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Netflix has created a self-fulfilling cancelation loop with its new shows

212 points by mikenew 4y ago

imchillyb 4y ago
Why begin watching a program that I know has already been cancelled? Why watch a show in its infancy, when I know Netflix cancels shows early and sometimes with cliff hangers? Why watch Netflix at this point?
- rnd0 4y ago
  That's what I say every time my room-mate and I discuss our subscriptions.
darcwader 4y ago
netflix shows are so predictably boring. seemingly fake suspenses. suddenly ending on a turn. ofcourse we are used to certain patterns in tv. but keeping it so monotonous makes me avoid watching anything that is a "N" in its logo.
tapoxi 4y ago
This is ultimately why I stopped watching television. I want to experience the whole story, and I want to be know it ties everything up and has a satisfying ending.
- eddie_catflap 4y ago
  I agree. Honestly if I’m browsing for something new and it has several seasons it puts me off even starting. I don’t want to invest that much time into something when the quality is pretty much guaranteed to drop as time goes on.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  That is what made netflix popular in the beginning before their "orginals" phase You could watch an entire TV Show, Back to back with no interuptions, or waiting a week. A Already made show would drop on nextflix, 5 seasons worth all at once, and "binging content" was born... Sad they do not know their own market anymore. Who ever running netflix these days is terrible
  - 988747 4y ago
    "Binge watching" is also weapon of Netflix demise: they drop the whole season at once, you watch it in a day or two, and then you forget it, and you never log in to Netflix again for several weeks. HBO dropping one episode at time creates a feeling of anticipation, and gives you a reason to keep your subscription always active, because every couple days there will be something new for you to watch..
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      Not me, I do not watch any streaming show until the entire season at a minimum has dropped I also do not subscribe to HBO Max in part because of that
    - sylens 4y ago
      I wonder if they would ever experiment with a lower cost membership that only has X hours of streaming per month. My favorite part of Netflix (and other streaming services that drop entire seasons at once) is that I can fit my viewing into my schedule. I may watch two episodes in one week because I have time that week, and then not watch anymore for two weeks as I'm busy with other things, only to return and watch 3 episodes at the start of the next month. A lower cost plan with a cap on hours would actually work well for me.
    - mindcrime 4y ago
      then you forget it, and you never log in to Netflix again for several weeks. But unless you actually cancel your subscription, that's not a bad thing for Netflix. All the time you're not in there watching content is time you're not consuming bandwidth or CPU cycles, etc. It's kinda like a gym: the perfect customer is somebody who signs up for a membership, and never shows up again, while keeping their membership active. Now I know some people do the whole "binge for a while, cancel my subscription and come back in a couple of months thing." A good friend of mine actually does that. But I suspect most people are too lazy to bother, and keep their account active even when they aren't actively watching something. But maybe that's just me projecting? Hmmm...
      - 4y ago
- raffraffraff 4y ago
  I'm the opposite. I prefer to wait until a whole series has finished and then watch the seasons that were decent, and screw the rest. I watched 2.5 seasons of ~Tits And Dragons~ Game Of Thrones, and honestly, that was 1.5 seasons too many. I'm also perfectly happy to rewatch Firefly knowing that they never finished it of with some bullshit final series or movie* that tried to tie it up with a bow, and ultimately fail. *I know Edit: awww, hn doesn't have strike through markdown support :(
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  I'm largely the same. I've recentered my life in a way where I rarely encounter groups where the main topic is "are you watching the latest thing," and the consequence is being free from show FOMO. Now I judge shows based on how they end. I don't care if I'm years late to watching it. If it's good it will age well, and if it's not then it won't. I've been duped too many times with Lost and GoT standing out in particular. If I kept watching the new stuff, I'd be a sucker.
schneems 4y ago
> It’s now created a system where creators should be afraid to make a series that dares to end on a cliffhanger I don’t see that as a bad thing personally. But I’ve 100% avoided watching some series that I know have been canceled. I’m wondering what a better model might be? Maybe air the pilots and let the people decide?
- watwut 4y ago
  Yeah. The cliffhangers are not even there for viewer pleasure. They are just there to force you to watch next series so that you learn how it ends. Getting rid for them is not exactly a loss.
- jon-wood 4y ago
  The better model in my view is for screenwriters to write series that stand in their own right. It should be very apparent at this point that shows get cancelled, often after one or two seasons, so plan for that. Don’t set up a six season story arc while failing to tell a worthwhile single season story.
  - schneems 4y ago
    > write series that stand in their own right. If that’s your end goal, then the current model serves you well. Getting rid of cliffhangers won’t stop your shows from randomly getting cut. Just give you slightly less headache when they are. Hence why I’m curious about alternative models.
webwielder2 4y ago
If this trend results in more miniseries versus long-winded, open-ended season after season that go nowhere, I’m all for it.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  Even a switch to closed-form seasons would be good. Complete arc in one season. Then do that again for another season and another.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  I'm all for focused shows - The Good Place is a nice example of one that didn't overstay its welcome - but there are a lot of great shows that wouldn't survive the "canceled after the first season unless metric x is met" climate. Star Trek: The Next Generation serves as a good example; the first season was rough. Didn't hit its stride until the second, when Riker grew the beard.
  - jbaber 4y ago
    This is so true that "Growing the Beard" is the opposite of "Jumping the Shark" in TV tropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrowingTheBeard https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrowingTheBeard
  - bityard 4y ago
    I'm watching TNG again for the first time in about 20 years and I just have to say, that show aged _extremely_ well. I think the thing I like most about it, is that it treats its audience with respect. The rough plot of every episode can be followed by almost everyone but they don't dumb down the dialog or keep repeating the main plot points over and over like modern TV. There is almost never any filler and each episode unfolds rather than simply leading the viewer from scene to scene.
  - isleyaardvark 4y ago
    Breaking Bad and The Americans are two other shows that would have been cancelled just looking at the viewership. Bob Oedenkirk mentioned in a recent interview that Breaking Bad didn't become a phenomenon until the 3rd or 4th season.
scohesc 4y ago
Someone more TV-knowledgeable can answer this for me or provide further clarification for me, but are there parallels between the Netflix show methodology and Anime? From my small amount of experience absorbing the anime world, it seems like a lot of studios find a manga/source material, then cram all the storyline into one season as the funding might not be there, etc. etc. I wonder if the motivations in the Anime world to put out one season are the same or similar to the Netflix show motivations - find a source material or writer who has a decent story, crank out a 1-season concept and if it takes off, you have a money-maker that will likely last a few years with more seasons/spinoffs.
- layer8 4y ago
  For manga-based anime, there often isn’t quite enough material yet to fill two seasons/cours, so they cram it into one, trying to fit some sort of story arc. There is certainly also the factor of risk reduction, only plan one season initially in case it isn’t successful. One difference from Netflix shows is that anime is usually part of a media mix (manga, light novels, merchandise, games, songs/music, physical media sales, sometimes musicals and other events), so even if it’s just one season with an open-ended storyline or a premature pseudo-ending, it serves to promote the other media of the franchise. Anime productions are typically planned and financed by a committee of media partners. See also this answer on stackexchange: https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/55361 https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/55361
  - Izkata 4y ago
    There's another aspect that their answer sort of hints at but doesn't really expand on: > Now that late-night anime is the norm, the TV networks treat the shows like infomercials, and production committees making them are mostly interested in selling DVDs and character goods. > Anime in itself isn't a recipe for profit, so bearing the risk of investment between a bunch of companies is better if a title flops. There's a lot of single-season anime out there that fans generally understand as never having intended to continue, but instead were made more as advertisements for the manga/other media they were adapted from.
mindcrime 4y ago
I was thinking the exact same thing a couple of days ago, when I heard about 1899 being cancelled. The thing is, I totally wanted to watch that, and it was on the "short list" of things I'd planned to start watching soon. But now that I know that it's cancelled, and especially knowing that it ends with a cliffhanger, there's no reason for me to ever bother starting it. Look, I know there are financial considerations at play for production companies and all. But at some point you gotta be willing to either commit and do something all the way, or not do it at all. This half-assing isn't helping anybody. This isn't just Netflix either. My big fear now is that the "Wheel of Time" series will be cancelled before the entire story is told. Which makes me very reluctant to start watching it. And if other people are also reluctant to start it for the same reason, that's going to hurt the viewership... which makes it all the more likely to be cancelled! You can't win.
- fizx 4y ago
  Wheel of Time was made by a team that respects the source material about as much as the team that ruined the last seasons of Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, you're not missing much.
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    Fair enough. But I'd at least like them to finish it, so that in the off chance I like what they've produced, I'll have a complete product to watch. It would suck to get really engrossed in it and then find out they quit halfway through. :-(
  - Izkata 4y ago
