In the streaming era, where reliance on advertising is much lower than in the broadcast era, ratings seem like they'd have a different importance. The content p

In the streaming era, where reliance on advertising is much lower than in the broadcast era, ratings seem like they'd have a different importance. The content provider isn't trying to inflate numbers to squeeze as much as possible out of advertisers but rather can use them to determine what content is most likely to retain customers. As such, there's much less reason to publish ratings except to try to generate buzz about a show. For the consumer, ratings are a sign of something you might want to give a chance and more importantly to me, high ratings hopefully mean the show won't be cancelled in the middle of the story, especially not left on a cliffhanger. Of course, sometimes different metrics are what are being targeted, such as Netflix's habit of canceling shows that seem to have a dedicated audience because the company values attracting new accounts with new programming over using existing programming to retain existing customers.