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

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/16/netflix-has-created-a-self-fulfilling-cancelation-loop-with-its-new-shows/

by mikenew • 4 years ago

212 285 4 years ago

forbes.com

tapoxi• 4 years 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.

phpisthebest3• 4 years 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

9887472• 4 years 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..

eddie_catflap• 4 years 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.

raffraffraff• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

schneems2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

schneems2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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

bityard• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

devnullbrain• 4 years ago

A quirk of human psychology is that we value ongoing storylines as if they were finished storylines. When we watch a Lost or read a Song Of Ice And Fire, we relate the twists and turns to finished stories we already know - or even to real life. We take it as a given that the plot thread spun in episode 3 will, somewhere, have a satisfying conclusion. The method that put the gun on the wall must satisfy physical and logical laws. So we become invested.

As a result, writers are incentivised to write convoluted, twisting, mysterious threads.

They're not required to finish them.

twiceaday• 4 years ago

I don't think this is much deeper than modern media abusing a strong expectation set-up by past media. The short-term mysteries are only as interesting as the audiences expectation that they will be resolved in an interesting way. We are trusting the narrator not to let us down. But of course it is much simpler to create mystery than to resolve it, and whenever the resolution is bad that trust gets chipped away. I think this trust is a limited resource and it feels like too many modern stories are chipping away at it. At least thats the case for me. I've become jaded about this kind of breach of trust. The shows hope that I am not attentive enough and keep around my positive memories of the mystery after observing the awful resolution. No. I go out of my way to taint past memories and call the experience bad overall.

falcolas• 4 years ago

I’m not sure if it’s psychology or not, but it sure is annoying. Especially when you then get big name creators berating fans for expecting a creator to follow through with their implied promises. “[ … ] doesn’t owe you anything.”

DalekBaldwin• 4 years ago

I think this trend is why they've gone all-in on sex-on-the-beach shows and true crime docuseries. One season can easily be self-contained, and if the viewer gets another, it's just a nice bonus.

Izkata4• 4 years ago

Which is disappointing, because there is stuff out there like Wonderfalls - the writers from the beginning understood the premise was so weird that they wrote the first season as self-contained, just in case it was canceled. And it was. And because of how they wrote it, it still works as a one-off thing to watch even now.

timmytokyo• 4 years ago

Television shows whose seasons are one-and-done (or two-and-done) are pretty common in the UK. I always preferred that model, because the shows are tightly plotted from beginning to end with a complete story arc and no loose ends. Another model that works is the anthology model.

jemmyw• 4 years ago

And also not having a billion episodes. The older UK standard was 6 episodes per series and so it felt like the script was also very tight, every line had to matter.

scohesc• 4 years 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.

layer82• 4 years 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

Izkata4• 4 years 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.

dogma1138• 4 years ago

Not not really Netflix doesn’t really do self contained seasons for the most part.

And don’t need to go all the way to Japan.

British shows used to have “series” which were self contained stories usually under 10 episodes sometimes even as little as 3 episodes in a series and series could be years apart.

However as budget grew and as British shows found audiences outside of the UK many have adopted a more seasonal approach with continuity between series and a yearly cycle.

However in general applying the anime way to shows is quite difficult because of the huge budget many shows require especially Scifi/Fantasy and historical dramas and a lot of that initial budget goes into setting up the production.

So you almost always need a multi seasonal plan to get those greenlit. Granted with CGI there is much less upfront sunken cost these days and much more of the cost goes into post production for each season but there is still enough when you need to build whole sets and costumes.

Miniseries also aren’t a solution mini series used to be pretty much made for TV movies with large budgets and often were huge events for the network.

Golden age 80’s miniseries like Winds of War, V and Masada from the 80’s had budgets on par with big movie blockbusters.

Winds of War which came out in the same year as Return of the Jedi had a budget of $40M to RoTJ $32.

By the late 80’s miniseries series like War and Remembrance were produced on a budget of over $100M, in fact War and Remembrance in 1988 had a budget larger than the 3 highest grossing films that came out that year - combined.

mindcrime4• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

mindcrime4• 4 years 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. :-(

Izkata4• 4 years 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)

nostromo3• 4 years ago

It’s befuddling.

Big Co: let’s acquire this beloved series for $X00 million.

…

Big Co: ok writers, feel free to completely ignore the content we just paid endless riches to acquire and change it however you’d like.