    > that ruined the last seasons of Game of Thrones. Didn't that happen because they completed the published books and had to figure out the rest on their own? (I never read or watched either one, I just vaguely remember hearing something like that)
    - snarf21 4y ago
      That was a major issue. They were told some general things that needed to happen but super high level. The other issue is that the story as written had sprawled uncontrollably and there was no way to reign it back in to a reasonable ending.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
redm 4y ago
The worst part of this is the statement that 1899 was canceled. I just finished it and was looking forward to the second season. I guess there's no way in Netflix to know if a show is ever coming back.. Will there ever be another Black Mirror season.. who knows..
jameshart 4y ago
A lot of people seem to assume a network-TV economic model applies to netflix, where ‘ratings’ are inherently good, and high rated shows beget renewals, and so on… But, Netflix subscriptions are much more in the ‘gym membership’ economic model. People watching shows on Netflix costs Netflix money. They would much rather take your money and have you not watch anything. The ideal Netflix subscriber is someone who won’t cancel because they think they might want to watch something some time, but who whenever they browse the shows decides not to bother starting a show right now. This strategy seems optimized for maximizing that audience.
- runamok 4y ago
  I know what you are saying but from what I understand the network costs per user are pretty negligible. I think its more that if a show is not a hit and does not become a big draw for users Netflix will nix it especially because the way most deals are done subsequent seasons cost them much more than the first. I have read the above in the past but can't find a good source at present as I am on mobile so apologies.
  - jameshart 4y ago
    The point is just the relationship between show quality, show production/residual cost, and viewership, and subscription signups/renewals is waaaaay more diffuse than it is for ad funded networks.
- philistine 4y ago
  We don’t have their data. They are so gun-ho on cancellations for a reason. I presume it’s because people who never watch Netflix end up unsubscribing at a steady rate, so they need to woo them back. Hence, new exciting shows they’ll hear about from outside Netflix to get them back in the app.
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  I don't really think this makes sense - they pay a relatively large engineering team, and they spend an inordinate amount on purchasing content to get engaged viewers. The cost of servicing the viewers is probably fairly trivial given the peering agreements they currently have in place and their distributed content infrastructure. I think the real problem is that if you're very measurement based - you make poor product decisions. You might be able to optimize all sorts of metrics, but if you can't measure it (or measuring it is hard/noisy/laggy), you tend to lose sight of it. In this case - Netflix isn't adequately measuring consumer satisfaction, and they haven't ever really been able to measure show quality without long term viewership numbers. At best, they correlate show quality with viewership, but that's a tricky game, and it's often a very laggy measurement - viewership at release is a very poor gauge. Netflix became the behemoth they are today by focusing on the long tail of shows - shows that had consistently moderate viewer counts over a long period of time - rather than focusing on boom and bust blockbusters. Personally - I think they're fucking up. I also cancelled this year after more than a decade.
andrejguran 4y ago
https://archive.ph/YffFM https://archive.ph/YffFM
stackedinserter 4y ago
Maybe these shows are being cancelled because they're not good enough and people don't watch them. "Netflix adaptation" is already a meme these days for a reason.
- acdha 4y ago
  > Maybe these shows are being cancelled because they're not good enough and people don't watch them. How do you square that with the people saying they would have watched it but never got the chance? It seems unlikely that a few weeks is enough to exhaust the pool of potential viewers, especially for a company which was once famous for monetizing the long tail.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    For the same reason that is brought up on every survey-based research discussion thread: what people say and what people mean/do are not the same.
    - acdha 4y ago
      Yes, but if you end the experiment before most people have a chance to start you haven’t given them time to reveal that preference. Most people don’t have time to start multiple new shows over the holidays.
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  Netflix made its name picking up content that had consistently moderate viewership over a long period of time, rather than looking for boom and bust blockbusters. That was their whole schtick - find undervalued series that had moderate viewership numbers on original airing, and then bank on those shows continuing to draw viewers over time. That seems to run entirely counter to the current strategy, they fell straight into the trap of entering the production game, and it turns out they just aren't that good at it. Which is a shame. They're undermining their own products dramatically by not letting stories wrap up. Their bread and butter shows don't exist if they've been cancelled because they weren't booming hard enough on opening weekend. I watch a lot of shows, but a catalog of cancelled season ones is a hard "no" from me. Not interested, not going to pay for it. I finally cancelled because of the ads, but the outrageously large number of dead in the water shows in their catalog made it a lot easier.
MBCook 4y ago
A month or so ago I saw a great set of tweets guessing at what’s going on. Residuals. (EDIT: https://mobile.twitter.com/PeterClines/status/1610408579940646913 https://mobile.twitter.com/PeterClines/status/16104085799406...) After the initial window they have to pay residuals every time people watch the episodes. As a series goes on, more people might start watching if it’s popular. The people who are already watching may re-watch it to get ready for the new season. All of that means paying for residuals. But if your shows are flash in the pan, that’s not as much of an issue. When Netflix cancels a show what are the odds a bunch of people are going to start watching it four years from now? And what happens if you constantly drop new shows and heavily promote them, hiding what a person was already watching? They may go to that new show and stop watching the old one? The window is new on the new show. Why release all episodes at once? So people watch it fast, not over enough time for residuals to be big. It seems like they are incentivized to keep people from re-watching existing things. This may not actually be what’s going on. But it seems to fit weirdly well.
- smogcutter 4y ago
  Netflix’s incentives are all out of whack. The more a customer uses the service, the more they cost. Meanwhile revenue per customer is essentially fixed. Your biggest fans are your worst liabilities!
  - slt2021 4y ago
    Same as Gym memberships
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    Are bandwidth costs a significant portion of the price of a subscription, for a nontrivial part of userbase? Internet tells me streaming costs less than $.10/GB, which is about $.03/hr.
    - bcrl 4y ago
      Bandwidth costs way less than $0.003/GB. Even cheaper for Netflix because ISPs are willing to host cache servers for free.
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
Someone maybe read too much mysticism and think they get a hard on (power?) by trashing their previous works, watching as no matter what they do with it, an established franchise with a strong fan base will sell no matter the content. Same patterns emerge in gaming. Strong, very good gaming studios with established franchises suddenly come up with terrible sequels with mind boggling narrative, borderline idiotic, superficial characters and plot. And all of these took 5+ years to be made :DDD.
linuxhansl 4y ago
Am I the only one who does not like episodes and prefers movies? One the one hand there is time for development that a movie would not have, on the other hand it often feels drawn out.
- green-salt 4y ago
  I'd really rather have a 'complete' story that was thought out more than a week in advance like some shows.
- stubish 4y ago
  Tastes vary. I think just about every movie I like I feel would have been better as a 3 part miniseries, or part of a multi-season series. I think a lot of movie makers feel the same way, struggling to cut things down to 2.5 hours and still ending up too long to sit through in a sitting.
jmyeet 4y ago
Netflix has fallen into the Google trap. Google famously kills projects and half-asses things. This destroys user trust. Eventually people won't use your new thing because they don't want to become dependent on something that's just going to languish before being cancelled. Larry Page's "more wood, fewer arrows" idea never really took hold. Apple OTOH is very good (mostly) at focusing on fewer things and seeing them through. Apple Pay is a prime example of this. Every month there are more banks and financial institutions onboarded. But this hurts Netflix on both sides. The obvious one is for viewers. It's becoming increasingly less likely that I become invested in some Netflix series knowing it's likely fate. Even the otherwise excellent Ozark's 4th season felt rushed, like they were trying to cram 2-3 seasons of storylines into one season. HBO has generally been very good at seeing things through. There are notable exceptions (eg Rome, Deadwood, arguably even Westworld although that one is complicated). But it hurts Netflix on the creator side. If you're an Aaron Sorkin type shopping around your series and you have a lot of suitors, why would you choose Netflix when you fear it'll get cancelled prematurely. Now you can write in commitments into contracts. This happened with House of Cards, initially two seasons guaranteed IIRC. But not everyone has that leverage. It seems like Netflix has fallen into the trap of optimizing for the wrong metrics, specifically short-term new customer signups. Maybe they look at customer retention too? Maybe customers don't actually care about this? I honestly don't know. I do think they're hurting their brand though.
- abnercoimbre 4y ago
  > I honestly don't know. This is the most frustrating bit isn't it? Misalignment between customer and company incentives grows to the point of speaking alien. Customer: "We want our favorite shows completed! Why are you f#cking over loyal customers?" Company: "Let's cycle growth optimization metric A in favor of metric B. That'll mean eliminating these shows but profit margins should be healthier in X years due to [cite big data]."
- lmm 4y ago
  > It seems like Netflix has fallen into the trap of optimizing for the wrong metrics, specifically short-term new customer signups. Maybe they look at customer retention too? Maybe customers don't actually care about this? I honestly don't know. They definitely look at that. They're aware that customers mostly don't finish the shows they start, that's something they've talked about before and probably a factor driving this decision. The part that I would personally speculate that they may have missed is that for someone who never gets around to watching past season 2 of a 5 season show, the existence of the last 3 seasons might still be part of their decision to remain subscribed. But IDK.
