Netflix can predict with any certainty which show that will be in the same way that VCs can’t pick which of 100 companies will IPO for a billion. So they just invest in 20 of the better ones.
  • throw_m239339 6y ago
    The problem is that the more Netflix cancels shows that way, the less people will want to follow a show because of that very policy. The law of diminishing returns. the same thing that has made people wary of using any Google product since Google doesn't think long term. I quit Netflix when they cancelled the excellent Daredevil show.
• shannifin 6y ago
  I guess it looks like a problem because they can afford to throw more spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks than a traditional network, the result being more fallen spaghetti... However, it is possible they're missing out on potential viewership when they cancel too early based only on one season metrics... I rarely watch a show that's only been on for one season because I'm that much more likely to not get story closure. Not sure how common that is, but how many people are watching shows that were cancelled before getting story closure? And how many might watch the back catalog otherwise? I guess not enough to be worth the investment. On a side note, I do wish more seasons (streaming or not) would actually come to a real stopping point instead of just ending on a cliffhanger and hoping to be renewed.
  • MattGaiser 6y ago
    Is viewership valuable to Netflix? I would argue not as they make money on signups, not use. Viewership costs money, so if a show cannot attract new users or retain current ones, you might want to throw away that viewership.
    • beojan 6y ago
      Yes? You pay monthly, not just once on signup.
      • ldoughty 6y ago
        Once you're a customer, your less likely to leave. So the goal is too attract new customers.. which is best done by the new hot show, not season 2 of the last hot show. So little incentive to renew
    • mmmmmbop 6y ago
      This is a really insightful take that I feel most other commenters miss. The intuitive metric of views is not what is good for Netflix's bottom line, quite the opposite. The best customer for Netflix is the one who stays subscribed but never uses it. I believe the reason most people miss this is that for traditional networks, more viewers are strictly better; more viewers result in more ad revenue, and the marginal cost of an additional viewer is zero. For Netflix however, this is inversed: an additional viewer does not add any revenue (assuming they were already subscribed), but still adds cost. The economic model of Netflix seems to be at odds with user interests.
• parineum 6y ago
  A lot of the shows they've cancelled just weren't that good, even the ones I watched. They hold up 3 shows as an example, Stranger Things, Game of Thrones and Schitt's Creek. The first two were smash hits after season 1. Schitt's Creek was a really good show from the start but it wasn't well known until later seasons. It didn't "hit it's stride" it built up it's audience over time. The quality was always there. The shows Netflix is cancelling aren't even close in quality.
• jpz 6y ago
  Sad that the Dark Crystal was cancelled - didn't know that. It did look awfully expensive to produce though, and it was not kid friendly at all (all that sucking the soul out of cute little puppets would scare the crap out of my young nieces and nephews!)
  • TulliusCicero 6y ago
    I'm the target demographic for Dark Crystal as I read a ton of fantasy, but I watched one episode and had no real desire to continue on. It was just kinda boring. I subscribe to r/fantasy and this is a fairly common opinion there as well. In comparison, I can't say for sure that The Witcher series is super high quality, but it managed to be pretty exciting and I enjoyed it for that.
• bashtoni 6y ago
  That's a very American perspective. In the UK a series is usually only 6 episodes and few shows last more than two or three series. Compare the original UK version of the Office and its American facsimile and I think you'll see it's much better to go out on a high rather than drag on endlessly. If the Simpsons had ended after a couple of seasons it would have been one of the best shows ever, instead the brain dead drivel they churn out for it now just continually diminishes its early greatness.
  • skohan 6y ago
    Yes, but UK series are normally tied up neatly at the end and not left unresolved. If Netflix did the same, I doubt people would have a problem with it. edit: it's also purely a matter of opinion, but I got a lot more pure enjoyment from the US version of the Office than the UK one. They had more time to develop the characters and figure out what was truly funny about the show. Sure it devolved into sentimental fan service in the last few seasons, but at it's peak I was laughing way harder at the American version than I ever did for the British one.
  • DanBC 6y ago
    But in the UK everyone knows that it's only going to be 3 series at 6 episodes each, and so that's how the show is written. The viewer gets a satisfying arc. Netflix just pulls the plug. This means you get a weird kludged together final episode to try to pull stuff together or they just leave it and there's no resolution for a lot of stuff. I do agree that many of these shows would be better if they were written in the UK style. A lot of US shows now just feel woolly as they meander through the plot.
    • ianai 6y ago
      Netflix hasn’t met the equilibrium the same way yet.
    • hef19898 6y ago
      This way of writing, at least the overall arc, really shows. Ideally, writers know when to stop. The Revenge had such an ending, it was Season 3 if I remember well, before it turned into yet another soap opera. Babylon 5 on the other hand was a great example of having the whole 5 seasons basically written before they started production.
• legerdemain 6y ago
  This is a bit of a left-field comment, but... don't episodic TV shows have a lot of the same downsides as SaaS solutions? You want indefinite entertainment that you'll be happy with season after season after season, but the cost is an eternity of risk that the network will cancel the show and you'll never find out how it ends. The difference is that I want Photoshop to run forever, but I'm not as sure I want Walter White to get an exotic new cancer every twelve months. I don't watch shows on my own. I know they satisfy the urge to turn on the TV and just have something on, and I think that urge is mind-rotting. If I have to watch something, why not a movie? If I don't have the energy to pay attention for 90 minutes, why idly kill time watching anything at all? Or what about short films? That's a whole neglected format. They have Oscars and a dedicated video network for them.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • RHSeeger 6y ago
    > If I don't have the energy to pay attention for 90 minutes, why idly kill time watching anything at all? I don't even understand the point of this question. Why is 90 minutes more worthy than 48 minutes? At the end of the day, I have a little bit of time to relax. I generally do so by watching one episode of <whatever series the wife and I enjoy atm>. What is it you think about a 90 minute movie makes it more worthy, that anything less than it isn't worth doing at all?
  • kleinsch 6y ago
    It’s about time invested to find something you’ll like. If I watch a new movie every night, I have to go do the work to find a movie to watch. If I watch short films for 90 mins, I have to do that 5-6x/night. If I watch a series, I find a new one once a month.
• deleted 6y ago
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• o_class_star 6y ago
  Bean counters shit up everything. This started in traditional publishing in the 1990s and it's responsible for the oppressive mediocrity of the "high literature" scene in the US. Money people never, ever know their place. They don't understand that culture is more important than they are, and it shows. It started with the chain bookstores. Used to be, getting in was the hard part, but once a writer got published, he stayed published. His editor would keep supporting his books until he broke out. Chain bookstores wrecked this. They'd pull an author's numbers, see that the first book was a flop, and pass on the second. They also introduced the 8-week rotation, which meant that reader word of mouth (a slower process) got disenfranchised, forcing publishers to pick winners (lead titles) and losers before the books were even launched. This changed the incentive structure. Instead of having to get one person, who knew literature, to believe in his work, an author has to convince a whole committee of people. If the editor can't sell the book to the money people, it gets no marketing or publicity and it dies. Then there are the literary agents, who don't even read 99 percent of the work sent to them. That's done by unpaid college-age interns. So, instead of writing a book readers will love, your focus becomes writing a book that people will think their bosses like. It's a totally different game. I'm not surprised this is happening to Netflix. We tend to have a pro-data bias in technology. We don't realize that when the money people get their hands on data, that unless we are extremely editorial in the context in which they interpret and use that data, it's going to be a disaster. They don't have altruistic motives and they don't work nearly as hard as we do to understand complexity-- it's best to think of them as a different species.
  • skohan 6y ago
    Yes "data driven" does not always lead to what's best for the consumer. From what I understand, Netflix' decision model is heavily based on how many users watch the first X minutes of a season in the first few days that it's up. Essentially if the show isn't a hit immediately after release, it won't be renewed, and the threshold required to renew goes up exponentially every season, so essentially a show has to be a runaway hit in order to survive past the second season. I'm sure this is a data-driven decision, and I guess it shows that novelty is probably what drives people to the platform and gets new subscribers. It makes intuitive sense: with most forms of media the largest number of people will give something a try when it's new, and aside from very rare exceptions the viewer base will settle in to a much lower number of "true fans". So it makes sense in the short term from a business perspective, and they have way more data than I do from my armchair, but I wonder if they are adequately assessing the risk of this decision model. People get deeply emotionally attached to media, and it's a strong negative when a series you love is cancelled, so this could negatively affect their brand over time. And that's not something which is so easy to design KPI's around as new subscriber numbers. I suspect Netflix would have to see increased churn due to pressure from competitors to see more serious attention paid to loyalty and retention.