…

Big Co: strange, the fans don’t seem to be as excited about this content as we expected!

snarf212• 4 years ago

WoT was hot garbage from the jump and not even Rosamund Pike could save it. GoT was awesome and did respect the source material. It is just that GRRM hasn't written in 20 years that caused major issues. The writing that he actually did was good. His problem was that he wove too many threads and people started getting bored and wondering if the story in the show would ever end. So they rushed the ending (so it could end) and made some questionable choices. However, it isn't like there were any good options for how to wrap it up.

Epic fantasy is hard. Look at the middle 6 WoT books, almost nothing of relevance happens in 4000 pages. When GoT was signed I'm sure GRRM promised them that the next books were already "done" and ready for release but as is typical, 12 years later they had nothing. Honestly, they should have diverged from the source after season 4 and create a new story that could be concluded satisfactorily.

gamblor9564• 4 years ago

TBH, after the first 3 books WOT is mostly boring trash that largely consists of female characters standing around tugging on their hair or smoothing their dresses while the male characters mope around.

homeland221• 4 years ago

At least there are copius amount of dragons cgi in S8 GoT. Wheel of Time is a waste of time to watch. That witcher Blood is also mediocre despite strong casts. I expect S3-S4 Witcher will be bad as well. Netflix is really going for dumpster metrics these days. Even if the viewership is no at Squid level, complete the storyline. HBO able to do that with Westworld. Netflix the biggest streamers cant.

allisdust3• 4 years ago

One of the worst book to series adaptations ever created. There was no sensible reason for the drastic changes in plot and characters they have done. Wish they would cancel and retry it with some other creative team.

emptysongglass• 4 years ago

I really, really enjoy the Wheel of Time series and hope it continues. I haven't read the books. The writing and acting have been consistently great.

kneebonian• 4 years ago

    Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing.

Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation

_moof• 4 years ago

Fortunately with Wheel of Time the story has already been told. You can go read it whenever you want. And although I'm not normally a "the book was better" type, for this reader, the show really is disappointing.

mindcrime4• 4 years ago

I'm on the last book literally right now. So yeah, I'll have read it either way. But I was kinda sorta thinking that a nice way to celebrate finishing the books would be to jump over and watch the show. I've heard mixed reports on how good (or bad) it is though, so I dunno.

Anyway, WoT in particular aside, the basic principle is the same: if you're going to take on producing an epic work, I'd really prefer that you commit to actually finishing it. That's true pretty much regardless of what franchise/property we're talking about.

acdha3• 4 years ago

That was especially weird to do right around the holidays. Some people are single & stuck in the airport but an awful lot of people are not looking to binge a show during peak family season. I was planning to try it this month but…

treeman79• 4 years ago

For some reason the first half of Voltron season 1 is missing on Netflix. They produced the show. Confusing.

iforgotpassword3• 4 years ago

I somehow managed to watch 1899 right on release and really enjoyed it, so am really bummed. But a lot of people around me just haven't gotten around to it because of the holidays, and now say the same thing as you do.

And I've heard some fans of DARK saying they just couldn't get into it because it was too slow, but I really liked that style of storytelling.

I just wish everybody and their mom would put on that show now even if they don't actually watch it, so maybe the numbers change and they reverse their decision. I actually took this as the final straw to cancel my Netflix subscription and will only ever sign up again if that show gets finished.

jsnell7• 4 years ago

I doubt that the holidays are the explanation.

1899 released five weeks before Christmas. The peak viewership for a Netflix show is typically first or second week (I guess mostly since the first week tends to be partial) and drops of fairly rapidly.

For comparison, Wednesday released 1 week after 1899, even closer to the holidays, racked up 5x the view numbers of 1899, and even had more viewers on Christmas week than 1899 had in its best.

(For me, it's that the word of mouth on 1899 was not good. The specific complaints people had were just the kind of thing that would drive me up the wall. So while I binged a bunch of shows during the holidays with different subsets of family, 1899 wasn't even in the discussion with any of them.)

imglorp• 4 years ago

Amazon might pick it up. They also picked up Expanse after enough fan noise.

autoexec3• 4 years ago

But a lot of people around me just haven't gotten around to it because of the holidays

Amazon's the tick was canceled, based on views, before I even got around to seeing it. Media companies need to get it through their heads that we're done watching TV and movies on their schedule. I've got far to much competing for my time and I'll get to things when it's good for me. That's what drove people to VCRs, then DVDs, then DVRs, then streaming.