partiallypro 4y ago
The 1899 cancellation is when I realized that Netflix has no competent strategy to rolling out shows. It was #1 and #2 on their charts for weeks, only dethroned by Wednesday, yet they cancelled it. I fear that Netflix is eventually going to just make "Fast and the Furious" quality of original content, or they will go with franchises with known names that are licensed. They created the Witcher, are pushing out another season of it (despite the lead leaving, bad reviews and backlash on direction) and have a spin off that is universally panned. Cinema is suffering from the same thing, which is why superhero films and franchises rule the silver screen. It's not a good direction for the artform or any semblance of quality. So many great franchises were rough (or had poor TV ratings) in their first seasons that are now considered classics. From Seinfeld to Parks and Rec to X-Files to Star Trek TNG, there are countless examples.
- jsnell 4y ago
  > It was #1 and #2 on their charts for weeks, only dethroned by Wednesday, yet they cancelled it. It was #1 for 0 weeks, #2 for 3 weeks, and plummeted off the charts quickly after that.
  - tempest_ 4y ago
    That also assumes that those charts actually reflect whatever metric they are based on. There is probably some finger on the scale to keep things near the top and promote them longer if they are struggling to gain traction.
    - jsnell 4y ago
      I'm not talking about any amorphous "most popular" lists in the app. Netflix publish weekly numbers on the hours viewed for the top shows / films. This is a fixed metric and a definite and comparable number. Here's the release week of 1899: https://top10.netflix.com/tv?week=2022-11-20 https://top10.netflix.com/tv?week=2022-11-20 There is no chance that they're fabricating these numbers. First, that would be securities fraud. Second, it would not work as promotion channel because basically nobody would look at this website to decide what to view. But it is great for getting data for obscure internet fights!
jsnell 4y ago
Let's not pretend that network television didn't have its fair share of shows being cancelled mid-stream. It feels like the big difference is that Netflix is culturally bound to having very short seasons, which get pushed out at once but rarely (like, not even once per year). This has a bunch of effects, that make the cancelations more painful. One is that the creators can't iterate and learn based on audience reactions. The classic network TV show pattern is a bunch of shaky episodes early on, until things click. If the first try didn't work well enough, too bad. You had your shot. Another is that the creators get no warning for when the show will be over. The only thing they can do is plan for success. While a network TV show that's not doing well enough would often know "these are the numbers we need to hit in the early part of the season, or it's over". And then they can plan for wrapping things up. Sometimes this goes wrong, the ending gets rushed for a show that then miraculously finds another round of funding. But it is still better than the alternative. The third is that shows have no time to build up word of mouth. When a new Netflix show drops, it is likely dead in the discourse two weeks later unless it was a once-per-year megahit like Stranger Things or Squid Game. When a once per week show drops, it'll get talked about weekly and (if the vibe is positive) pick up viewers. The most obvious case of this I remember recently is the utterly mediocre The Nevers. On the forum where I do my TV and movie discussion on, a Netflix show of similar quality dropping six episodes at once would warrant 5 messages in an omnibus thread, and then be forgotten. This got hundreds of messages of very engaged chat.
- lumost 4y ago
  My two cents. I’m somewhat tired of TV which expects me to dedicate 10-40 hours to it over 3 seasons. Ending on a cliffhanger is lazy. Why can’t I have plain old episodic TV? Strange new worlds felt like a breath of fresh air.
  - throwyawayyyy 4y ago
    Agree! An example I like: the Fargo TV series. Each season is self-contained and none outstays its welcome.
    - 4y ago
at_a_remove 4y ago
I know Hollywood has a lot of very smart contract lawyers and CPAs, hence the "Hollywood Accounting" meme, which has been around so long that even in a Travis McGee novel, one woman mentions that the really creative people work in finance, "net profits" should be "nyet profits," and so on, but ... If I were to start any kind of television show, my contract would have a heavily-armored section about getting N number of episodes to wrap things up upon hearing of cancellation. Maybe N as a function of the number of seasons (and therefore loose ends) would be smart. But something, so that the work could feel finished, rather than terminated.
hedora 4y ago
Hah. I cancelled netflix and figured I’d come back after a few dozen shows were filmed to completion.
xwdv 4y ago
I actually prefer tight self contained single season shows. Multiple seasons make me nervous, it feels like there’s an opportunity every new season for things to go bad and sour my opinion on a show. When writers are able to top the previous season it’s great, but increasingly it seems like the exception rather than the norm.
glitcher 4y ago
There is definitely some truth to this. I typically don't start watching a new show unless it has at least 2 seasons already released.
jonhohle 4y ago
In an on-demand model, what’s the point of “seasons” anyway? Tell a story, break it up into chapters for easier consumption, and move on. Not all stories need multi year story arcs. If there’s interest, make another mini-series with the same characters or universe or themes. why carry the legacy baggage of network production schedules?
jaimex2 4y ago
HBO's Barry has a fantastic bit on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktAbh39aoU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktAbh39aoU8 Hilarious and watching I felt it was targeted directly at Netflix.
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  I watched the first two seasons of Barry and haven't started the 3rd... I'm just not sure I want to see these characters continue to fuck everything up. I get it's the black comedy ethos but man did it get hard to watch.
toyg 4y ago
Personally, I've just cooled off on the whole episodic format. The emotional toll of the cliffhanger, the hours of pseudo-psychological filler (sorry, "character exploration") in-between bursts of narrative progression, continuously going from one macguffin to the other... It all takes so much time, and usually for little reward.
topspin 4y ago
Mindhunter. I'm hoping they pick that one back up. The long thread in that series is BTK, which they teased throughout the existing episodes. Apparently Netflix never "got the numbers" they wanted, which disappoints the hell out of me; it is some of the best work Netflix has ever done.
- mxz3000 4y ago
  Such a great show. I was so sad when I realised it stopped at season 2.
IvyMike 4y ago
While we're ripping on them, let's not forget that Netflix's strategy has left it with a vast library of half-complete series. Imagine if they had finished, say, The OA, 1899, Glow, Sense8, and a couple of more of the series that had devoted fan bases. In the future, these shows would be a selling point for new Netflix subscribers. Instead, they're just junkyard scrap that almost nobody starts watching, since they know there's no satisfying ending.
- jerojero 4y ago
  I watched all of the series you mentioned and enjoyed all of them thoroughly. In fact, they are all in my top favorites for the platforms. I really appreciate that they had the decency to give Sense8 some kind of ending, but honestly I also understood why it was cancelled, it was extremely ambitious and expensive and at the time Netflix was just dipping their toes into originals. But at this point in the game it seems ridiculous to me for them to cancel something like 1899 because it's not the massive hit they expected, and I really mean massive hit because sure enough the show was quite popular looking at the numbers. I've cancelled my Netflix subscription, of course, because the platform is just not giving me the quality I had come to expect. I was devastated when they cancelled The OA, specially given that it's a show that deals with emotional alienation; it really resonated with me. But oh well. Business is business, it just seems like personally I'm not very well aligned with the market.
  - AndyKluger 4y ago
    I still hope for the The OA continued in some form one day. Book, short story, graphic novel, comic, animated, audio/podcast, picture book, anything.
- freilanzer 4y ago
  Mind Hunter... Jesus Christ, that alone makes me want to cancel my subscription.
- stuckinhell 4y ago
  Devoted fanbases doesn't mean money though. TV shows can be expensive to make and often have very thin margins. Nerd were major targets for a while because they have extra income they would use to buy merchandise. It's why reality tv is beloved by executives because it's cheap and profitable.
darknavi 4y ago
Here is a crazy thought: Could streaming providers put this into the hands of the customers? What if they put the idea of "cancel or continue?" in their faces and made them vote with their feet (screens)?
- hadlock 4y ago
  Surely the analytics team at netflix has looked at this in depth and decided their current strategy is the most truthful and reliable. When you start polling people vs looking at raw usage data, you end up with people voting ideologically vs their true preferences. Probably. It would be very interesting to hear from someone on the analytics team about how viewership data impacts show renewal, but I suspect this algorithm is super-secret sauce that keeps them profitable compared to their competitors.
- bmacho 4y ago
  They do exactly this: if enough people watch it, they continue, otherwise they cancel.
cafed00d 4y ago
God! I hate “data driven decision making” with the intensity of a thousand white hot suns
efsavage 4y ago
I've taken a similar approach for reading sci-fi/fantasy, where authors/publishers seem obligated to make everything a trilogy. I'm tired of reading a great book and waiting years for the next, so now I just don't bother until they're all done. If they're expecting to use the first book to decide whether to do the remainder (which seems rare) I'm not helping the situation, but hopefully I'm voting with my dollars that writing standalone books is appealing. There's enough good stuff out there, or series being completedthat even at 20-30 books per year I'm not lacking for anything to read. I'm looking forward to reading The Kingkiller Chronicle, The Stormlight Archive, etc. ... someday.
- phs 4y ago
  The system I use is somewhat similar, but with a twist: I wait for the author to die.
  - efsavage 4y ago
    I'd venture to say that the demographics of science fiction/fantasy authors differ greatly between the deceased greats and the active contributors, and that would be something I would be afraid to miss out on by limiting myself to the former.