• mszcz 6y ago
  I'm afraid that this behaviour in general, not just related to Netflix, is doing the industry much harm. My own experience is that recently I just don't want to get into new shows, at all. The story goes - I start to watch a show, I grow to like it, get all emotionally invested, the show gets cancelled halfway and I'm left out in the cold, dick in my hand, no satisfying end to a story arc, nothing. Most recent example is Counterpart which was (imo) phenomenal but got the axe after two seasons. I'm not expecting the shows to run in perpetuity, just for them to run their course, tell their story. Great shows aren't great because they last a long time.
  • ajnin 6y ago
    Yes. I suspect a large part of why so many shows fail according to Netflix is that people have already been bitten once or more by cancelled shows and they'll now wait for a few seasons to see if the show is rolling before watching. It's a downward spiral and either it keeps on until Netflix's demise, or they break out of it by committing on their shows.
• op03 6y ago
  Content has become like the toothpaste aisle - https://www.metropolismag.com/uncategorized/the-toothpaste-aisle/ https://www.metropolismag.com/uncategorized/the-toothpaste-a... And the toothpaste aisle wars, as the link explains well, usually end with consolidation around 2 players. Given that Netflix has racked up quite a bit of debt to dominate the aisle, and now serious cash rich competitors like Disney, Apple (and lets throw in Amazon) enter the scene, does it really matters what moves Netflix makes? Is Netflix story done? Do Disney and Amazon end up dominating the aisle in a couple years? But this story feels slightly different than the tooth paste story. There is that scene in GoT where the knight stands protecting a big secret. Challengers arrive. The knight knows this is going to be a fight to the death, as the secret is that important. And he says, "Now it begins". And the challenger replies "No now it ends". What matters is neither the knight or the challenger but the secret.
  • skohan 6y ago
    I'm not sure if the analogy lands. Toothpaste is all about branding/packaging because there's essentially no difference in terms of what's inside the tube. Media is almost the opposite: the quality of content actually matters quite a lot to the consumer. That's not to say Netflix won't be out-competed by bigger players, but media creation is probably more correlated with organizational competence, and less correlated with pure spending power than many other industries.
    • Semaphor 6y ago
      > because there's essentially no difference in terms of what's inside the tube At the risk of creating a tangent, but I disagree. I actually pay extra for Sensodyne Some-specific-subbrand-here because I like the taste the best: Barely minty, barely sweet. For me the most important part about toothpaste is the taste.
      • skohan 6y ago
        Have you done a blind taste-test? Research has shown that a lot of our perceptions around the experience of a product can be influenced by presentation and branding.
• me_me_me 6y ago
  What Glow was cancelled? I can see why they would have low viewership for OA, its unusual and bit disturbing at times. But Glow?? It was high quality soap opera about low quality wrestling soap opera. Maybe netflix is not to blame but the people who want Stranger things 3 or 4
  • klmadfejno 6y ago
    Yep. If wikipedia page views are a good proxy, glow ranks even worse than OA. Haven't watched either show personally https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2015-07-01&end=2020-10-13&pages=The_OA|Stranger_Things|GLOW_(TV_series) https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&pl...
    • me_me_me 6y ago
      That is surprising but hard to argue.
• ReptileMan 6y ago
  Isn't the problem with shows being so insanely expensive to produce? Everything lately is very polished with extremely high production values. We have/d this problem with AAA games in the industry. Art and asset budgets slurping the whole available resources. If creators want to have long term deals they should probably learn to stretch a dollar a bit more.
  • tobias3 6y ago
    They canceled "Teenage Bounty Hunters" which didn't look expensive (no idea if it was). It was a bit uneven but had good, witty writing. IMO could have hit its stride in following seasons and become a cult series.
    • nickthegreek 6y ago
      oh man they canceled it? This was one of my favorite covid finds!
    • kgwgk 6y ago
      I read "Teenage Booty Hunters", given the recent controversy about "cuties" it didn't seem so unlikely...
• rayrag 6y ago
  That's why I prefer watch anthologies like Fargo or True Detective. Each season tells a different story but it has common things (setting, vibe, etc.) with previous one and I know more or less what to expect. And if I want to skip let's say S02 I can watch S03 witout any problems.
• Gys 6y ago
  > Netflix won't release viewership numbers, but it's clear its strategy is prioritizing quantity over quality That is very subjective. I watch netflix and most shows mentioned in this article seem what he/she calls ‘quantity’ to me: from the first moment clear that there will no ending whatsoever
• rkangel 6y ago
  This is an interesting complaint in contrast to films. The normal complaint with films is that there is never any new IP, it's just sequel after sequel. Cutting TV shows short so they don't get to conclude is obviously a pain for fans, but continually having new interesting TV is no bad thing.
• IshKebab 6y ago
  > "Game of Thrones" wasn't an overnight phenomenon Uhm, it pretty much was. Season 1 was hugely popular.
  • mvanbaak 6y ago
    Not when it was first aired. It took some time to become popular.
• bryanlarsen 6y ago
  If the OA and Glow have such dedicated fans, can't another network pick up the show for an instant boost in subscribers? If the contract doesn't allow it, show creators should make sure subsequent contracts do.
  • laken 6y ago
    My understanding is that the current Netflix contract generally includes a clause preventing other streaming services from picking it up, leaving to only allowing network TV to buy rights. That's how One Day at a Time got saved, PopTV which is owned by CBS, so technically network, managed to buy the rights. However they aren't allowed to add it to CBS All Access like they do other Pop shows. Doesn't help that the Netflix demographic, _especially_ for shows with large fandoms, don't generally use network TV.
• the_other 6y ago
  Optimising for attention, not art.
• klmadfejno 6y ago
  I don't agree with the article's premise at all. I think it's very rare that shows get better with age. Almost all shows get significantly worse. It cites Game of Thrones as something that got better. Really? Game of Thrones got frustratingly stupid in later seasons. The first few were far superior and the author's comment seems to be around the difficulty of shooting the pilot which is a tangential issue altogether. I haven't seen many of these cancelled titles. I do recall some complaints around Altered Carbon being killed this year. If that's representative, I'm going to guess that a lot of these shows are just bad...
  • speeder 6y ago
    The article didn't say the shows got better. It said that shows sometimes, do not get traction immediately. I suspect that might been the case with "The OA" for example. I watched first season only because my wife wanted it, and to me it was just some weird "mindbending newage" stuff. But second season the show went into a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, and started to have interesting mysteries, characters, better plot, and give impression that something was going on after all. SPOILER: first season the show implies the main character maybe, maybe not, is some kind of spiritual entity. second season is clearer in the fact that the main character actually is a person that can travel between dimensions, and the finale make clear the show will be about the protagonists and antagonists chasing each other across dimensions. A "dimension chase" plot sounds much more interesting than "maybe I am an angel" plot. So when the show finally had the chance to bring in a wider audience, it got killed.
    • klmadfejno 6y ago
      The second season garnered less interest than the first though. How would you run the business if that was the case?
  • mvanbaak 6y ago
    Yes, the beginning of GoT is best, but still it took some time to become popular. That's the point they are trying to make. Not that later seasons are better.
• andybak 6y ago
  Just like with the resentment over Google shuttering things - this is a classic case of ignorning second order effects. Yes - not enough people are watching to justify the cost. But cancellation has a whole raft of hidden costs: 1. Reluctance of viewers to invest time in the next thing that comes along 2. Users defecting to rivals out of anger 3. A negative effect among those demographics that tend to influence others the most 4. Loss of creative talent - edgy directors and actors won't want to risk your platform I'm sure there are more but they all circle around a common theme. Loss of trust.
  • dcbadacd 6y ago
    People looking at data often ignore that every user uses a specific subset of the total subset of features or content. Just as a simplistic example, user set A wants content `x` and `y`, user set B wants content `y` and `z` - data shows that `y` is popular, but by removing `x` or `z` they make those users very reluctant to continue using the service. I've seen it multiple times with services I use where only the common set is kept and then people start loathing and leaving the service.