They're still trying to stuff the genie back into the bottle. They often withhold episodes, choosing to dole them out once a week so they can longer maintain and better control social media coverage/adverting. I already wait until a season is fully released before I start watching (it's saved me from a lot of disappointment already).

I just wish everybody and their mom would put on that show now even if they don't actually watch it, so maybe the numbers change and they reverse their decision.

Streaming services need to accept that the times and their viewers have changed. I'm not going to let them make me feel pressured to jump on every episode of something I enjoy the moment they release it, and I'm not going to spend my time trying to manipulate their numbers and hope that somehow that gets me what I want. Time is short and I've got plenty of better things to do than play games for the sake of clueless streaming companies.

Fire-Dragon-DoL2• 4 years ago

It's slow. I love dark, probably my favorite tv show, still 1899 is slow. That being said, it's still looking like an amazing show, I like slow, but it was way too slow, but not to the point of canceling. They would have improved with the next season. Bah, I'm so disappointed in Netflix.

It seems like only books get endings. Isn't there a way to read books in a shared way, like tv, so that I could do that with my wife?

FuturisticLover2• 4 years ago

It wasn't on Dark level but it was still good. I was able to finish it within 2 days probably because most of shows nowadays, especially from Netflix wasn't that good.

I can't remember the last time Netflix released an amazing series.

karaterobot2• 4 years ago

If Wheel of Time gets canceled before the entire story is told, they'll just get Brandon Sanderson to start a production company and finish it.

LegitShady• 4 years ago

sanderson is nit a film maker or producer.

marcosdumay• 4 years ago

I really recommend watching 1899.

It finishes the story before ending in a cliffhanger. And, honestly a second season would probably not be good at all, because there isn't much to add up to it.

unshavedyak• 4 years ago

Yea i quite liked it. Though i'm quite sour on Netflix for the cancellation. Debating not bothering subscribing to them for any shows with incomplete stories.

I think of 1899 like the show Dark (also made by the same people i believe). Did i like Dark S1? Yes. Is it almost exponentially better when all the seasons are watched? Definitely. Gives me pains wondering what 1899 could have been when viewed through the Dark lens.

ninth_ant• 4 years ago

I can imagine if Dark had been cancelled after one season folks would have said the same as you did here. Yet seasons 2-3 were unexpectedly additive to the whole story.

abadger9• 4 years ago

my wife and I absolutely hated 1899, but we also hated midnight mass as well - it's possible these types of series aren't our pallet but I wouldn't invest too much time with 1899.

LeftHandPath• 4 years ago

It seems like part of a larger trend of overemphasis on min-maxing profits by praying at the altar of data and using what those gods return to try to cut all the right corners on the product. In the end, there are things that don't show up in the data that do affect consumption.

dom96• 4 years ago

I watched the first episode of 1899 and could see why it was cancelled. Just an amalgamation of mysteries that don't seem to have much connection.

On the other hand, I also watched Wednesday and thought it was missing a lot of what made The Addams Family great. But I guess it just wasn't made for me.

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.

I don't think they look at viewership when deciding whether to cancel a show. They look at the percentage of people that continued watching more than just the first episode.

mingus88• 4 years ago

Here's why this really stinks. The writers of Dark wrapped up every mystery. It was through composed from the start and even the choice of 3 seasons was thematically relevant (same reason why the logo is a three sided knot)

We have every reason to believe that 1899 would have connected every one of those mysteries, because the writers planned the whole show out.

But if Netflix is only going to support reality cooking shows or breakaway hits, then we will never see another masterpiece on Netflix again.

I checked out 1899 but then I got busy with my two kids, work, and the holidays. I even gave it two thumbs up. I fully intended to watch the whole thing, probably multiple times because of all the details they put into it. But I need the time and focus to actually sit and watch it (and read all the subtitles)

But I guess according to their metrics, my single viewing of Ep01 hurt more than it helped because I didn't immediately binge the entire show to completion.

hgsgm3• 4 years ago

I don't know that show. It is a cliffhanger that teases the next story, or a story ended in the middle? For shows that tease the next story at the end of an episode or season, you can just ignore the tease.

autoexec3• 4 years ago

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.