- jerojero 4y ago
  Well at least Brandon Sanderson is really transparent with his progress and seems to be capable of writing consistently, he doesn't seem to be the kind of "i'm waiting for inspiration to come" author. So if you get into The Stormlight Archive you know a new book is coming every 3-4 years; and that's a good pace, imo. The books are lengthy. But other than that, I completely agree with you. Anyone that has read The Kingkiller Chronicle will. Or The Song of Ice and Fire. In any case, I haven't ever really regretted reading a good book or watching a good series even if the ending is not out. So of course it's a shame for something to get cancelled or never released but they can't take away the good time you had with it in the first place.
jron 4y ago
I told friends and family to wait for season 3 before watching 1899 and to start with Dark. I canceled my Netflix sub after they canceled 1899 and won't return to anything but torrents for Netflix content.
londons_explore 4y ago
The flip side of this for Netflix is that frequent cancellation helps keep cast and crew costs far lower. The cast typically want a big pay bump when it has become clear the show is successful...
aksss 4y ago
We could learn a thing or two from the British in the sense of making short run series, designed to not go beyond two or three seasons. Like the wrap-up is known from the start. It seems like Netflix wants every show to go on for infinity, and if it doesn't show promise for that by end of season, it gets axed. Far better to make several well-premised stories with limited seasons, than so many false starts that piss off viewers. That said, God help the English and their insatiable appetite for procedurals to the exclusion of nearly everything else. The only thing more amazing than the quantity of repetitive detective shows is that the population hasn't risen up in revolt over it.
TristanBall 4y ago
Yup. This is actually why I just cancelled my netflix completely. I thought it was pretty telling that in their little "tell us why you're cancelling" they didn't have "because we cancel too many shows mid run". They didn't even have "just following your lead"!!
squarefoot 4y ago
1899 cancelled? Another low for Netflix, that series was great. I wonder if series producers could demand upfront to be given by contract enough episodes to wrap up and complete stories so that the whole series doesn't lose all its value in case of DVD adaptation or re-run? Also, please stop ending seasons with cliffhangers. Doing that equals to treating your viewers as dumb idiots who need an incentive to start watching the next season, aside destroying the series value in case of cancellation.
- rnd0 4y ago
  To be fair, I always assumed that the cliffhanger thing was for the benefit of the studios. Like "hey, we have a story to tell and viewers have a reason to come back. please renew us for another season". It sucks that 1899 was cancelled but to be fair I was expecting it personally.
perryizgr8 4y ago
Why doesn't Netflix create shows that are more episodic? Like each episode is a self-contained story, like Star Trek (not the recent ones, they are barely Trek). And produce 20-30 episodes each season. Even if a few stories are not great, it still doesn't hurt the show much. People will continue to watch, and re-watch. It is also easier to start. I have been avoiding 1899, just because it feels so tedious to follow one over-arching story over 8 hours.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  Also nothing wrong with just releasing a miniseries instead of trying to make everything a multi-season affair based on how successful it is. The two concepts might align well really.
- gs17 4y ago
  Episodic shows also get cancelled by them.
thedailymail 4y ago
I prefer to think of this as a double-cliffhanger, in which the buildup of suspense relies on creating an aura of angsty dread over 1) will the protagonist escape from those circling hammerheads? and 2) will the producers cancel Season 2???
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
Can't they start making 1 season tv shows then? I mean, clearly they can't commit, at least make only one season with an ending!
waspight 4y ago
Why don’t they just stick to mini series? Best invention since the movies imo.
Nexxxeh 4y ago
I don't understand why they don't now factor a TV movie or mini series to tie it all off, in the season's comissioning. A Serenity to Firefly. Even if one is shot every season that may be its last. Just left without post-production unless needed. Everyone gets resolution, the show is presumably worth more in the catalogue and resale, and you've got people watching another couple of hours of content. No more "I'm not starting it, Netflix will kill it on a cliffhanger." The shot footage can potentially be recycled for the next season anyway, or used to write out actors that don't return or whatever. Would writing and shooting less than three hours of material, with no post-production, really cost that much more?
nicolas_t 4y ago
I still watch Netflix but yes after being burned so many times, I do not want to start a series until I know it's concluded satisfactorily. 1899 was something I thought I'd watch and was on my shortlist but I won't now that I know that it's been cancelled in the first season.
technofiend 4y ago
Sort of a tangent, but related: I read a lot of serialized fiction and it suffers from the same problem that there's an implied contract the creator will take the consumer through a complete story arc. But authors struggle with both writing new episodes and attracting readers, and unless they build enough viewership it's possible they'll lose motivation and just stop writing. To protect yourself from this, it usually pays to either read stories from authors who've finished work in the past, or wait until they're done. Too long between episodes, or frankly lots of "slice of life" (cynically read: the author hasn't plotted anything out and doesn't have a plan to create and resolve conflict, so they just putter along) and most readers will lose interest. Anecdotally this is why I stopped watching Rick and Morty even prior to the various revelations about the authors. They shed enough momentum that any interest in the characters or universe was lost. And R & M is a good example of what happens when there's no planned plot line: you end up with filler episodes like "Intergalactic Cable" where the authors just riff randomly. For people who remember Babylon 5, there was a great deal of excitement in part because the arcs were all pre-planned which some viewed as a positive because there was no danger of the show just turning into episodic and formulaic exploitation of a known set of characters and places. We used to have TV shows just stagger on until cancelled, with showrunners hoping to be the next Simpsons, Star Trek or Stargate writer and now we're at the other extreme that if audiences don't show immediate and sustained engagement, the show (at least on Netflix, HBO MAX, etc) is doomed.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  I mean, Rick and Morty has made many jokes about not wanting to be a show about progressing the canon. It’s probably the worst possible example you could choose for this concept. Most episodes are deconstructions of other works and they seem to prefer it being that way. I do too. I’m still laughing at the concept of a deconstruction of homages to die hard. I love their perspectives on writing.
  - technofiend 4y ago
    >I mean, Rick and Morty has made many jokes about not wanting to be a show about progressing the canon. Yeah, part of my complaint is indeed there's no story arc, but my other complaint specifically about R & M was loss of momentum: they took so long between seasons it just stopped being interesting. Because even if I got back into the next season how long before the season after that comes around? I'd rather just stop watching. And again that's just a personal opinion. I don't expect most people will feel the same.
m000 4y ago
Multi-season series rarely work these days. They will be either cancelled too early (e.g. 1899), or closed/cancelled too late (e.g. Walking Dead). Both are disrespectful to the time the viewer spent on the series. Limited series is the future.
stuckinhell 4y ago
This article is really begging the question: Why do tv shows need multiple seasons ? What's wrong with telling a single story in 8-10 episodes and calling it a day ? Doesn't british television often work this way ?
- eatsyourtacos 4y ago
  >Why do tv shows need multiple seasons ? Because people get comfortable with the characters/storyline and want to see more. Is it really that difficult of a concept? And I find it amusing that you bring up British TV, because the only shows that I can think of that are super popular and have a worldwide audience are the ones that run for quite a while. The Crown, Downton Abbey, Peaky Blinders, Sherlock. Yeah they do a lot of shorter ones but those barely get out of the country as far as I'm aware.
  - stuckinhell 4y ago
    Yes, its difficult concept when most tv shows get canceled after 1-2 seasons especially on netflix it seems. I don't think everything needs to be super popular, have a world wide audience, or go on forever. Many British tv shows have a very different sensibility when it comes to seasons, the vast majority are done after 1-2 seasons. It seems netflix tv shows should be more oriented as mini series.
- orange_fritter 4y ago
  Yes I would argue that it's an extremely difficult skill to keep an intense story going forever. A 4-9 episode miniseries is probably my favorite format to watch because the parameters are known ahead of time and it's not a long enough shoot that real life gets in the way of the writers and actors. Breaking Bad was a rare exception.
- mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
  I think some of these are modeled after a TV show format but are just long movies and several episodes or sub-story lines are added to extend it out to 8-12 hours worth of content. It might be a better story if it was condensed, somewhere I read that removing in the edit phase is key and much more difficult but contributes to a better product.
eli_gottlieb 4y ago
>some sort of record-breaking fluke megahit (Wednesday) I watched it and liked it, but huh, I didn't realize that it was a record-breaking fluke megahit. Good to hear it'll get a second season, though!
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
That's a stretch. Do people really anticipate cancellation and use it as an excuse? I doubt the loop is real. Now, it is a real thing that NetFlix has abandoned all pretense of building a catalog. They're now just ratings-whores like most content providers.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
We were just screwed by this last week. After weeks of rationing out a detective series we came to the last episode just to have a cliff-hanger added in the last 20 seconds. And the show long-cancelled. Sigh.
Krollifi 4y ago
I didn’t like 1899 or Dark so I celebrate their cancellation and their resources going to a better series.
aryehof 4y ago
Is there some source that lists canceled Netflix series? I’d like to know which series are not worth starting?