  • alltakendamned 6y ago
    1. for sure. I stopped watching anything that only has one season.
  • 542354234235 6y ago
    > I'm sure there are more but they all circle around a common theme. Loss of trust. Users failing to recommend shows on your platform to possible new users because they were canceled without a resolution. “The OA” is perfect example. Netflix won’t make another dime off that show because anyone that has seen it will adamantly steer people away and anyone that googles it and sees it was canceled on a cliffhanger will have zero interest. Shows don’t need to run forever, but they need to finish them. If that is 1 season, fine. If that is 6 seasons and a movie, great. But I’m not interested in a show that just stops airing without an ending, just like I’m not interested in reading a book where the publisher just stopped printing chapters at some random point.
    • 6y ago
• zmk_ 6y ago
  At some point Netflix will have to stop thinking about how to get 'new subscribers' and focus on how to 'keep current subscribers'. It's all great if you can recapture the interest of burnt customers with new flashy shows, but how many times can you do that before they stop Netflix subscription and go to Disney or HBO instead?
  • giancarlostoro 6y ago
    It really does amaze me they are not doing this. How you gain more subscribers is by maintaining a solid track record for Netflix originals now I typically hold off until I see that its past the 3rd season as a show. If I cancel Netflix the only way I am going back is if they stop cancelling shows. Whats worse is Netflix will be full of a graveyard of shows never finished. If the last time a show has been updated is over two years back I dont click to watch. Amazon had the better idea to plan for the long term not the short term. I hope Netflix takes a similar stand. Make your customers happy and eventually your shareholders will follow when the numbers work themselves to your favor.
• pgrote 6y ago
  When Netflix comes out with a new show I won't watch it until it gets into a third season. Learned early on the investment of time doesn't pay off as they quickly pull the shows. Unsure what the future holds for netflix as more and more IP silos are popping up and eventually they'll have to resort to their own programming in the USA to carry the load. Will that be enough versus other services having vast libraries?
  • pkroll 6y ago
    And because of how they apparently consider renewing series, your lack of initial interest makes it less likely a series will make it to season 3. That's not a fault of yours, and I'm right there with you, but it's frustrating.
  • JackFr 6y ago
    > When Netflix comes out with a new show I won't watch it until it gets into a third season. Why can't you just enjoy a one or two well done seasons? Season 1 of Barry on HBO was basically a perfect story. Season 2 wasn't terrible, but it was stretched and didn't really add to what had been a perfect capsule. Patriot on Amazon, was also a brilliantly plotted two season arc, and though I love the characters I admit to push it to another season would be to take away from it not to add.
    • 542354234235 6y ago
      The same reason I can’t just enjoy 10 chapters of a book. If a book only has 10 chapters, that’s great. But if the printer just decided that’s all the chapters they were willing to pay for and the story has no ending, that is completely unsatisfying. I love mini-series/limited series because I know the story is going to have a conclusion. I have no interest in investing in something new that will likely be axed with no ending when there is plenty of great content out there that I know does have a complete story, however long that happens to be.
    • cwhiz 6y ago
      >Why can't you just enjoy a one or two well done seasons? Not OP, but I share the opinion. For my viewing there are basically two types of shows. The first is relatively mindless entertainment. I enjoy an episode here or there but I'm not invested in the plot. I'm not watching YouTube recaps and "explainers" after the episodes, and I'm not engaged in a community where we discuss the plot and predict where things are going. Barry is a good example of that. Ted Lasso is another good example. Then there are the shows where I get invested in the plot and story. Shows where I am theorizing with my wife, watching YouTube videos on it, and discussing it online. Shows such as Westworld or Game of Thrones. There are some shows that straddle the line well, but you usually know ahead of time. Watchmen falls into that category. Single season, compelling drama, had me engaged the whole time, and it was a single season. But I knew it was going to be a single season from the start. This is the same reason I typically try not to read unfinished trilogies. Patrick Rothfuss and GRRM have ruined me.
• crowf 6y ago
  > It's also worth noting how many of the cancellations have been shows with women and people of color prominently behind the scenes or starring. "One Day at a Time," "Tuca and Bertie," "Glow," "I Am Not Okay with This," and "Everything Sucks" are just a few examples of canceled shows with both diverse characters and representation behind the lens. Maybe that has something to do with it. There is a common meme "manga, anime, Netflix adaption". The first two show the main character looking as designed, and the last show a black woman. It ends up, if you optimize for showing every race and gender rather than entertainment, I can see why the show would be cancelled.
  • treeman79 6y ago
    Some Netflix shows are over the top with political correctness. Dragon Prince is one example. Cute show, but very in your face. Old 80s sitcom Dinosaurs, ran into the same problem. Later episodes often made you feel bad. Not the best for a comedy show. You can agree with a stance, but you don’t always want it shoved down your throat. Oh look every cast member is a different race/ gender/ orientation. Oh great, but is the show any good?
  • jacobion 6y ago
    I don't fully understand this. Suppose that you remake say, Batman, with Batman as a black woman instead of a white man. Even assume that there's some nefarious political agenda forcing that decision. How does that make the show less entertaining? It seems like how good the show is would be orthogonal to that choice. And it doesn't take any more effort to have a black woman star than a white man, so it's not like that choice reduces the energy they can put into making the show good. On the other hand, if quite a few people just prefer to watch the version with a white man, that seems like it would correlate to the shows being cancelled, independently of how entertaining they are..
    • xiphias2 6y ago
      I generally don't care whether a show stars women or men, but the stories generally get more boring in subsequent seasons of a show when it gets more and more PC. Supergirl started as a nice show that was promoting female power, but at the 4th-5th season transgender and black women started to appear just becuase they are transgender and black, and men characters got dropped out of the show just because they are men even though they were very good team companions to supergirl. Also for me it's boring to hear how much women don't need men instead of seeing an interesting story. The other problem with subsequent seasons with lots of PC speech is that viewer counts drop because of the boring story line, and then of course the series gets cancelled.
• whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  Honestly really struggling to justify paying for Netflix anymore, think there has been maybe one thing I enjoyed watching on it the past 4 months and I look through the listing every single day. I also don't think the way they make shows is very smart, it's all optimized for trying to cause a binge watch in the realm of 10+ hours. I did watch the first 4 hours of that OA show and honestly the level of content felt about enough for a 90 minute movie just stretched out at a glacial pace and I just couldn't stand the navel gazing required to drag it out into a 10 hour long series.
• hevelvarik 6y ago
  Just spitballing here, but the subscription model and streaming and the increasing competition is doing this to the industry. Providers will have to increase the velocity of their output to keep up. I will guess that each of these canceled series are being placed on the catalog shelf as the raw material for movies. Netflix may be playing the long game here, sacrificing viewer ill will in the present in order to build an IP catalog that will feed the pipeline for years to come. Accordingly, since funds are limited and you can only produce n things concurrently, there is a certain sense in constantly churning out new IP. I think this theory fits with the report in the article about creators getting 9 figure contracts as their series gets ‘cancelled’
• netcan 6y ago
  I've been wondering about the "economics" of long running serials for a while. If you have a new series, all potential viewers are potential viewers. If you have a season 3, the only potential viewers are season 2 watchers. A genuinely huge show like breaking bad or GOT might break this dynamic, as people eventually catch up on old seasons and make the pool bigger. In normal circumstances though, new seasons have limited potential. They also have no upside. Season 4 is not going to be a blockbuster if 1-3 were average. Maybe it makes sense to shoot single seasons, with multiple seasons being a rare circumstance thing. Just tell a story that fits in 6-12 hours. Seems like it would be good for creativity, the opposite of cinema's recycling problem. Who says new shows are worse than new seasons. It even seems like a bolder choice to me. No guaranteed audience, but unlimited audience.
  • dwighttk 6y ago
    Maybe not a serial, but The Office took off around season 3.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • tguedes 6y ago
    When Netflix first came out with streaming, there was certainly the Netflix effect. You mention Breaking Bad, they didn't take off until they were added to Netflix, so people could catch up on the past seasons. Same thing happened with Shameless from Showtime.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    While there are examples of shows that needed some time to find their footing (S1 of ST:TNG was mostly pretty forgettable), I don't in general find the powering through season after season until the audience drops off model of TV series especially admirable. To be honest, even if the show stays strong, you start to hit the 6th and 7th season of 20x1hr seasons and I've probably lost interest. I know there are people who would be happy for their favorite shows to just keep going year after year because they're old friends but I'm not one of them.