Exactly. Every series that ends well, even if it only ever attracts a small number of fans, is a benefit for netflix's library and service. Every show that they cancel is just a time bomb that will either sit unwatched by those who know better or disappoint and piss off one netflix customer after another that hasn't been forewarned.

Netflix needs to get their shit together.

ergvgdvgrd• 4 years ago

The irony with your comment about the Wheel of Time is that the _book_ very nearly was canceled... the writer died after taking a very long time to finish what he did, but then Brandon Sanderson stepped in and finished the series after the original author's death.

allisdust3• 4 years ago

It wasn't nearly cancelled. Robert Jordan picked sanderson and passed on his notes, ending. He even wrote the last parts of the book. It's planned as well as it could be.

oerpli• 4 years ago

Though 1899 was really a genuinely bad series. I think if someone summarized the plot you would think it's a meme on r/iam14andthisisdeep

Netflix might be doing weird stuff but 1899 is a really bad example because the mistake there was actually greenlighting the first season.

oco101• 4 years ago

I agree was\is really bad. Still canceling a series based on how many viewers they have in the first weeks is bad practice. I, for one, do not watch almost any movies or series durning the summer so winter I'm just catching up, and I probably missed great series also. At least they should wait at a 6 month to a year at least before deciding or not to cancel it forever.

Doxin• 4 years ago

So while 1899 technically ends on a cliffhanger, it works perfectly well as an open-ended story. I'd still recommend watching it.

treis2• 4 years ago

I heard about 1899 being cancelled.

Ugh what a crappy way to start my morning :(. That was a legitimately good show and they ended on a massive cliff hanger.

flippinburgers3• 4 years ago

Not watching TWOT at this point will be because the first season was an awful "adaptation".

joshstrange2• 4 years ago

Just read the books or listen to the audiobooks (with the original narrators, Kate Reading and Michael Kramer) the show is terrible. I'll continue to hate-watch it just to call out how much they got wrong but more out of a sense of obligation than for any enjoyment.

What's most frustrating is they made changes that aren't even for the better. At least Foundation made a good sci-fi show based on someone who walked by a person reading the actual book (spoiler, re-reading the book did not hold up well for me), WoT somehow made a "meh" show which diverged from the books for no good reason.

I think I've fully moved into the "dear god please don't make a TV/Movie adaptation of a book series I love"-camp. I never read GoT but I liked the show and I think I've heard that, aside from the ending, the show does a pretty good job. Unfortunately I feel like way more often than not the Show/Movie is just a huge disappointment.

redm• 4 years 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..

jameshart2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

jameshart2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

horsawlarway2• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/YffFM

stackedinserter• 4 years 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.

acdha3• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

horsawlarway2• 4 years 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.

MBCook2• 4 years 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/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.

at_a_remove2• 4 years ago

That was sort of true of "syndication," or roughly your hundredth episode. If the show ran long enough, it got into syndication, and then the residuals mattered. It used to be that a hundred episodes was kind of a benchmark for that sort of thing.

Case in point, Angel, which was cancelled on a February when Joss Whedon, the showrunner, demanded to know whether or not they got a fifth season. Sort of a "tell me now or fuck it." Well ...

Granted, it wasn't a great choice for the network (that exec moved on, probably "failed upward") and it wasn't a good ultimatum for Whedon to make, but it does serve as an example of the kind of games that get played out, because quite a lot of networks would stop shows just before that, due to the Hollywood accounting being a pain once you had to keep paying your actors for decades. The math varies, so some shows go on, but that fourth season, man ... look out.

Izkata4• 4 years ago

Case in point, Angel, which was cancelled on a February when Joss Whedon, the showrunner, demanded to know whether or not they got a fifth season. Sort of a "tell me now or fuck it." Well ...

Whether they'd get a 6th season. It did get 5, with a total of 110 episodes.

MBCook2• 4 years ago

Wasn’t that also the deal with Brad Garrett’s sitcom after Everybody Loves Raymond? ‘Till Death?

I think he had a contract that guaranteed enough episodes to get into syndication, but no one liked the show. So it just sort of weirdly limped on in this strange netherworld until they fulfilled the contract. And a show that normally would have been replaced mid-season instead was on for 5 years.

gamblor9564• 4 years ago

Netflix does not pay residuals, they pay a lump sum upfront.

So he's right about why WB cancelled and pulled a lot of shows (and the new CEO specifically acknowledged that this was done to avoid residuals) but wrong about why Netflix is cancelling shows.