212 points by mikenew 4y ago

Why begin watching a program that I know has already been cancelled? Why watch a show in its infancy, when I know Netflix cancels shows early and sometimes with cliff hangers? Why watch Netflix at this point?

rnd0 4y ago
That's what I say every time my room-mate and I discuss our subscriptions.

darcwader 4y ago

netflix shows are so predictably boring. seemingly fake suspenses. suddenly ending on a turn. ofcourse we are used to certain patterns in tv. but keeping it so monotonous makes me avoid watching anything that is a "N" in its logo.

tapoxi 4y ago

This is ultimately why I stopped watching television. I want to experience the whole story, and I want to be know it ties everything up and has a satisfying ending.

eddie_catflap 4y ago
I agree. Honestly if I’m browsing for something new and it has several seasons it puts me off even starting. I don’t want to invest that much time into something when the quality is pretty much guaranteed to drop as time goes on.
phpisthebest 4y ago
That is what made netflix popular in the beginning before their "orginals" phase You could watch an entire TV Show, Back to back with no interuptions, or waiting a week. A Already made show would drop on nextflix, 5 seasons worth all at once, and "binging content" was born... Sad they do not know their own market anymore. Who ever running netflix these days is terrible
- 988747 4y ago
  "Binge watching" is also weapon of Netflix demise: they drop the whole season at once, you watch it in a day or two, and then you forget it, and you never log in to Netflix again for several weeks. HBO dropping one episode at time creates a feeling of anticipation, and gives you a reason to keep your subscription always active, because every couple days there will be something new for you to watch..
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    Not me, I do not watch any streaming show until the entire season at a minimum has dropped I also do not subscribe to HBO Max in part because of that
  - sylens 4y ago
    I wonder if they would ever experiment with a lower cost membership that only has X hours of streaming per month. My favorite part of Netflix (and other streaming services that drop entire seasons at once) is that I can fit my viewing into my schedule. I may watch two episodes in one week because I have time that week, and then not watch anymore for two weeks as I'm busy with other things, only to return and watch 3 episodes at the start of the next month. A lower cost plan with a cap on hours would actually work well for me.
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    then you forget it, and you never log in to Netflix again for several weeks. But unless you actually cancel your subscription, that's not a bad thing for Netflix. All the time you're not in there watching content is time you're not consuming bandwidth or CPU cycles, etc. It's kinda like a gym: the perfect customer is somebody who signs up for a membership, and never shows up again, while keeping their membership active. Now I know some people do the whole "binge for a while, cancel my subscription and come back in a couple of months thing." A good friend of mine actually does that. But I suspect most people are too lazy to bother, and keep their account active even when they aren't actively watching something. But maybe that's just me projecting? Hmmm...
    - 4y ago
raffraffraff 4y ago
I'm the opposite. I prefer to wait until a whole series has finished and then watch the seasons that were decent, and screw the rest. I watched 2.5 seasons of ~Tits And Dragons~ Game Of Thrones, and honestly, that was 1.5 seasons too many. I'm also perfectly happy to rewatch Firefly knowing that they never finished it of with some bullshit final series or movie* that tried to tie it up with a bow, and ultimately fail. *I know Edit: awww, hn doesn't have strike through markdown support :(
kelseyfrog 4y ago
I'm largely the same. I've recentered my life in a way where I rarely encounter groups where the main topic is "are you watching the latest thing," and the consequence is being free from show FOMO. Now I judge shows based on how they end. I don't care if I'm years late to watching it. If it's good it will age well, and if it's not then it won't. I've been duped too many times with Lost and GoT standing out in particular. If I kept watching the new stuff, I'd be a sucker.

schneems 4y ago

> It’s now created a system where creators should be afraid to make a series that dares to end on a cliffhanger I don’t see that as a bad thing personally. But I’ve 100% avoided watching some series that I know have been canceled. I’m wondering what a better model might be? Maybe air the pilots and let the people decide?

watwut 4y ago
Yeah. The cliffhangers are not even there for viewer pleasure. They are just there to force you to watch next series so that you learn how it ends. Getting rid for them is not exactly a loss.
jon-wood 4y ago
The better model in my view is for screenwriters to write series that stand in their own right. It should be very apparent at this point that shows get cancelled, often after one or two seasons, so plan for that. Don’t set up a six season story arc while failing to tell a worthwhile single season story.
- schneems 4y ago
  > write series that stand in their own right. If that’s your end goal, then the current model serves you well. Getting rid of cliffhangers won’t stop your shows from randomly getting cut. Just give you slightly less headache when they are. Hence why I’m curious about alternative models.

webwielder2 4y ago

If this trend results in more miniseries versus long-winded, open-ended season after season that go nowhere, I’m all for it.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
Even a switch to closed-form seasons would be good. Complete arc in one season. Then do that again for another season and another.
ceejayoz 4y ago
I'm all for focused shows - The Good Place is a nice example of one that didn't overstay its welcome - but there are a lot of great shows that wouldn't survive the "canceled after the first season unless metric x is met" climate. Star Trek: The Next Generation serves as a good example; the first season was rough. Didn't hit its stride until the second, when Riker grew the beard.
- jbaber 4y ago
  This is so true that "Growing the Beard" is the opposite of "Jumping the Shark" in TV tropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrowingTheBeard https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrowingTheBeard
- bityard 4y ago
  I'm watching TNG again for the first time in about 20 years and I just have to say, that show aged _extremely_ well. I think the thing I like most about it, is that it treats its audience with respect. The rough plot of every episode can be followed by almost everyone but they don't dumb down the dialog or keep repeating the main plot points over and over like modern TV. There is almost never any filler and each episode unfolds rather than simply leading the viewer from scene to scene.
- isleyaardvark 4y ago
  Breaking Bad and The Americans are two other shows that would have been cancelled just looking at the viewership. Bob Oedenkirk mentioned in a recent interview that Breaking Bad didn't become a phenomenon until the 3rd or 4th season.

scohesc 4y ago

Someone more TV-knowledgeable can answer this for me or provide further clarification for me, but are there parallels between the Netflix show methodology and Anime? From my small amount of experience absorbing the anime world, it seems like a lot of studios find a manga/source material, then cram all the storyline into one season as the funding might not be there, etc. etc. I wonder if the motivations in the Anime world to put out one season are the same or similar to the Netflix show motivations - find a source material or writer who has a decent story, crank out a 1-season concept and if it takes off, you have a money-maker that will likely last a few years with more seasons/spinoffs.

layer8 4y ago
For manga-based anime, there often isn’t quite enough material yet to fill two seasons/cours, so they cram it into one, trying to fit some sort of story arc. There is certainly also the factor of risk reduction, only plan one season initially in case it isn’t successful. One difference from Netflix shows is that anime is usually part of a media mix (manga, light novels, merchandise, games, songs/music, physical media sales, sometimes musicals and other events), so even if it’s just one season with an open-ended storyline or a premature pseudo-ending, it serves to promote the other media of the franchise. Anime productions are typically planned and financed by a committee of media partners. See also this answer on stackexchange: https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/55361 https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/55361
- Izkata 4y ago
  There's another aspect that their answer sort of hints at but doesn't really expand on: > Now that late-night anime is the norm, the TV networks treat the shows like infomercials, and production committees making them are mostly interested in selling DVDs and character goods. > Anime in itself isn't a recipe for profit, so bearing the risk of investment between a bunch of companies is better if a title flops. There's a lot of single-season anime out there that fans generally understand as never having intended to continue, but instead were made more as advertisements for the manga/other media they were adapted from.

mindcrime 4y ago

I was thinking the exact same thing a couple of days ago, when I heard about 1899 being cancelled. The thing is, I totally wanted to watch that, and it was on the "short list" of things I'd planned to start watching soon. But now that I know that it's cancelled, and especially knowing that it ends with a cliffhanger, there's no reason for me to ever bother starting it. Look, I know there are financial considerations at play for production companies and all. But at some point you gotta be willing to either commit and do something all the way, or not do it at all. This half-assing isn't helping anybody. This isn't just Netflix either. My big fear now is that the "Wheel of Time" series will be cancelled before the entire story is told. Which makes me very reluctant to start watching it. And if other people are also reluctant to start it for the same reason, that's going to hurt the viewership... which makes it all the more likely to be cancelled! You can't win.

fizx 4y ago
Wheel of Time was made by a team that respects the source material about as much as the team that ruined the last seasons of Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, you're not missing much.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  Fair enough. But I'd at least like them to finish it, so that in the off chance I like what they've produced, I'll have a complete product to watch. It would suck to get really engrossed in it and then find out they quit halfway through. :-(
- Izkata 4y ago
  > that ruined the last seasons of Game of Thrones. Didn't that happen because they completed the published books and had to figure out the rest on their own? (I never read or watched either one, I just vaguely remember hearing something like that)
  - snarf21 4y ago
    That was a major issue. They were told some general things that needed to happen but super high level. The other issue is that the story as written had sprawled uncontrollably and there was no way to reign it back in to a reasonable ending.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

redm 4y ago

The worst part of this is the statement that 1899 was canceled. I just finished it and was looking forward to the second season. I guess there's no way in Netflix to know if a show is ever coming back.. Will there ever be another Black Mirror season.. who knows..