• wodenokoto 6y ago
  > The first season was an incomplete prequel story to Jim Henson's innovative 1982 film, and it's a shame that the story will go unfinished. In this case I think it takes 2 to tango. We don't know what happened but either Netflix bought a season with (presumably) a promise of a second season if succesful, or they bought two seasons, with payment in to installations, and decided to bail halfway through. I think the first setup is the most likely and in that case the producers then decided to try and take the viewers hostage, by producing an unfinished story, in the hopes that the an outcry for more can help demand for a season 2.
• mattlondon 6y ago
  Personal opinion from a brit: US series are too long. It is a psychological thing I guess - sitting down and perusing netflix, see something you like but then realise it is 24 hour-long episodes just in the first season. It is a turn off - I can't commit upfront to that amount of time to something entirely unknown to me. Especially since in a lot of series I've watched, they often lose their way and 99 times out 100 the last 2 or 3 seasons inevitably decay into a "will-they-wont-they" thing about two characters falling in love or whatever, and the rest of the cast and whatever made the series good originally is mostly ignored. Then they're cancelled. So e.g. Lost, US Office, that 70s show and many more all went on way too long while dancing around with romance between two characters etc etc while ignoring what made the first season or two appealing. Don't get me wrong, I love binge watching something good and I am disappointed when I run out of episodes or whatever, but it is good for people to know when to end a show and leave people with good memories, rather than turning it into a death march where people are relieved to just have finished the show. Give me 8 to 10 good episodes per season, and please don't string it out for 7, 8, 9 seasons when there is only enough ideas for 2 or maybe rarely 3 seasons's worth of episodes.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    I totally agree with you. I have a friend who is entirely the opposite. She's really into Masterpiece Treater type stuff and she's constantly complaining about 5 episode seasons and series that only last a few of those seasons. >please don't string it out for 7, 8, 9 seasons Especially historically on broadcast TV, there were a lot of incentives all around to continue to milk a cash cow with a core audience who would watch it for the next 20 years given the opportunity. In addition to the networks, I'm sure many of the actors and others involved in a long-running show realize they'll probably never have as good a meal ticket again. So screw artistic vision.
  • golemotron 6y ago
    It's acclimation. Since the 70s, the BBC has produced series for a particular number of episodes and then dropped them. There are some exceptions, like Doctor Who, but that has been the practice. In the US, historically, we just keep running until the ratings tell us to quit.
  • 6y ago
• rubyn00bie 6y ago
  Netflix is sowing its own demise through shitty content and the worst fucking content discovery system ever. First Netflix UI is anti-consumer and regularly hides things or makes them difficult/impossible to find. Worst algorithm driven interface after Amazon. It’s truly awful for discovery as you can’t ever be sure what you’re seeing is all that’s available. I fucking hate it. This wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t grade shows success on their initial views... but they do. So things are hard to discover so I don’t watch them immediately or can’t find them again if I wait a week or two. I have stopped watching any and all Netflix originals because they will be judiciously cancelled save animated titles because it seems cheap enough for them to produce or something like the Witcher where they hopefully can’t fuck it up so badly it gets canceled before a decent run. Then again I wait and save the last few episodes shows I really like instead of binging them but that only hurts them more and hastens their cancellations. So then I don’t watch them, this too hastens their cancellations. So when watching Netflix shows you have two options: 1.) Is the show epically well funded AND staring big name actors from cinema? Okay, maybe won’t be canceled. E.g. the Witcher. 2.) Is the show so cheap to make they’ll do it just because they need to add content? E.g. Castlevania IMHO, Netflix is willfully creating the rope from which it will hang itself.
  • raizinho 6y ago
    > First Netflix UI is anti-consumer and regularly hides things or makes them difficult/impossible to find. Your working hypothesis is that Netflix is willfully trying to keep people from spending more their platform?
    • pembrook 6y ago
      The reason behind this is widely known. If you could easily scroll through their entire catalog as a list, it'd feel kinda like walking through a small, underwhelming Blockbuster. The whole point of the UI is to give you this un-ending sense of abundance, ie. "You like 1980s action comedies? Scroll through 20 of them here! Like 1990s female-driven drama? Here's 10 we picked for you! Keep scrolling! We have everything!" In reality, their catalog (while having about 10,000 items) is quite limited in terms of big name films and TV shows you'd recognize.
• dougmwne 6y ago
  I much prefer single season series or series that weren't confident in their renewals. The writing is just completely different. A single series season can tell a coherent story that makes real progress and drives it's characters to change and resolution. It's satisfying in the way that watching LOTR extended edition can be. A series planning on being on the air forever can start with a clever premise, meander on and on in no rush to get anywhere. It endlessly teases to reveal secrets, change characters, or resolve plot. But the princess is always in another castle.
• sohamsankaran 6y ago
  Netflix gained ground in original television by funding bold new stuff that nobody else would (Orange Is The New Black, BoJack). They've now becomes slaves to their data despite the fact that the signals they rely on are hopelessly confounded. It's possible that they've hit upon the right strategy, but I both suspect and hope that isn't true.
• KingOfCoders 6y ago
  Hasn't this been clear since the Amazon leaks some years back? Each season needs to attract new subscribers compared to something ad-driven where a season needs to have viewers.
  • rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    I haven't heard about these Amazon leaks. Any links to share?
• darkerside 6y ago
  I think it's clear that the problem isn't cancelling TV shows, it's that Netflix cancels them unexpectedly. I'd prefer a model where, after one season, a number of seasons is determined with input from executives, writers, cast and crew. Then everybody marches in lockstep towards a satisfying conclusion at that target. You don't end up with the 8 season long show that drags on, no end in sight. And you don't have a cliffhanger series ending. Can someone run this up the flag at Netflix please?
• JackFr 6y ago
  TFA takes as its hypothesis that Netfix don't know what their doing, that is they are somehow missing out on growing or retaining their audience by cancelling shows after one or two seasons. Obviously Netflix isn't going to act against their own interest, so they must believe the marginal cost of producing new seasons must be greater than the marginal revenue attributable to these new seasons. What makes Netflix (and all streamers) different than the traditional networks is that their viewership data is orders of magnitude better. They know who watches, how quickly, where, when, which series are abandoned by viewers, which episodes are abandoned by viewers, how series X performed with people who binged series Y. I imagine they aren't just saying that series X didn't have a big enough audience, they are figuring based on their machine learning models, series X could not build a large enough audience to justify the production costs. That the art suffers for the bottom line, while tragic, is nothing new.
  • dade_ 6y ago
    They cancel a series after the second season to avoid paying exorbitant salaries to the cast and director. I cancelled my Netflix once I understood what they are up to. I finally get to know the characters in the second season, and it's over.
  • merrywhether 6y ago
    For all their data, they still can’t measure things like eroding sentiment, word of mouth that doesn’t happen, etc. I used to recommend Netflix, now I feel mostly meh about it. That is the long term road to cancellation at the personal level and irrelevance/bankruptcy if it happens at large scale.
    • JackFr 6y ago
      That is a good point - that is, because of the fallacy of composition, what is financially prudent for each individual show, as a strategy for all new production, slowly erodes the platform. I'm not sure that's proven but it certainly should be accounted for.
• someonehere 6y ago
  I think one thing most of these comments overlook (at least in my eyes) is that there’s too much to choose from. I have Netflix but rarely watch it. My SO is more into Netflix. But for someone like me who’s a bit older, I open Netflix and am overwhelmed with the amount of shows on the screen. It’s way too much for me to figure out what I should watch. Recommendations, trending, etc.. where do I begin watching a show? I think what I’m getting at is Netflix is just putting original content on their platform to see what sticks, however I don’t know what they want me to watch? How do I decide what to watch because obviously there’s a lot to offer. This is just how I see it. The app sits idle on my TV for me and I hardly use it.
• edm0nd 6y ago
  RIP season 2 of The Dark Crystal. Netflix axed it. I thought it was a brilliant revamp and collaboration in between Netflix and the Henson group. It even won an Emmy.