It's actually very silly for Netflix to cancel shows after 1 season; they generally tie talent to 3-season deals so the cost for a show doesn't significantly increase until a 4th season. Basically, Netflix show financing frontloads all the costs of a new show on its balance sheets. It helped in the beginning to draw talent in, but now it's biting them in the ass because their shows start off more expensive.

Having sunk the money in, Netflix is faced with 2 choices: throw good money after bad and hope that the show can attract new viewers over the remainder of the initial 3-year contract, or just cancel the show. Most networks will give shows that are on the "bubble" of profitability additional time to try and gain an audience if the shows are cheap enough to justify the risk. But since Netflix frontloads the costs, the financial calculus rarely pencils out.

FreakLegion2• 4 years ago

Netflix pays residuals. In fact the WGA won a fairly hefty arbitration against them maybe half a year back for underpaying, and SAG and DGA members also get them.

pwinnski• 4 years ago

That is absolutely incorrect, Netflix does pay residuals[0].

Netflix is notorious for not allowing shows, even popular shows, to go beyond two seasons[1], so your subsequent paragraphs also seem to be incorrect.

It does make some difference for most streaming services who is responsible for the production costs of a show, but Netflix seems to have their own standard orthogonal to that, as they don't seem to cancel on the same basis as other services.

0. https://www.ign.com/articles/netflix-must-pay-42-million-in-...

1. https://nofilmschool.com/netflix-cancels-another-show-after-...

smogcutter• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Same as Gym memberships

hgsgm3• 4 years 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.

kderbyma• 4 years ago

great analysis. Netflix is run by producers and financiers....maybe a political fad from time to time, but it certainly is not run by people who are passionate about entertainment or movies or films or the art....

the platform has little creativity in any aspect of it...and the shows being done for a single viewing may just be the side effect of having no talent in anything except infrastructure planning....

lofaszvanitt• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

I'd really rather have a 'complete' story that was thought out more than a week in advance like some shows.

stubish• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

thevagrant• 4 years ago

I stay subscribed because I plan to watch something but then don't get round to it. It's still in my mental calculations for staying subscribed even if it costs me.

When they cancel the shows without finishing them, it leads to "no point watching, no point paying"

nicolas_t2• 4 years ago

I regularly watch a first episode, decide that this show is great and so would need more focused time for me to watch it so I wait to have free times (holidays) and for the seasons to be finished.

partiallypro• 4 years 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.

jsnell7• 4 years 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_2• 4 years 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.

fbdab1035• 4 years ago

Historical supernatural fiction is not a genre with a huge established audience. The likely path to success is for the show to be excellent and organically grow from word of mouth. Which is going to take time to present itself on a top-ten chart.

tarotuser3• 4 years ago

We've cancelled our Netflix, and loading up our Jellyfin server with all those classics (legally... naturally!). And we're in S02E08 of X-Files, because it really was that good. We're also watching Julia Child, and a few other shows.

We were some of the first on Netflix's DVD library, and went to streaming as soon as they offered it. And early on, it was the best of the best. Now, it's throw-away B movie garbage you wouldn't even pay $1.99 in the Walmart's dvd bin, and riddled with shows that were great but naturally cancelled on a cliffhanger. I'm still sour about "Dark Matter". Bought from SyFy to Netflix, and summarily canceled.

I'll just wait until/if the shows are complete. And then I will acquire them. I've been done for a while, after paying waay too much and being jerked around by the media companies. Back to Yo Ho Ho. That means I can afford expensive rum :)

darknavi2• 4 years ago

I might be crazy but a lot of the 1-2 season cancelled shows are still worth watching. A really fun journey that ends prematurely is still really entertaining.

I suggest... acquiring... them.

dmix2• 4 years ago

Yeah given the numbers of shows being produced, as long as 3-4 new ones per year are worth watching what more do you really need? There's tons of back libraries of good shows and HBO and Apple TV is still making high quality stuff.

Let Netflix produced a pile of garbage and I'll sift through the diamonds the year after... I have yet to have a year where there wasn't 3-5+ high quality streaming seasons (this yr = White Lotus, The Offer, and Severence).

If not you can always rewatch The Wire for the 5th time.

The only losers are those looking to binge watch new stuff every week... AFAIK those people were previously the audience for garbage prime time network shows on FOX/NBC/etc that no one even remembers the names of 5yrs later.

