I wonder if there had ever been a show in the history of television in which 70% of viewers who watched the pilot made it to the finale. Fortunately, the article states Netflix has no plans to "rejigger" (i like that word, plan on using it more) its method of greenlighting shows. Which probably, despite the enormous quantity of data they collect, still resembles something akin to that scene in "Network," where they consider doing a docu-drama about the Symbionese Liberation Army.

You can count me as one of the 30% that never makes it past the first ten minutes of even the most acclaimed serial content. I just like movies. But out of curiosity I did watch the extended trailer of the 500 Startups reality show "Bazillion Dollar Club." There is a scene where a team is finalizing a prototype with its sourced design consultants. Its all dudes and they select a shape that is, well, let's just say suggestively masculine in its proportion. They decide they need to counterbalance their opinion with the female perspective and invite the ladies on staff to give their opinion. The women choose a completely different design. Soft, with rounded curves. But most importantly they have a visceral negative reaction to the men's choice. But the startup leadership completely ignores what I would consider a very important data point in favour of an arbitrary metric. That "70% of men make electronic purchasing decisions for their households." Completely ignoring the fact that generally, men don't really care about the appearance of their gadgets, just that they function properly. And that women generally tend to make the design choices at home. Obviously a very broad generalization but still.

The lesson here is about letting stats influence faulty reasoning while ignoring intuition. It doesn't appear that Netflix is allowing data to dictate programming. Yet.