• mchusma 6y ago
  I think length is not the right issue IMO. Creatively, dramas should have a clear story to tell. If that is 1 hour, or 100 hours, that is ok. But stopping unexpectedly halfway through is bad. An easy way for netflix to help is to say "every story on Netflix has an ending." Which has marketing value and still allows creative freedom, and actually would appeal to creators more. In practice, this means "you can't tease a next season that has not been approved yet" OR "you can end on a cliffhanger and is show is authorized for a 1 hour wrap up episode of the next season is cancelled".
• racl101 6y ago
  Netflix is becoming a graveyard of junk shows. This is why, for the most part, I don't start watching streaming service exclusives until their sophomore season is complete and they haven't been cancelled. Of course there are few exceptions like Cobra Kai or The Mandalorian where it's evident that the concept is pretty solid and that the show is bonafide hit from the first 10 minutes. But yeah, like for every Netflix hit there's like 10 or more less than promising shows. It's really becoming a graveyard. And when you realize that you can't even give them a shot because you know that even if they're decent there won't be any resolution or closure in the form of a series ending then it makes you not wanna even start to watch them. Seriously, they should fund less shows but really make sure they're quality shows. They should act like HBO in short.
  • gonzo41 6y ago
    I totally agree with you. I feel as if netflix doesn't press their writers and the creatives enough to develop a full arc for a story. It seems like every shows' got an idea. And then once they get funding they start thinking through the details. I know it would be a lot of ask and probably expensive but people write novels all the time. Netflix could break the mold by looking for stories that fit something like 24 chapters / episodes and having a complete 'thing' at the end of it. The could then have the arc of the story to work with and just produce three seasons of content to spread the risk.
    • jarjoura 6y ago
      I don't think any platform will fund a creative project without a stated beginning, middle and end. It's just that Netflix pays upfront for the idea, so the writers and directors don't have control over when to finish the story. If they're told to space this idea out over 5 seasons and paid by the season, what else can they do except to live the dream of making original content and hope for the best?
  • klmadfejno 6y ago
    Why do people like the Mandalorian? It's really just not that good. The action sequences are very low quality. The writing is fairly mundane faux-gritty tropes. Would people like it if it didn't have the star wars backdrop? Does the star wars backdrop even make that much sense? I know this one won't bother many people but I particularly hated their depiction of the bounty hunter droid, which was orders of magnitude more competent than any other droid in the universe. Droids in star wars aren't immaculate AI like other Sci Fi. I hated that they used this as a plot point.
• sg47 6y ago
  Whoever canceled Norsemen should be fired. This is something I've decided to start saying.
• nobodyandproud 6y ago
  Like many, I subscribed to Netflix during the pandemic, and one thing the pandemic permits (especially when the cold season comes around) is binge watching. With that in mind, I was sucked into The OA and I was annoyed to find out that it was halted. ImHo, tell a complete story and then halt. A catalog & graveyard of half-completed shows will be Netflix’s undoing. Because why would I want to risk getting sucked into a story that won’t ever be completed?
• flerchin 6y ago
  They're really good with their data and analytics. They'll know if you're cancelling your subscription. I did. Otherwise all your complaining still got them at least $8.99 a month, and they saved on production costs.
• Razengan 6y ago
  I will never forgive them for cancelling The Dark Crystal :(
• neap24 6y ago
  There are a variety of bigger problems with the current TV show culture beyond getting cancelled early. Reliance on the cliffhanger, too much pandering to current events/politics, overuse of the "mystery box" plot technique, and so on. There are a few other personal gripes I have that may not be shared in this community (like, I think shows are way oversexed and have far too many grotesque and gritty elements for my taste) which have basically turned me completely off of modern television shows. For the time being, I'm watching "classics" and movies. I'm not convinced that cancelling TV shows too soon is creating a problem. The bigger problem, for me, are the above features + an over-abundance of volume of content (the ol' "Netflix will produce just about anything" criticism).
• JansjoFromIkea 6y ago
  Netflix's problem isn't cancelling shows too soon, it's an inability to make anything that endures. They've had loads of shows that won raves upon initially airing but haven't really stuck around much at all. They haven't managed to make sticky shows like Friends, the Big Bang Theory or even something more recent like Brooklyn Nine Nine that people can mindlessly rewatch over and over and they haven't managed to make top tier prestige stuff (talking Sopranos/Wire level here, they've made plenty a couple of notches below). The whole platform depends on a certain kind of novelty of the algorithm being able to churn up totally new stuff that's okay. As far as cancelling stuff goes, I get the impression Netflix moreso just doesn't renew? HBO seem to have a formula where a cancelled show will get a special to wrap things up (e.g. Looking, Hello Ladies), always thought that was pretty savvy as it probably costs quite a bit less, makes that one episode into a bit of an event for fans and leaves the overall series a lot more enticing to people in the future.
  • loxs 6y ago
    I had to look at the Wikipedia list of Netflix shows to believe you. Probably Stranger Things is one exception and maybe The Witcher will endure, though it's really questionable how much The Witcher counts as "theirs"
• arnvald 6y ago
  Netflix has this problem that, unlike its large competitors, they have only one source of income, and they have relatively little of their own content - Amazon and Apple can throw money at streaming because they make tons of money from other sources, Disney and HBO have years worth of content that people will happily go back to and watch with their kids. So I understand Netflix' situation, they keep losing licensed content so they need to keep making up for it with quantity of new shows, but damn, knowing that a show was cancelled without a proper ending is a big "no" for me when I choose which series to watch.
• m3kw9 6y ago
  By season 3 you can generally tell if the creators are trying to milk the current viewers or if they really have more cohesive story to tell. I’m sure Netflix looks at that as a negative, those type of shows burn people out and correlates with decreased viewership numbers.
• dangus 6y ago
  “Creating a problem” For who exactly? The whole article assumes that: 1. Viewers give a shit about quality 2. The article authors know more about whether a show is viable than Netfix (with its massively detailed viewership data) In reality, Netflix only cares about subscriber count, and that incentive is both obvious and intuitive. A show winning an Emmy has nothing to do with whether or not it’s profitable. I mean, see cable pre-Internet. The delusion that Netflix is something unique beyond what cable was has never been true. The only thing special about it is that there are no ads, which is not universal among the industry (do cheap Hulu, Tubi, and Pluto remind you of anything? Reminds me of cable!) Critically acclaimed shows like Stranger Things might have been important to gain mindshare, but now everyone knows what Netflix is and those expensive efforts are probably not worth it. Personally, I spend most of my TV time watching House Hunters which (a) will never win critical acclaim and (b) is about the cheapest show to produce that someone can imagine. But I don’t like watching one hour dramas that are there to be depressing and have expensive actors, sets, and special effects. I just want to veg out and watch some idiots buy the wrong house.
• pier25 6y ago
  What's the point of investing in a show very few people want to see? Netflix has all the metrics. I doubt they cancel shows just because they can. Of course there will always be some disappointed people.
• LanceH 6y ago
  The path of a series on traditional tv too often follows the path: 1. New show is popular 2. Gets renewed 3. Season 2 or 3 they decide to slow the story line and just have individual episodes where a problem pops up and is resolved with no advance of the overarching plot. 4. By seasons 4 the actors are now famous and getting too expensive to continue. Some drop out, new people come in. 5. It gets cancelled with many things unresolved.
• oregontechninja 6y ago
  I don't care if series are short so long as the wrap up and properly end the story. It's like America's version BBC, great shows that run for half a season to short.
• nicolas_t 6y ago
  I've been burned by that quite a bit, it's annoying watching a show for it to end with either a cliffhanger or some lame tacked on ending. I really enjoyed the Travelers for example but it sucked for it to end as it did. Another thing I've noticed is that I tend to not watch shows when they've just been released, especially when it's the second season of something I like. Instead, I wait until I have the time to enjoy the show but at at that point me viewing it doesn't count in the metrics Netfix uses to decide in favor of continuing the show. Right now though, I feel ambivalent about starting a new show on netflix because I don't want to be disappointed in the ending.
• nogbit 6y ago
  More mini series are needed. The UK has this in spades and executes well. They have an end written before the first episode starts. 3 episodes or 10, but not the same drivel season after season.
