It doesn’t work like that. A lot of the networks’s and Netflix’s breakout shows were not planned to be great. That’s why they just greenlight a bunch of random pilots and see what sticks to the wall.
It’s extremely hard to create hits.
There's a great interview with Bryan Cranston, where he's talking about the origins of "Breaking Bad."
Basically AMC wanted to compete with HBO, but they didn't have HBO money. So they gave the creators a limited budget but a lot more creative freedom. AMC basically created an environment where creative people who had a passion project could get it off the ground if they were willing to work for less money.
In particular, Vince Gilligan had to go to the mat for Bryan Cranston, because AMC wanted Gilligan to cast someone else.
That might be true for a lot of breakout shows, but not all of them. House of Cards was arguably Netflix' first breakout show, and Netflix outbid other networks for House of Cards when they were just starting to focus on original programming. That was always painted in showbiz media as a very deliberate plan based on Netflix' data about their users' preferences.
Startup Savvy CEOs have 2, maybe 3 successful companies under their belt, so it's harder to judge how much of their success is due to repeatable factors.
“Feeling” about a show, and connections to the people running are the two major factors driving those decisions.
Data driven shows tend to be forgettable and ignored by newer generations, who are the ones holding their parents’s credit cards, and therefore, a major audience for hit shows.
Apple is making a series out of Isaac Asimov's Foundation books. [0] :-D
The foundation is great, but its not your traditional laser-battle big budget mainstrean action-sf thingy.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40881567-the-last-astron...
To succeed in short video they needed something that was beyond a bombshell, something desperately sought after but not forthcoming. Highly polished DeepFake Beatles concerts, with new music written by Paul McCartney. I don't see how you succeed charging for something that qualitatively better than YouTibe. You'd have to at least have new interactive elements (choose your own adventure? I don't know, but something cool).
We're not so different from those 1000 monkeys writing shakespeare :)
Wait till you see what Disney is offering... you are going to cancel Prime.
I’m not disputing either of your presented facts, per se, but the first of those is absolutely not implied by the second.