5 ms·

I don't think Netflix has a particular problem; maintaining series for more than a couple of seasons has always been hard in broadcasting. It's easier to spot n

by toyg 4y ago

I don't think Netflix has a particular problem; maintaining series for more than a couple of seasons has always been hard in broadcasting. It's easier to spot now because people have complete visibility: instead of caring about a couple of series in key time slots, they can know care about all series, so it's more noticeable that most series die a sad death. Addressing off-ramps in a nicer way would be an innovation. The problem is that production costs are so high, that keeping a losing franchise running is extremely expensive. On the other hand, Google plays in a field where maintenance costs are a rounding error. You can basically freeze a product and keep it running forever for pennies, and these products get embedded in our daily lives, which is why killing it looks so bad - I can always pick up a new series with zero effort, whereas migrating off a productive service takes time and effort.

esprehn 4y ago
Netflix is different from traditional broadcasting in that they always order an entire season. That makes the cancellations more dramatic because instead of a pilot or few episodes like in the past they instead keep performing a Firefly on their viewers over and over again.
hotpotamus 4y ago
The joke I've heard is "six seasons and a movie" that goes back to broadcast TV series. Something about contracts running six years, so costs balloon after that, and a one-time movie is much easier to schedule a group of actors for. I've long wondered why Netflix doesn't do it more often. I'm sore about the cancellation of "Santa Clarita Diet" and I think it could easily be wrapped up in a movie.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Costs (salaries) can balloon on successful series. It's also the case that, if a series is getting close to the number of episodes that can make for profitable syndication deals, it made sense (in the context of network TV) to stretch things to that point. It's also the case that, as long a series is still doing pretty well, odds are that putting something new in its slot will be a net negative. Traditional broadcast also just had different incentives than streaming. A successful sitcom captured a lot of eyeballs that could be translated into advertising dollars. It could also be a magnet for viewers to watch perhaps somewhat less captivating content in adjacent timeslots a la "must see TV Thursdays on NBC." Netflix, on the other hand, mostly needs to fill its catalog and have enough really must see content so that subscribers keep renewing. There's overlap between the two models. Both reward series that people really want to watch. But the specifics are subtly different.
- meh8881 4y ago
  This is a joke from Community about open ended TV shows typically having enough narrative steam to get a compelling run of six seasons and a movie at best. Not a financial thing. Community has crawled through the trenches to get its six seasons and now finally a movie and I wish them the best.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Sometimes shows naturally have a 1 or 2 season arc and sometimes (rarely) they go out strong at 6 or 7. But, yeah, for me sometime around season 5--even if a show has successfully mixed things up a bit--I find tuning in for new episodes more and more optional in most cases.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    I wasn't thinking of it as a Community joke, but rather a Dan Harmon quote/meme that he placed in Community (he's nothing if not meta). If my memory is correct (and it does get a bit fuzzy over time), my comment above is paraphrasing him or some other explanation of the saying.
- gowld 4y ago
  There's no 6-season cutoff. It was just an estimate of a successful show.
  - toyg 4y ago
    The cutoff is 100 episodes, which traditionally is a magic number for US syndication deals. An ongoing series with 100 episodes under its belt will get a good deal for everyone involved. Most traditional series will hit that number in 5 seasons, but obviously nobody wants to make a deal for a dead series; so you produce season 6 too, to make it palatable. By this point, however, your talent bill has probably grown significantly, so making new seasons is less and less profitable - as well as narratively hard. So you pull the plug and start afresh.
eastbound 4y ago
> You can basically freeze a product and keep it running forever for pennies We’re moving to a security culture where a Cloud product not only has to be constantly rewritten to keep its features (not only upgrade libraries but also swap out the old Apache libs), but logs must be constantly inspected to address security risks, and GDPR issues have to be automatically lodged with CNIL. This “let’s keep this service only” has become as dangerous as leaving a Windows XP computer connected to the Internet.
- taeric 4y ago
  Yes and no. Things do need monitoring and support. But hardening is doable, as well. With more and more use solidifying exactly what to allow. Upgrades and new features often make hardening tougher, due to a combinitorial explosion in exposed surface area.
phpisthebest 4y ago
2 "Seasons" of a netflix show is not even 1 season of broadcast... Most Broadcast shows run 20-24 Episodes per Season. Netflix is 10 at the most, some 6 episodes. per "season" That is part of their problem, and why the cancellations feel even more abrupt and why people do not want to invest time in them. it is hard to tell a compelling story in 6 episodes of TV. So if a netflix series get 2 seasons, 12 Episode. it is just starting... even though to netflix thinks it should have a captive audience. that would just be the midseason of a Broadcast show Most of the popular shows on broadcast would never had made it to be popular under the netflix model of 1000 shows @ 6 episodes...
- skeletal88 4y ago
  Depends on the country, it is totally ok for some british detective/crime series to have 6 episode seasons, because each episode is an hour or 1,5 long, they are not filled with pointless stuff to make them longer, etc. I recommend Line of duty.
  - isk517 4y ago
    The short series format works if you write a story that is suited to it. When done right it feels like the middle ground between movies and a full TV series, not as starved for time as a movie and moves much faster than a 12-24 episode TV series. Of course the issue with Netflix is they tend to take what would traditionally be a 24 episode TV series, break it down into small parts, then cancel it at a inconvenient point in the story.
- mejutoco 4y ago
  IMO the problem of Netflix is not how the split the shows or their duration, but their quality.
  - toyg 4y ago
    Yeah, I think that's the real issue. People complain about 6 episodes not being enough, but the truth is that a lot of those 6-8 episodes now feels like filler - probably because some constraints (ad cuts on scenes...) have disappeared, so writers feel emboldened. Not everything can be The Wire.
r0ze-at-hn 4y ago
> Google plays in a field where maintenance costs are a rounding error. You can basically freeze a product and keep it running forever for pennies, and these products get embedded in our daily lives, which is why killing it looks so bad That would be nice if it was true, but that is not how it plays out at most tech companies. I have specifically targeted this in my career, thinking about engineering productivity and even spent a number of years working at a company that provided software for manufacturing and explicitly learning about lessons learned in that field. What usually happens is maintenance costs are not taken into account when building a product and a team is not disbanded after building something. They continue to run the larger teams/orgs until one day some VP looks at the expenses and decides to simply kill the entire product. So in a world of having hiring freezes, having someone come in to help reduce total costs, from AWS to headcount is a way to free up people and get "new hires" without additional cost. Some companies and individuals seem to get this instinctively, but many are happy to not make waves and try to improve the system. For some in management, adding value without headcount doesn't mean anything for them individually so they wont. Increasing the total value over total costs of teams and orgs is my jam. I can take over products that have high maintenance burden, but are valuable, dramatically reduce the maintenance burden, then turn around with my free headcount and go and do it again and again growing the total value produced. This is the 10X-100X game.
autokad 4y ago
when I was doing research on ratings, one thing I noticed: no matter how popular or unpopular a show, its an almost certainty that the number of viewers viewing something goes down over time. The first season almost always has more viewers than season 2, season 2 almost always has more viewers than season 3. The only real difference between the extremely popular shows is that the decrease from season to season is not as pronounced, but its still there. I was like wow, I'm surprised they even bother with season 2s.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
I think google needs to stop launching new products under its own name. If they dont explode as desireable but are sustainable, spin them out. Then again, maybe we are all over estimating how sustainable these products really are.