• crazygringo 6y ago
  This is a classic dilemma which doesn't have any clear answer. Individually, I assume Netflix has the data to back up the fact that each show should have been cancelled -- that no matter how critically acclaimed or how devoted the fanbase, the shows simply didn't have enough fanbase to justify the cost. But then in aggregate, it adds up to an unintended narrative that could prove to be harmful to the bottom line: that Netflix cancels shows. So people stop watching the first season to see if a show survives into a third... stop recommending Netflix... and it's harmful to the bottom line. The thing is, there's no obvious answer. If Netflix didn't cancel any of these shows, it would go out of business and/or not have the money to fund future (hopefully successful) ones. It's the same way with Googling canceling products: it's ridiculous and money-losing to keep around every failed product, but individually they add up to a reputation. It's a classic damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't. People love it when companies experiment and launch lots of new products/shows -- that's where innovation comes from. But then they hate it when the unsuccessful ones get cancelled, because every product/show has some set of users/viewers who love it. But I see no solution, except for companies to continue cancelling unprofitable things, and people to continue complaining about it.
  • asciimov 6y ago
    There is a solution. Netflix could say, you get 12-16 episodes to tell your story: beginning, middle, and end. If your numbers are good enough, we will give you another 12-16 episodes.
    • triceratops 6y ago
      Isn't that what they already do? It's not like they tell showurnners "Leave cliffhangers and unfinished plotlines, your renewal is pretty much a cert". Mostly they give shows 2 seasons and consider renewing after that. That's actually an improvement over network TV, where sometimes you may even be cancelled halfway through the first season.
  • mixmastamyk 6y ago
    > The thing is, there's no obvious answer. If Netflix didn't cancel any of these shows, it would go out of business and/or not have the money to fund future… Netflix isn't even remotely close to that point, they're still looking for places to drop cash by helicopter. Instead of cancelling outright, they should guarantee each production an extra half season to wrap up at a minimum. This would reverse the damage to their brand.
• projproj 6y ago
  One of the first things I do when looking at a new show to watch is try to find out if the show ends and was cancelled on a cliffhanger. Wikipedia is okay for this, but I've been wishing for a dedicated website with that info.
• bartread 6y ago
  From my point of view the problem manifests in this way: I simply don't bother to invest the time to watch new shows until it's clear that they're going to get a proper run that allows them to finish well (Breaking Bad, Justified; even Sons of Anarchy, which was a real slog for the last 3 seasons, ended well). I'm tired of investing time in shows that Netflix simply drops: The Expanse (though now thankfully picked up by Amazon), Designated Survivor, and Shooter (although that was total crap, especially after season 1) spring immediately to mind, but there have been plenty of others. I also won't bother starting to watch shows that I know Netflix have cancelled before they've concluded (e.g., Glow), because what's the point? And this is starting to severely erode the value of Netflix's library to me. Things that have worked incredibly well on Netflix are shows that tell self-contained stories within a single season, like Narcos or Fargo, or shows that tell have a self contained but are able to tell it in a longer form than feature film would allow. The canonical example of the latter for me is Godless, which is one of the best shows on TV, I think. Genuinely fantastic. And this last point leads on to another, which others have made: US TV series are too long, typically 18 - 24 episodes per season, multiple seasons, often too bloated with filler episodes, and often suffer from ridiculous over-plotting after the first few seasons, which comes off as aimless thrashing around: Prison Break (season 3 onwards: just utter nonsense), 24 (SPOILER ALERT: I mean, seriously, WTF was that Tony Almeida betrayal storyline all about in, I think, the final season - multiple sharks were jumped and I'm still pissed off about it). On the flipside UK TV series are often too short: 6 half-hour episodes is still quite typical, so you're only really getting into a show and then suddenly the season ends. With that said, for some shows this has been made to work really well: Line of Duty, or the earlier seasons of Luther. I do feel like, for many shows, a happy medium would be 10 - 12 hour long episodes. You could then afford to make a much more polished product, whilst still probably investing quite a bit less.
  • pr0zac 6y ago
    I agree with all your points but do think its important to clarify that The Expanse was originally cancelled by SyFy not Netflix before being picked up by Amazon, Netflix just had streaming rights at the time.
    • 6y ago
• at_a_remove 6y ago
  Quite a lot of hit shows just need more time to incubate than others. Most Star Trek series didn't get decent until the third season. Looking even further back, something like Cheers would have been axed almost instantly. Back when I used to give a damn about television series, I followed a lot of the inside baseball, including incidents that might lead to a series getting cancelled. Some networks were just more prone to cancellation than others. For a while, Fox was particularly eager to take a sackful of new kittens down to the creek; I recall one series didn't make four shown episodes before cancellation. The Sci-Fi Channel (later SyFy) had a particularly brutal streak for a while. It's clear that whatever any network promises at the outset, they exist in a huge tension with the actual show creators and runners (and yet more tension with the actors). All negotations should be performed with that in mind. I wonder precisely how hard an "exit clause" would be to wrangle. You know, you cancel the show, we get four or six episodes, at such and such budget, and such and such filming time, to wrap things up. Since about 2005, my television series selection is what I call the "vulture strategy:" I wait until a series is cancelled before I watched. Then I wait for the hype to die down (the carcass gets more juicy). If it is still appealing after all of that, I stick my beak in. I just cannot get invested in something that might have the lifespan of a carnival guppy that could be flushed down the toilet at the first sign of listlessness. Netflix in particular has been very clumsy in the execution of its shows lately, even once I filter out the endless annoyance of its dark UI patterns. Very "message-y;" I got a bellyful of that with the Christian types. And that's without them going and retroactively editing their old shows. Netflix is turning into my last pick when I want to look for something random to watch.
• intrasight 6y ago
  I do now prefer the "mini-series" approach. Like "Good Omens". Take a good book and turn it into a mini-series. There are so many good books about - no need to create crappy multi-season series.
• musingsole 6y ago
  Lot of media experts in here who know for a fact that Netflix's decisions are terrible for business. Don't they know about second order effects on their customer base!? I suppose it just a matter of time before they got the way of Blockbuster (you know, the corporate giant Netflix starved).
• kentlyons 6y ago
  Too soon for whom or for what? This is not explicitly stated and it seems much of the discussion is based on different assumptions. Too soon to make good shows? Too soon for you? Too soon for Netflix? All of those likely lead to different answers. It seems quite possible that optimizing for Netflix's interests might leave some dissatisfied. But it is hard to call that cancelling too soon if it lets them get to their overall objectives. An interesting question is if Netflix themselves in optimizing for the short term reward are penalizing themselves in the long term? That is much harder to know.
• dzonga 6y ago
  netflix originals are bad. like most of them super bad. they either suffer from bad writing or bad directing or both. some originals might have good actors, but nowdays you just expect netflix shit to suck. hope they invest more in writers. like actually pay writers and nurture talent. but it might be an industry symptom - writing on most shows these days sucks. hbo keeps producing good shows, hulu has some good shows, prime too. netflix nada.
• patagonia 6y ago
  It's a feature, not a bug. I'm sure that Netflix has the analytics to back up this decision. Just as we reap what we sow when it comes to social network gamification and profiteering and elections, we are seeing the results of content creation, subscription based pricing, and detailed analytics. Netflix does not endeavor to create great content. Netflix endeavors to create content to increase subscription and engagement rates. I spend more time watching the first 5 mins of some "Netflix" original and then turning it off because, unsurprisingly it's no good, than I do watching really great films. Because Netflix is just throwing spaghetti at the wall and without content curation or selective and informative promotional material, I give these new titles the benefit of the doubt and watch them. Since I watch past the first 3 mins or whatever Netlix requires for it to be considered "watched" I'm considered "engaged" and those titles go on my "watched" list then influence the algorithm and on and on. Meanwhile a couple hours goes by, more content is created, and the cycle repeats. Netflix 1 - Me 0
• lumberingjack 6y ago
  Change my mind altered carbon failed because all they did season 2 was virtue signal liberal BS I made it through three episodes I'm a former Democrat just couldn't take it virtue signaling was retarded
• CameronNemo 6y ago
  Last time I watched a new show on Netflix, I literally said to myself "I am ready to get hurt again" before hitting play. I really wish Flaked had a season 3, but I still enjoy the two seasons we got. I guess we just have to accept what we have sometimes.