jameshart 4y ago

A lot of people seem to assume a network-TV economic model applies to netflix, where ‘ratings’ are inherently good, and high rated shows beget renewals, and so on… But, Netflix subscriptions are much more in the ‘gym membership’ economic model. People watching shows on Netflix costs Netflix money. They would much rather take your money and have you not watch anything. The ideal Netflix subscriber is someone who won’t cancel because they think they might want to watch something some time, but who whenever they browse the shows decides not to bother starting a show right now. This strategy seems optimized for maximizing that audience.

runamok 4y ago
I know what you are saying but from what I understand the network costs per user are pretty negligible. I think its more that if a show is not a hit and does not become a big draw for users Netflix will nix it especially because the way most deals are done subsequent seasons cost them much more than the first. I have read the above in the past but can't find a good source at present as I am on mobile so apologies.
- jameshart 4y ago
  The point is just the relationship between show quality, show production/residual cost, and viewership, and subscription signups/renewals is waaaaay more diffuse than it is for ad funded networks.
philistine 4y ago
We don’t have their data. They are so gun-ho on cancellations for a reason. I presume it’s because people who never watch Netflix end up unsubscribing at a steady rate, so they need to woo them back. Hence, new exciting shows they’ll hear about from outside Netflix to get them back in the app.
horsawlarway 4y ago
I don't really think this makes sense - they pay a relatively large engineering team, and they spend an inordinate amount on purchasing content to get engaged viewers. The cost of servicing the viewers is probably fairly trivial given the peering agreements they currently have in place and their distributed content infrastructure. I think the real problem is that if you're very measurement based - you make poor product decisions. You might be able to optimize all sorts of metrics, but if you can't measure it (or measuring it is hard/noisy/laggy), you tend to lose sight of it. In this case - Netflix isn't adequately measuring consumer satisfaction, and they haven't ever really been able to measure show quality without long term viewership numbers. At best, they correlate show quality with viewership, but that's a tricky game, and it's often a very laggy measurement - viewership at release is a very poor gauge. Netflix became the behemoth they are today by focusing on the long tail of shows - shows that had consistently moderate viewer counts over a long period of time - rather than focusing on boom and bust blockbusters. Personally - I think they're fucking up. I also cancelled this year after more than a decade.

andrejguran 4y ago

https://archive.ph/YffFM https://archive.ph/YffFM

stackedinserter 4y ago

Maybe these shows are being cancelled because they're not good enough and people don't watch them. "Netflix adaptation" is already a meme these days for a reason.

acdha 4y ago
> Maybe these shows are being cancelled because they're not good enough and people don't watch them. How do you square that with the people saying they would have watched it but never got the chance? It seems unlikely that a few weeks is enough to exhaust the pool of potential viewers, especially for a company which was once famous for monetizing the long tail.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  For the same reason that is brought up on every survey-based research discussion thread: what people say and what people mean/do are not the same.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Yes, but if you end the experiment before most people have a chance to start you haven’t given them time to reveal that preference. Most people don’t have time to start multiple new shows over the holidays.
horsawlarway 4y ago
Netflix made its name picking up content that had consistently moderate viewership over a long period of time, rather than looking for boom and bust blockbusters. That was their whole schtick - find undervalued series that had moderate viewership numbers on original airing, and then bank on those shows continuing to draw viewers over time. That seems to run entirely counter to the current strategy, they fell straight into the trap of entering the production game, and it turns out they just aren't that good at it. Which is a shame. They're undermining their own products dramatically by not letting stories wrap up. Their bread and butter shows don't exist if they've been cancelled because they weren't booming hard enough on opening weekend. I watch a lot of shows, but a catalog of cancelled season ones is a hard "no" from me. Not interested, not going to pay for it. I finally cancelled because of the ads, but the outrageously large number of dead in the water shows in their catalog made it a lot easier.

MBCook 4y ago

A month or so ago I saw a great set of tweets guessing at what’s going on. Residuals. (EDIT: https://mobile.twitter.com/PeterClines/status/1610408579940646913 https://mobile.twitter.com/PeterClines/status/16104085799406...) After the initial window they have to pay residuals every time people watch the episodes. As a series goes on, more people might start watching if it’s popular. The people who are already watching may re-watch it to get ready for the new season. All of that means paying for residuals. But if your shows are flash in the pan, that’s not as much of an issue. When Netflix cancels a show what are the odds a bunch of people are going to start watching it four years from now? And what happens if you constantly drop new shows and heavily promote them, hiding what a person was already watching? They may go to that new show and stop watching the old one? The window is new on the new show. Why release all episodes at once? So people watch it fast, not over enough time for residuals to be big. It seems like they are incentivized to keep people from re-watching existing things. This may not actually be what’s going on. But it seems to fit weirdly well.

smogcutter 4y ago
Netflix’s incentives are all out of whack. The more a customer uses the service, the more they cost. Meanwhile revenue per customer is essentially fixed. Your biggest fans are your worst liabilities!
- slt2021 4y ago
  Same as Gym memberships
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Are bandwidth costs a significant portion of the price of a subscription, for a nontrivial part of userbase? Internet tells me streaming costs less than $.10/GB, which is about $.03/hr.
  - bcrl 4y ago
    Bandwidth costs way less than $0.003/GB. Even cheaper for Netflix because ISPs are willing to host cache servers for free.

lofaszvanitt 4y ago

Someone maybe read too much mysticism and think they get a hard on (power?) by trashing their previous works, watching as no matter what they do with it, an established franchise with a strong fan base will sell no matter the content. Same patterns emerge in gaming. Strong, very good gaming studios with established franchises suddenly come up with terrible sequels with mind boggling narrative, borderline idiotic, superficial characters and plot. And all of these took 5+ years to be made :DDD.

linuxhansl 4y ago

Am I the only one who does not like episodes and prefers movies? One the one hand there is time for development that a movie would not have, on the other hand it often feels drawn out.

green-salt 4y ago
I'd really rather have a 'complete' story that was thought out more than a week in advance like some shows.
stubish 4y ago
Tastes vary. I think just about every movie I like I feel would have been better as a 3 part miniseries, or part of a multi-season series. I think a lot of movie makers feel the same way, struggling to cut things down to 2.5 hours and still ending up too long to sit through in a sitting.

jmyeet 4y ago

Netflix has fallen into the Google trap. Google famously kills projects and half-asses things. This destroys user trust. Eventually people won't use your new thing because they don't want to become dependent on something that's just going to languish before being cancelled. Larry Page's "more wood, fewer arrows" idea never really took hold. Apple OTOH is very good (mostly) at focusing on fewer things and seeing them through. Apple Pay is a prime example of this. Every month there are more banks and financial institutions onboarded. But this hurts Netflix on both sides. The obvious one is for viewers. It's becoming increasingly less likely that I become invested in some Netflix series knowing it's likely fate. Even the otherwise excellent Ozark's 4th season felt rushed, like they were trying to cram 2-3 seasons of storylines into one season. HBO has generally been very good at seeing things through. There are notable exceptions (eg Rome, Deadwood, arguably even Westworld although that one is complicated). But it hurts Netflix on the creator side. If you're an Aaron Sorkin type shopping around your series and you have a lot of suitors, why would you choose Netflix when you fear it'll get cancelled prematurely. Now you can write in commitments into contracts. This happened with House of Cards, initially two seasons guaranteed IIRC. But not everyone has that leverage. It seems like Netflix has fallen into the trap of optimizing for the wrong metrics, specifically short-term new customer signups. Maybe they look at customer retention too? Maybe customers don't actually care about this? I honestly don't know. I do think they're hurting their brand though.

abnercoimbre 4y ago
> I honestly don't know. This is the most frustrating bit isn't it? Misalignment between customer and company incentives grows to the point of speaking alien. Customer: "We want our favorite shows completed! Why are you f#cking over loyal customers?" Company: "Let's cycle growth optimization metric A in favor of metric B. That'll mean eliminating these shows but profit margins should be healthier in X years due to [cite big data]."
lmm 4y ago
> It seems like Netflix has fallen into the trap of optimizing for the wrong metrics, specifically short-term new customer signups. Maybe they look at customer retention too? Maybe customers don't actually care about this? I honestly don't know. They definitely look at that. They're aware that customers mostly don't finish the shows they start, that's something they've talked about before and probably a factor driving this decision. The part that I would personally speculate that they may have missed is that for someone who never gets around to watching past season 2 of a 5 season show, the existence of the last 3 seasons might still be part of their decision to remain subscribed. But IDK.