by toyg 4y ago

esprehn 4y ago

Netflix is different from traditional broadcasting in that they always order an entire season. That makes the cancellations more dramatic because instead of a pilot or few episodes like in the past they instead keep performing a Firefly on their viewers over and over again.

hotpotamus 4y ago

The joke I've heard is "six seasons and a movie" that goes back to broadcast TV series. Something about contracts running six years, so costs balloon after that, and a one-time movie is much easier to schedule a group of actors for. I've long wondered why Netflix doesn't do it more often. I'm sore about the cancellation of "Santa Clarita Diet" and I think it could easily be wrapped up in a movie.

ghaff 4y ago
Costs (salaries) can balloon on successful series. It's also the case that, if a series is getting close to the number of episodes that can make for profitable syndication deals, it made sense (in the context of network TV) to stretch things to that point. It's also the case that, as long a series is still doing pretty well, odds are that putting something new in its slot will be a net negative. Traditional broadcast also just had different incentives than streaming. A successful sitcom captured a lot of eyeballs that could be translated into advertising dollars. It could also be a magnet for viewers to watch perhaps somewhat less captivating content in adjacent timeslots a la "must see TV Thursdays on NBC." Netflix, on the other hand, mostly needs to fill its catalog and have enough really must see content so that subscribers keep renewing. There's overlap between the two models. Both reward series that people really want to watch. But the specifics are subtly different.
meh8881 4y ago
This is a joke from Community about open ended TV shows typically having enough narrative steam to get a compelling run of six seasons and a movie at best. Not a financial thing. Community has crawled through the trenches to get its six seasons and now finally a movie and I wish them the best.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Sometimes shows naturally have a 1 or 2 season arc and sometimes (rarely) they go out strong at 6 or 7. But, yeah, for me sometime around season 5--even if a show has successfully mixed things up a bit--I find tuning in for new episodes more and more optional in most cases.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I wasn't thinking of it as a Community joke, but rather a Dan Harmon quote/meme that he placed in Community (he's nothing if not meta). If my memory is correct (and it does get a bit fuzzy over time), my comment above is paraphrasing him or some other explanation of the saying.
gowld 4y ago
There's no 6-season cutoff. It was just an estimate of a successful show.
- toyg 4y ago
  The cutoff is 100 episodes, which traditionally is a magic number for US syndication deals. An ongoing series with 100 episodes under its belt will get a good deal for everyone involved. Most traditional series will hit that number in 5 seasons, but obviously nobody wants to make a deal for a dead series; so you produce season 6 too, to make it palatable. By this point, however, your talent bill has probably grown significantly, so making new seasons is less and less profitable - as well as narratively hard. So you pull the plug and start afresh.