• darepublic 6y ago
  Please bring back mindhunter for a new season
• bluedays 6y ago
  I watch tv shows more than pretty much anyone I know and lately I don't even bother watching a show unless it already has several seasons. So this is a terrible business decision. I mean there's a reason "binging" because a phenomenon. I'm not going to binge a show with one season. Worst news I got from this article was that The Dark Crystal got cancelled. I was looking forward to more shows so I could check it out, guess I never will now.
• throwaway_dcnt 6y ago
  Maybe this is a game of poker. They cancel some shows as a bluff to next generation of creators that they should avoid asking for large raises for their shows past 2nd season.
• jedberg 6y ago
  Netflix is not very good at seeing things that don't show up in the data. If it can't be A/B tested, they are fairly blind to it. There is no good way to A/B test how cancellations affect signups. You can't release new seasons of a show to just some customers in a region. And if you only release new seasons in some regions, there is no way to know if the effect was because of local cultural reasons. Until there is a large movement of people who make a lot of noise about not signing up for Netflix specifically because of their reputation for cancellation, this probably won't change. And until then, ironically, this reputation will only make the problem worse. People will not watch a new show until they know it isn't cancelled, leading to even more cancellations because of low viewership.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > There is no good way to A/B test how cancellations affect signups. Not really an A/B test, but you can certainly from internal data see how individual viewership of cancelled shows (or even break it down to shows cancelled with and without closure, if you take the effort to have someone code shows for that) correlates with downstream retention. For the reputational stuff, I'd be very surprised if they are not using one or more of the consumer survey services to track that and the role decisions like cancelling series in general or in particular play into it.
  • magicalhippo 6y ago
    > Netflix is not very good at seeing things that don't show up in the data. This reminds me of Battlefield 3. The designers of Battlefield 3 used data mining a lot to drive their decisions, particularly around multiplayer weapon balance. For a long time the competitive players said there was a balance issue with the M16, but the designers were adamant there was no issue because they didn't see any particular issue in the data. The M16 was used a bit more than the others, but it was also the weapon everyone started with and had unlocked. So they thought everything was fine. Then, after quite a while, someone made a video clearly highlighting the issue. And then the designers finally took a closer look and found that gosh darn, there was a bug in the weapon stats. The M16 did not get less inaccurate when you got hit, unlike all the other weapons. So if you equipped a M16 you were significantly more likely to successfully return fire, compared to the other weapons. Like an order of magnitude. Which significantly increased the chance of surviving the firefight if you were a moderately competent player. Of course the competitive folks had figured this out quickly and predominantly used the M16, but they hardly made a blip as a percentage of the total player base so it didn't really show up in the stats.
• screye 6y ago
  There isn't a single TV show that can't tell a compelling story in 26 hr-long episodes (~2 seasons) Sure, some shows truly shine with time, but if your show is likely to get cancelled, then you should start tying off plot threads for the current arc. A great example is the Boys. Each season ends with them tying off the main arc, and an expose that sets up for the next season. Season 2's conclusion felt satisfactory, while still keeping me excited for what's to come. The 1st season of Witcher does this really well too. Netflix's problem is the same one as network TV. It is just far more evident with Netflix because the binge format is central to it. When the entire show is enjoyed in a very small time span, the ending affects your perception of the show more strongly than if the show was enjoyed over years on broadcast TV. A similar phenomenon is visible with movies too, where a bad ending can often come to define the entire movie. I'm surprised that TV contracts haven't become more sophisticated and diverse with time. How about sign a 3 season contract with no extensions or mandate arc conclusions for shows whose fate is up in the air? Maybe create a final season as a low-budget short, allowing show runners to provide a conclusion when axed. I'm no expert on the matter, but the complete lack of new ideas in the domain is surprising, given the degree to which Netflix has revolutionized the rest of the distribution business.
• simonw 6y ago
  I'm still heart-broken about Santa Clarita Diet. First season was good, second and third seasons were absolutely brilliant. And then it was cancelled on a cliff-hangar.
  • vanpythonista 6y ago
    The cancellations of Santa Clarita Diet and One Day at a Time were completely unwarranted in my opinion.
• echelon 6y ago
  I've been an amateur filmmaker for awhile - it's one of my biggest hobbies. I'm working on a startup in the streaming space that I think innovates in a competitive way. I'm still working out the kinks for our first "film", and I'm going to approach investors once we've released it. I think it's pretty novel and not something these companies will touch before it becomes a threat. But it very much should put fear into them as it changes the business. Are there any of you that are extremely passionate about film, emotion, story, character, setting, aesthetic? Do you think the current slate of productions by Netflix and Disney mostly suck? Do you like Miyazaki? If that speaks to you we should get in touch at some point. Leave me a comment and I'll reach out when I'm ready. As "proof" I'm not just blowing steam, my last big project (not a startup): https://vo.codes https://vo.codes
• yepthatsreality 6y ago
  Part of the issue is that people pay for an algorithmic recommendation streaming service. Prior to Netflix streaming offering, people searched and chose movies to watch in the mail based off recommendations from their social circles. When there is no discovery option, Netflix is forced to "guess" what it's customers want rather than know. They've completely removed the social aspect of enjoying shows to the point where people say "have you seen x?" "yes" and that's the end of the conversation.
• jarjoura 6y ago
  The problem isn't that Netflix cancels shows after 1 or 2 seasons. It's that they insist on injecting mystery box plotlines and ending seasons without resolving some of them. They do this to keep you bingeing, but the end result is a lot of annoyed fans who put in the time and invest in the show without any resolution. Instead of they shift to a one-and-done model with room for more seasons, then it wouldn't matter. Now Netflix has a vast library of content, yay for them, but full of half unfinished stories. Imagine going to the library with the back half of the books missing. Would you want to read the first half of the book?
• fullshark 6y ago
  A lot of these cancellations are due to COVID right? Basically that was a hard reset on TV production, seems odd the article doesn't mention that till the end and only as a factor re: future cancellations.
• deleted 6y ago
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• coryfklein 6y ago
  Could be that Netflix is strategically cancelling several shows in a single wave. In the same way that a company will do a single large lay-off all at once rather than several demoralizing smaller ones.
• AzzieElbab 6y ago
  Every time I read something about Netflix, my first thought is - fk! I am still paying for it
• asimpletune 6y ago
  Am I the only person here that loved the OA?
• kelvin0 6y ago
  "Statements from executives have described the cancellations as the result of a cost analysis that tells Netflix a longer-running show won't lead to new subscribers." How about the cost analysis of loosing current subscribers?
• sequoia 6y ago
  Plenty of shows can be good with just one or two seasons, and more is worse. Freaks & Geeks: 1 season, amazing. Ditto UK The Office. Fleabag: 2 short seasons, amazing. The OA: AMAZING first season with a complete coherent ending, then they had to make a bizarre, scattershot second season. Ditto Killing Eve (how many damn times can she get killed lol). Downton Abbey: PLANNED for 3 seasons (pre, during, & post wwI) but it was so popular they just rambled on for ages until it looked like the scripts were being pulled directly from tumblr ("beloved character came back from america! for a wedding episode! plus: PUPPIES!!" literally). So I don't totally get the "cancelled too soon" argument. The OA should have not run to even 2 seasons. There's a trend of not producing art or even something original, but producing "content." For example someone asked me if The Mandalorian is good. "It's star wars Content" I replied. "If you like star wars, and want Content, you'll like it." Is the plot novel? Is it original or compelling? No, but boy it's fun to see yoda puppet and more Content from the SW universe you've come to know and love! A lot of these series may have run their creative course & while megafans want more "Content" it's the same thing as something being cancelled too soon, and most people aren't megafans.
  • albacur 6y ago
    > Freaks & Geeks: 1 season, amazing. Ditto UK The Office. Do I have news for you...
  • raiyu 6y ago
    I think Showtime should have followed this. Usually the first season is spectacular, and it's almost as if the writers are surprised it is renewed, but they wasted their best material on season 1. Weeds Season 1 was amazing, the rest not so much. Dexter, season 1 should have just been a single season, sooo good, after a while you wonder how many serial killers reside in Florida. Billions, season 1 amazing, it hasn't been too bad after, but after a while it just starts to seem forced.
    • unclenoriega 6y ago
      Showtime seems like the worst for this. Maybe Netflix is becoming the anti-Showtime. I've joked before that I wish I could pay half price for a Showtime subscription that only had the first half of each series.