partiallypro 4y ago

The 1899 cancellation is when I realized that Netflix has no competent strategy to rolling out shows. It was #1 and #2 on their charts for weeks, only dethroned by Wednesday, yet they cancelled it. I fear that Netflix is eventually going to just make "Fast and the Furious" quality of original content, or they will go with franchises with known names that are licensed. They created the Witcher, are pushing out another season of it (despite the lead leaving, bad reviews and backlash on direction) and have a spin off that is universally panned. Cinema is suffering from the same thing, which is why superhero films and franchises rule the silver screen. It's not a good direction for the artform or any semblance of quality. So many great franchises were rough (or had poor TV ratings) in their first seasons that are now considered classics. From Seinfeld to Parks and Rec to X-Files to Star Trek TNG, there are countless examples.

jsnell 4y ago
> It was #1 and #2 on their charts for weeks, only dethroned by Wednesday, yet they cancelled it. It was #1 for 0 weeks, #2 for 3 weeks, and plummeted off the charts quickly after that.
- tempest_ 4y ago
  That also assumes that those charts actually reflect whatever metric they are based on. There is probably some finger on the scale to keep things near the top and promote them longer if they are struggling to gain traction.
  - jsnell 4y ago
    I'm not talking about any amorphous "most popular" lists in the app. Netflix publish weekly numbers on the hours viewed for the top shows / films. This is a fixed metric and a definite and comparable number. Here's the release week of 1899: https://top10.netflix.com/tv?week=2022-11-20 https://top10.netflix.com/tv?week=2022-11-20 There is no chance that they're fabricating these numbers. First, that would be securities fraud. Second, it would not work as promotion channel because basically nobody would look at this website to decide what to view. But it is great for getting data for obscure internet fights!

jsnell 4y ago

Let's not pretend that network television didn't have its fair share of shows being cancelled mid-stream. It feels like the big difference is that Netflix is culturally bound to having very short seasons, which get pushed out at once but rarely (like, not even once per year). This has a bunch of effects, that make the cancelations more painful. One is that the creators can't iterate and learn based on audience reactions. The classic network TV show pattern is a bunch of shaky episodes early on, until things click. If the first try didn't work well enough, too bad. You had your shot. Another is that the creators get no warning for when the show will be over. The only thing they can do is plan for success. While a network TV show that's not doing well enough would often know "these are the numbers we need to hit in the early part of the season, or it's over". And then they can plan for wrapping things up. Sometimes this goes wrong, the ending gets rushed for a show that then miraculously finds another round of funding. But it is still better than the alternative. The third is that shows have no time to build up word of mouth. When a new Netflix show drops, it is likely dead in the discourse two weeks later unless it was a once-per-year megahit like Stranger Things or Squid Game. When a once per week show drops, it'll get talked about weekly and (if the vibe is positive) pick up viewers. The most obvious case of this I remember recently is the utterly mediocre The Nevers. On the forum where I do my TV and movie discussion on, a Netflix show of similar quality dropping six episodes at once would warrant 5 messages in an omnibus thread, and then be forgotten. This got hundreds of messages of very engaged chat.

lumost 4y ago
My two cents. I’m somewhat tired of TV which expects me to dedicate 10-40 hours to it over 3 seasons. Ending on a cliffhanger is lazy. Why can’t I have plain old episodic TV? Strange new worlds felt like a breath of fresh air.
- throwyawayyyy 4y ago
  Agree! An example I like: the Fargo TV series. Each season is self-contained and none outstays its welcome.
  - 4y ago

at_a_remove 4y ago

I know Hollywood has a lot of very smart contract lawyers and CPAs, hence the "Hollywood Accounting" meme, which has been around so long that even in a Travis McGee novel, one woman mentions that the really creative people work in finance, "net profits" should be "nyet profits," and so on, but ... If I were to start any kind of television show, my contract would have a heavily-armored section about getting N number of episodes to wrap things up upon hearing of cancellation. Maybe N as a function of the number of seasons (and therefore loose ends) would be smart. But something, so that the work could feel finished, rather than terminated.

hedora 4y ago

Hah. I cancelled netflix and figured I’d come back after a few dozen shows were filmed to completion.

xwdv 4y ago

I actually prefer tight self contained single season shows. Multiple seasons make me nervous, it feels like there’s an opportunity every new season for things to go bad and sour my opinion on a show. When writers are able to top the previous season it’s great, but increasingly it seems like the exception rather than the norm.

glitcher 4y ago

There is definitely some truth to this. I typically don't start watching a new show unless it has at least 2 seasons already released.

jonhohle 4y ago

In an on-demand model, what’s the point of “seasons” anyway? Tell a story, break it up into chapters for easier consumption, and move on. Not all stories need multi year story arcs. If there’s interest, make another mini-series with the same characters or universe or themes. why carry the legacy baggage of network production schedules?

jaimex2 4y ago

HBO's Barry has a fantastic bit on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktAbh39aoU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktAbh39aoU8 Hilarious and watching I felt it was targeted directly at Netflix.

agentwiggles 4y ago
I watched the first two seasons of Barry and haven't started the 3rd... I'm just not sure I want to see these characters continue to fuck everything up. I get it's the black comedy ethos but man did it get hard to watch.

toyg 4y ago

Personally, I've just cooled off on the whole episodic format. The emotional toll of the cliffhanger, the hours of pseudo-psychological filler (sorry, "character exploration") in-between bursts of narrative progression, continuously going from one macguffin to the other... It all takes so much time, and usually for little reward.

topspin 4y ago

Mindhunter. I'm hoping they pick that one back up. The long thread in that series is BTK, which they teased throughout the existing episodes. Apparently Netflix never "got the numbers" they wanted, which disappoints the hell out of me; it is some of the best work Netflix has ever done.

mxz3000 4y ago
Such a great show. I was so sad when I realised it stopped at season 2.

IvyMike 4y ago

While we're ripping on them, let's not forget that Netflix's strategy has left it with a vast library of half-complete series. Imagine if they had finished, say, The OA, 1899, Glow, Sense8, and a couple of more of the series that had devoted fan bases. In the future, these shows would be a selling point for new Netflix subscribers. Instead, they're just junkyard scrap that almost nobody starts watching, since they know there's no satisfying ending.

jerojero 4y ago
I watched all of the series you mentioned and enjoyed all of them thoroughly. In fact, they are all in my top favorites for the platforms. I really appreciate that they had the decency to give Sense8 some kind of ending, but honestly I also understood why it was cancelled, it was extremely ambitious and expensive and at the time Netflix was just dipping their toes into originals. But at this point in the game it seems ridiculous to me for them to cancel something like 1899 because it's not the massive hit they expected, and I really mean massive hit because sure enough the show was quite popular looking at the numbers. I've cancelled my Netflix subscription, of course, because the platform is just not giving me the quality I had come to expect. I was devastated when they cancelled The OA, specially given that it's a show that deals with emotional alienation; it really resonated with me. But oh well. Business is business, it just seems like personally I'm not very well aligned with the market.
- AndyKluger 4y ago
  I still hope for the The OA continued in some form one day. Book, short story, graphic novel, comic, animated, audio/podcast, picture book, anything.
freilanzer 4y ago
Mind Hunter... Jesus Christ, that alone makes me want to cancel my subscription.
stuckinhell 4y ago
Devoted fanbases doesn't mean money though. TV shows can be expensive to make and often have very thin margins. Nerd were major targets for a while because they have extra income they would use to buy merchandise. It's why reality tv is beloved by executives because it's cheap and profitable.

darknavi 4y ago

Here is a crazy thought: Could streaming providers put this into the hands of the customers? What if they put the idea of "cancel or continue?" in their faces and made them vote with their feet (screens)?

hadlock 4y ago
Surely the analytics team at netflix has looked at this in depth and decided their current strategy is the most truthful and reliable. When you start polling people vs looking at raw usage data, you end up with people voting ideologically vs their true preferences. Probably. It would be very interesting to hear from someone on the analytics team about how viewership data impacts show renewal, but I suspect this algorithm is super-secret sauce that keeps them profitable compared to their competitors.
bmacho 4y ago
They do exactly this: if enough people watch it, they continue, otherwise they cancel.

cafed00d 4y ago

God! I hate “data driven decision making” with the intensity of a thousand white hot suns

efsavage 4y ago

I've taken a similar approach for reading sci-fi/fantasy, where authors/publishers seem obligated to make everything a trilogy. I'm tired of reading a great book and waiting years for the next, so now I just don't bother until they're all done. If they're expecting to use the first book to decide whether to do the remainder (which seems rare) I'm not helping the situation, but hopefully I'm voting with my dollars that writing standalone books is appealing. There's enough good stuff out there, or series being completedthat even at 20-30 books per year I'm not lacking for anything to read. I'm looking forward to reading The Kingkiller Chronicle, The Stormlight Archive, etc. ... someday.