So I guess it sucks for them - being the guinea pigs for the rest of us ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

AtlasBarfed4• 4 years ago

I feel they need to acquire a "real" studio like NBC. They are sorely lacking in organizational production, casting, writing talent, or people that know the industry to identify talent.

Netflix from what I can tell simply bootstrapped their own production company, and I think Amazon did too. My conclusion is that they are not organizationally good at production, they simply hope for miracles from whomever they put in charge of IP.

I mean, is HBO a "big company" from a production/management standpoint? Look at the quality they put out. NBC I believe is not that big anymore either, but their series and coherent branding simply seems so much better than Netflix or Amazon Prime.

rainbowzootsuit• 4 years ago

I watch my shows a quarter-hour at a time. Therefore I stick to their children's animated content that's often without dialog or plot beyond a single five minute scene. Hearing about these trials and tribulations, it sounds like I have chosen wisely.

uni_rule• 4 years ago

It's as simple as dropping a show like a hot stone before they have to increase their actors' pay contractually. Terminal bean-counting.

jsnell7• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Agree!

An example I like: the Fargo TV series. Each season is self-contained and none outstays its welcome.

LarryMullins3• 4 years ago

For the most part, network TV used sitcom or "monster of the week" formats in which most episodes stood on their own as self-contained stories, you didn't need context from other episodes to understand the episode you were watching. 90% of the X-Files can be viewed in a randomized order and it makes no difference. This was important on network TV because it was always a crapshoot whether the schedules of fans would line up with the TV schedule so fans missing episodes was the norm.

One advantage of this format is that the importance of a show being ended on a cliff hanger had less relative importance to the rest of the show. If a show like the X-Files was going to get cancelled on a cliff hanger of the "main story", it didn't really matter because 9 out of 10 episodes didn't involve the main story and therefore wouldn't be retroactively devalued by a cliffhanger cancellation.

Marsymars2• 4 years ago

If a show like the X-Files was going to get cancelled on a cliff hanger of the "main story", it didn't really matter because 9 out of 10 episodes didn't involve the main story and therefore wouldn't be retroactively devalued by a cliffhanger cancellation.

This is probably the root of the difference in my take on media - I don't believe it's possible for a later instalment to retroactively devalue previous ones.

e.g. The enjoyment I got from reading Dune wasn't diminished by Sandworms of Dune.

Lammy• 4 years ago

Let's not pretend that network television didn't have its fair share of shows being cancelled mid-stream.

“Well, I suppose if all those shows go down the tubes, we might have a shot.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oMTmtN7lHI

tomjen3• 4 years ago

I don't think your example is that good. I loved the nevers because it always had you go thats awesome and WTF?

Obviously that is not for everybody and that is fine, but I would have watched the shit out of it if it didn't get canceled.

at_a_remove2• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

xwdv• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

HBO's Barry has a fantastic bit on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktAbh39aoU8

Hilarious and watching I felt it was targeted directly at Netflix.

agentwiggles6• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

topspin2• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

IvyMike• 4 years 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.

jerojero2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Mind Hunter... Jesus Christ, that alone makes me want to cancel my subscription.

stuckinhell3• 4 years 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.

darknavi2• 4 years 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)?

hadlock3• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

They do exactly this: if enough people watch it, they continue, otherwise they cancel.

cafed00d• 4 years ago

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

efsavage2• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

The system I use is somewhat similar, but with a twist: I wait for the author to die.

efsavage2• 4 years 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.

jerojero2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

imchillyb• 4 years 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?

rnd03• 4 years ago

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

londons_explore• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

rnd03• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Episodic shows also get cancelled by them.

thedailymail• 4 years 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-DoL2• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

Nexxxeh• 4 years 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_t2• 4 years 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.

technofiend2• 4 years 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.

oneoff7864• 4 years 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.

technofiend2• 4 years 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.

_fat_santa• 4 years ago

With R&M, I always thought of "Intergalactic Cable" as one of those 4th wall episodes, the writers knew they had nothing and that was part of the joke.

m000• 4 years 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.

stuckinhell3• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

stuckinhell3• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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_gottlieb2• 4 years 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!

JoeAltmaier2• 4 years 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.

JoeAltmaier2• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

aryehof• 4 years ago

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

darcwader• 4 years 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.

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

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