• galkk 6y ago
  It's certainly a skill to drop hints of existence of racism and sexism into everything. It's especially funny in case of Netflix, the company that notoriously pushes it's agenda into almost every show. > It's also worth noting how many of the cancellations have been shows with women and people of color prominently behind the scenes or starring.
• willchang 6y ago
  There's a good chance Netflix is behaving rationally. Shows are like startups. The payoff is a very skewed distribution, i.e. median and mean are vastly different. After one season, I'd argue you have a pretty good estimate of the earning potential for a show. Maybe you're even off by a factor of two or three, but since the goal is to find a show with 10x or 100x the viewership, you're better off canceling a show with median success. Actually it's probably a lot easier to predict the payoff for a show after one year, than for a startup. Startups can take multiple years to find product-market fit; shows rarely pivot dramatically. [Update: I got the facts wrong with the following example, as someone nicely pointed out below! I think the general principle still stands.] Tuca & Bertie, for example, was canceled after one season, but the same people went on to make Bojack Horseman, which was a much bigger hit. Bojack would not have happened if Tuca were renewed, and Tuca would never have gotten as popular as Bojack.
  • rideontime 6y ago
    You've got your timeline reversed, Bojack predated Tuca & Bertie by years.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • CameronNemo 6y ago
      Plus Tuca & Bertie is the best show Netflix has ever produced.
• webmaven 6y ago
  Hmm. Netflix may be shooting themselves in the foot a bit here, but frankly I much prefer "too many series are cancelled before hitting their stride" where the shortsighted decision is being made based only on viewership and budget, than the previous situation where cancelled shows never developed an audience due to being broadcast in a bad time slot, or because they were repeatedly bumped from their time slot[0] (eg. by sporting events going into overtime) with missed episodes never repeated, or by episodes being shown out of order[1]. At least now shows are cancelled based on their intrinsic viewership. Short-sighted cancelations are still an unfortunate problem, but this is still a huge improvement over the previous status quo. A bit more concerning to me is that Netflix's "throw the spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks" approach is starting to lean a bit more in the direction of "same but different" clones of other shows with a twist to the setup, even for shows based on existing properties. But, so it goes. [0] eg. Dark Skies [1] eg. Firefly, where the pilot wasn't broadcast until the end of the season.
• tijuco2 6y ago
  *it's clear its strategy is prioritizing quantity over quality perfect! They a launching a movie per month with a famous actor and shallow stories. I think Netflix and Google make a good parallel. Google is infamous for cancelling products that many people use too, like the beloved Google Reader.
• bretthowell 6y ago
  Slow burn of this topic, this deeper analysis looked at Netflix’s impact on Hollywood too. This[1] is from 2019: “[Netflix] now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third ... don’t do much...” ^1 https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-slow-death-of-hollywood https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-slow-death-of-hollywo...
  • mszcz 6y ago
    Yeah, I wonder when they'll start looking into what not doing a third season does to getting rid of subscribers...
  • Animats 6y ago
    If producers know that up front, then the story line should be planned accordingly.
• carabiner 6y ago
  HBO Westworld... Season 1 incredible, magical. Season 2 unraveled but was still interesting. Season 3 was just boring, nothing.
  • LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    Nope. Evan Rachel Wood from behind on a cyberbike. Priceless! :)
• deleted 6y ago
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• kazagistar 6y ago
  I watch anime, and its great. Most shows only ever get one season. When they get more, its usually with a hiatus between seasons these days. The quality of US TV shows has finally risen in recent times, but they still haven't learned the value of a short run that ends permanently.
• alan_n 6y ago
  I hate when they cancel lesser known shows that maybe never had a wide audience to begin with (Dark Crystal, Dirk Gently, etc). Like why did they even bother to make the shows??? They didn't even really give them a chance. I only just found out they had made Dirk Gently, which has so far been great, but it really bums me out that it might end badly. I'm only watching it because I'm already a fan.
• mcguire 6y ago
  But what about all those wonderful Chinese and Korean movies and shows??!?
• VoxPelli 6y ago
  I guess this is just Netflix trying to be the Google of streaming services?
• theonlybutlet 6y ago
  I can't stand it when a show carries on for two long. If it seems like a show will carry on past season 1 or 2 I won't watch it.
• dannykwells 6y ago
  Compare Netflix to HBO, and you'll instantly see the difference in how they are run. Netflix prioritizes algorithmic made content, HBO artist-driven content. Not coincidentally, HBO is much better at committing to shows long term. Even with a fraction of the content, I would take HBO over Netflix any time.
• LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  Hm. Late to the party, nevertheless I can't resist to give my two cents to the phenomenon which is btw. not even new, or limited to Netflix. First I didn't grow up with much TV, because there were many more interesting things to do as a child, like playing in the forest. Later on I haven't been a fan either, and finally discarded my TV in 1996 and went into cinema instead. But again, not that much. For a time I substituted that with a Hauppauge WinTV in one of my PCI-slots, and had the surreal experience to watch the second plane crash into the Twin Towers in NYC live on CNN after IRC exploded with: "TURN ON CNN NOW!1!!". Removed the card maybe a few weeks after that, because TV became toxic then, as in News are bad for you, and wasn't worth the energy anymore. Did a strict media diet for a few years then, until I couldn't resist because of Battlestar Galactica, and got lost into Lost :) From then on I partially catched up, but still very selective. Anyways, what follows is an incomplete list of things which either never made it further than the pilot, or got canceled mid-season, or could have been longer IMO. Earliest thing which comes to mind are several attempts from Gene Roddenberry with [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_II_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_II_(film) in 1973 followed by [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_(film) in 74 and [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_New_World_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_New_World_(film) in 75 Similar for [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(TV_series) around the same time. Then the reimagined [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(2008_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(2008_TV_series) where I can recommend the original https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(1975_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(1975_TV_series) if you are into realistic Non-Zombie Post-Apocalypse stuff and can get it in good quality. [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Train_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Train_(TV_series) from 1999 What are they going to do after? How? Where? WTF? [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(2006_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(2006_TV_series) This was one of the most annoying cancelings mid-season! [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcasts_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcasts_(TV_series) from 2011 could have been more. [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_(TV_series) also from 2011 could have been much more. [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_(TV_series) 2011 [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Skies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Skies 2011 [12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defiance_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defiance_(TV_series) 2013 [13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewind_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewind_(2013_film) Never made it into a series. WHY? [14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries) 2015 [15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Pines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Pines 2015 [16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied 2015-2017 This one is special and maybe didn't get much attention because politically incorrect with the ongoing Crimean ... how to put it, occupation, crisis? Anyways, very watchable! (I'm delighted to discover there is a third season out there now. Yay!) [17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_(TV_series) 2016-2018 How do the aliens look? I mean WTF? What a let-down :( [18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strain_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strain_(TV_series) 2014-2017 Not really canceled, but could have been more. [19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Sun 2018 Could have been so much more... Maybe it's because budgets of production companies have been tighter since the [20] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80... ? Also more and more competition with more and more immersive games, sometimes rendered so photorealistic that players just dive in to explore the gameworld by sightseeing, and have fun interacting with things like in an old point-and-click adventure, just seriously upgraded and optionally in groups, networked :)
• squarefoot 6y ago
  The reason so many US series are cancelled, and not just Netflix ones, is simply that there are too many of them. Producers discovered that most series attracts more viewers during their first episodes, then numbers start either exploding if the series is deemed to become a huge success, or slowly fading year after year. Therefore they already know that cancelling a series to replace it with a new one after some strong advertising will without any doubt pay in the short time. How could they solve the problem without leaving watchers with unresolved plots and those awful cliffhangers? To me there are two possible solutions: either produce less series so that they're not competing against themselves, or offer by contract a way to resolve plots by guaranteeing that a certain number of episodes will be produced anyway after the cancellation decision. I don't see why implementing either, or even both, could be detrimental in any way to the business, unless they're counting profits by the cent with total disregard to their customers.
• AQXt 6y ago
  My only take from the article is that some people take their entertainment too seriously... "Netflix is disregarding the smaller but powerful fandoms it's creating, where people are left crying out for show renewals" "Last summer, 'OA' fans protested outside Netflix's Los Angeles headquarters for days, with one woman even going on a hunger strike."
• NetOpWibby 6y ago
  _cries in Altered Carbon_