phs 4y ago
The system I use is somewhat similar, but with a twist: I wait for the author to die.
- efsavage 4y ago
  I'd venture to say that the demographics of science fiction/fantasy authors differ greatly between the deceased greats and the active contributors, and that would be something I would be afraid to miss out on by limiting myself to the former.
jerojero 4y ago
Well at least Brandon Sanderson is really transparent with his progress and seems to be capable of writing consistently, he doesn't seem to be the kind of "i'm waiting for inspiration to come" author. So if you get into The Stormlight Archive you know a new book is coming every 3-4 years; and that's a good pace, imo. The books are lengthy. But other than that, I completely agree with you. Anyone that has read The Kingkiller Chronicle will. Or The Song of Ice and Fire. In any case, I haven't ever really regretted reading a good book or watching a good series even if the ending is not out. So of course it's a shame for something to get cancelled or never released but they can't take away the good time you had with it in the first place.

jron 4y ago

I told friends and family to wait for season 3 before watching 1899 and to start with Dark. I canceled my Netflix sub after they canceled 1899 and won't return to anything but torrents for Netflix content.

londons_explore 4y ago

The flip side of this for Netflix is that frequent cancellation helps keep cast and crew costs far lower. The cast typically want a big pay bump when it has become clear the show is successful...

aksss 4y ago

We could learn a thing or two from the British in the sense of making short run series, designed to not go beyond two or three seasons. Like the wrap-up is known from the start. It seems like Netflix wants every show to go on for infinity, and if it doesn't show promise for that by end of season, it gets axed. Far better to make several well-premised stories with limited seasons, than so many false starts that piss off viewers. That said, God help the English and their insatiable appetite for procedurals to the exclusion of nearly everything else. The only thing more amazing than the quantity of repetitive detective shows is that the population hasn't risen up in revolt over it.

TristanBall 4y ago

Yup. This is actually why I just cancelled my netflix completely. I thought it was pretty telling that in their little "tell us why you're cancelling" they didn't have "because we cancel too many shows mid run". They didn't even have "just following your lead"!!

squarefoot 4y ago

1899 cancelled? Another low for Netflix, that series was great. I wonder if series producers could demand upfront to be given by contract enough episodes to wrap up and complete stories so that the whole series doesn't lose all its value in case of DVD adaptation or re-run? Also, please stop ending seasons with cliffhangers. Doing that equals to treating your viewers as dumb idiots who need an incentive to start watching the next season, aside destroying the series value in case of cancellation.

rnd0 4y ago
To be fair, I always assumed that the cliffhanger thing was for the benefit of the studios. Like "hey, we have a story to tell and viewers have a reason to come back. please renew us for another season". It sucks that 1899 was cancelled but to be fair I was expecting it personally.

perryizgr8 4y ago

Why doesn't Netflix create shows that are more episodic? Like each episode is a self-contained story, like Star Trek (not the recent ones, they are barely Trek). And produce 20-30 episodes each season. Even if a few stories are not great, it still doesn't hurt the show much. People will continue to watch, and re-watch. It is also easier to start. I have been avoiding 1899, just because it feels so tedious to follow one over-arching story over 8 hours.

zamadatix 4y ago
Also nothing wrong with just releasing a miniseries instead of trying to make everything a multi-season affair based on how successful it is. The two concepts might align well really.
gs17 4y ago
Episodic shows also get cancelled by them.

thedailymail 4y ago

I prefer to think of this as a double-cliffhanger, in which the buildup of suspense relies on creating an aura of angsty dread over 1) will the protagonist escape from those circling hammerheads? and 2) will the producers cancel Season 2???

Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago

Can't they start making 1 season tv shows then? I mean, clearly they can't commit, at least make only one season with an ending!

waspight 4y ago

Why don’t they just stick to mini series? Best invention since the movies imo.

Nexxxeh 4y ago

I don't understand why they don't now factor a TV movie or mini series to tie it all off, in the season's comissioning. A Serenity to Firefly. Even if one is shot every season that may be its last. Just left without post-production unless needed. Everyone gets resolution, the show is presumably worth more in the catalogue and resale, and you've got people watching another couple of hours of content. No more "I'm not starting it, Netflix will kill it on a cliffhanger." The shot footage can potentially be recycled for the next season anyway, or used to write out actors that don't return or whatever. Would writing and shooting less than three hours of material, with no post-production, really cost that much more?

nicolas_t 4y ago

I still watch Netflix but yes after being burned so many times, I do not want to start a series until I know it's concluded satisfactorily. 1899 was something I thought I'd watch and was on my shortlist but I won't now that I know that it's been cancelled in the first season.

technofiend 4y ago

Sort of a tangent, but related: I read a lot of serialized fiction and it suffers from the same problem that there's an implied contract the creator will take the consumer through a complete story arc. But authors struggle with both writing new episodes and attracting readers, and unless they build enough viewership it's possible they'll lose motivation and just stop writing. To protect yourself from this, it usually pays to either read stories from authors who've finished work in the past, or wait until they're done. Too long between episodes, or frankly lots of "slice of life" (cynically read: the author hasn't plotted anything out and doesn't have a plan to create and resolve conflict, so they just putter along) and most readers will lose interest. Anecdotally this is why I stopped watching Rick and Morty even prior to the various revelations about the authors. They shed enough momentum that any interest in the characters or universe was lost. And R & M is a good example of what happens when there's no planned plot line: you end up with filler episodes like "Intergalactic Cable" where the authors just riff randomly. For people who remember Babylon 5, there was a great deal of excitement in part because the arcs were all pre-planned which some viewed as a positive because there was no danger of the show just turning into episodic and formulaic exploitation of a known set of characters and places. We used to have TV shows just stagger on until cancelled, with showrunners hoping to be the next Simpsons, Star Trek or Stargate writer and now we're at the other extreme that if audiences don't show immediate and sustained engagement, the show (at least on Netflix, HBO MAX, etc) is doomed.

oneoff786 4y ago
I mean, Rick and Morty has made many jokes about not wanting to be a show about progressing the canon. It’s probably the worst possible example you could choose for this concept. Most episodes are deconstructions of other works and they seem to prefer it being that way. I do too. I’m still laughing at the concept of a deconstruction of homages to die hard. I love their perspectives on writing.
- technofiend 4y ago
  >I mean, Rick and Morty has made many jokes about not wanting to be a show about progressing the canon. Yeah, part of my complaint is indeed there's no story arc, but my other complaint specifically about R & M was loss of momentum: they took so long between seasons it just stopped being interesting. Because even if I got back into the next season how long before the season after that comes around? I'd rather just stop watching. And again that's just a personal opinion. I don't expect most people will feel the same.

m000 4y ago

Multi-season series rarely work these days. They will be either cancelled too early (e.g. 1899), or closed/cancelled too late (e.g. Walking Dead). Both are disrespectful to the time the viewer spent on the series. Limited series is the future.

stuckinhell 4y ago

This article is really begging the question: Why do tv shows need multiple seasons ? What's wrong with telling a single story in 8-10 episodes and calling it a day ? Doesn't british television often work this way ?

eatsyourtacos 4y ago
>Why do tv shows need multiple seasons ? Because people get comfortable with the characters/storyline and want to see more. Is it really that difficult of a concept? And I find it amusing that you bring up British TV, because the only shows that I can think of that are super popular and have a worldwide audience are the ones that run for quite a while. The Crown, Downton Abbey, Peaky Blinders, Sherlock. Yeah they do a lot of shorter ones but those barely get out of the country as far as I'm aware.
- stuckinhell 4y ago
  Yes, its difficult concept when most tv shows get canceled after 1-2 seasons especially on netflix it seems. I don't think everything needs to be super popular, have a world wide audience, or go on forever. Many British tv shows have a very different sensibility when it comes to seasons, the vast majority are done after 1-2 seasons. It seems netflix tv shows should be more oriented as mini series.
orange_fritter 4y ago
Yes I would argue that it's an extremely difficult skill to keep an intense story going forever. A 4-9 episode miniseries is probably my favorite format to watch because the parameters are known ahead of time and it's not a long enough shoot that real life gets in the way of the writers and actors. Breaking Bad was a rare exception.
mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
I think some of these are modeled after a TV show format but are just long movies and several episodes or sub-story lines are added to extend it out to 8-12 hours worth of content. It might be a better story if it was condensed, somewhere I read that removing in the edit phase is key and much more difficult but contributes to a better product.

eli_gottlieb 4y ago

>some sort of record-breaking fluke megahit (Wednesday) I watched it and liked it, but huh, I didn't realize that it was a record-breaking fluke megahit. Good to hear it'll get a second season, though!

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

That's a stretch. Do people really anticipate cancellation and use it as an excuse? I doubt the loop is real. Now, it is a real thing that NetFlix has abandoned all pretense of building a catalog. They're now just ratings-whores like most content providers.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

We were just screwed by this last week. After weeks of rationing out a detective series we came to the last episode just to have a cliff-hanger added in the last 20 seconds. And the show long-cancelled. Sigh.

Krollifi 4y ago

I didn’t like 1899 or Dark so I celebrate their cancellation and their resources going to a better series.

aryehof 4y ago

Is there some source that lists canceled Netflix series? I’d like to know which series are not worth starting?