eastbound 4y ago

> You can basically freeze a product and keep it running forever for pennies We’re moving to a security culture where a Cloud product not only has to be constantly rewritten to keep its features (not only upgrade libraries but also swap out the old Apache libs), but logs must be constantly inspected to address security risks, and GDPR issues have to be automatically lodged with CNIL. This “let’s keep this service only” has become as dangerous as leaving a Windows XP computer connected to the Internet.

taeric 4y ago
Yes and no. Things do need monitoring and support. But hardening is doable, as well. With more and more use solidifying exactly what to allow. Upgrades and new features often make hardening tougher, due to a combinitorial explosion in exposed surface area.

phpisthebest 4y ago

2 "Seasons" of a netflix show is not even 1 season of broadcast... Most Broadcast shows run 20-24 Episodes per Season. Netflix is 10 at the most, some 6 episodes. per "season" That is part of their problem, and why the cancellations feel even more abrupt and why people do not want to invest time in them. it is hard to tell a compelling story in 6 episodes of TV. So if a netflix series get 2 seasons, 12 Episode. it is just starting... even though to netflix thinks it should have a captive audience. that would just be the midseason of a Broadcast show Most of the popular shows on broadcast would never had made it to be popular under the netflix model of 1000 shows @ 6 episodes...

skeletal88 4y ago
Depends on the country, it is totally ok for some british detective/crime series to have 6 episode seasons, because each episode is an hour or 1,5 long, they are not filled with pointless stuff to make them longer, etc. I recommend Line of duty.
- isk517 4y ago
  The short series format works if you write a story that is suited to it. When done right it feels like the middle ground between movies and a full TV series, not as starved for time as a movie and moves much faster than a 12-24 episode TV series. Of course the issue with Netflix is they tend to take what would traditionally be a 24 episode TV series, break it down into small parts, then cancel it at a inconvenient point in the story.
mejutoco 4y ago
IMO the problem of Netflix is not how the split the shows or their duration, but their quality.
- toyg 4y ago
  Yeah, I think that's the real issue. People complain about 6 episodes not being enough, but the truth is that a lot of those 6-8 episodes now feels like filler - probably because some constraints (ad cuts on scenes...) have disappeared, so writers feel emboldened. Not everything can be The Wire.

r0ze-at-hn 4y ago

> Google plays in a field where maintenance costs are a rounding error. You can basically freeze a product and keep it running forever for pennies, and these products get embedded in our daily lives, which is why killing it looks so bad That would be nice if it was true, but that is not how it plays out at most tech companies. I have specifically targeted this in my career, thinking about engineering productivity and even spent a number of years working at a company that provided software for manufacturing and explicitly learning about lessons learned in that field. What usually happens is maintenance costs are not taken into account when building a product and a team is not disbanded after building something. They continue to run the larger teams/orgs until one day some VP looks at the expenses and decides to simply kill the entire product. So in a world of having hiring freezes, having someone come in to help reduce total costs, from AWS to headcount is a way to free up people and get "new hires" without additional cost. Some companies and individuals seem to get this instinctively, but many are happy to not make waves and try to improve the system. For some in management, adding value without headcount doesn't mean anything for them individually so they wont. Increasing the total value over total costs of teams and orgs is my jam. I can take over products that have high maintenance burden, but are valuable, dramatically reduce the maintenance burden, then turn around with my free headcount and go and do it again and again growing the total value produced. This is the 10X-100X game.

autokad 4y ago

when I was doing research on ratings, one thing I noticed: no matter how popular or unpopular a show, its an almost certainty that the number of viewers viewing something goes down over time. The first season almost always has more viewers than season 2, season 2 almost always has more viewers than season 3. The only real difference between the extremely popular shows is that the decrease from season to season is not as pronounced, but its still there. I was like wow, I'm surprised they even bother with season 2s.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

I think google needs to stop launching new products under its own name. If they dont explode as desireable but are sustainable, spin them out. Then again, maybe we are all over estimating how sustainable these products really are.