Backlash as Netflix cancels five shows at once including its 'best series' | Hacker News Reader

Backlash as Netflix cancels five shows at once including its 'best series'

independent.co.uk

71 pointspg_123493 comments

At this point I refuse to start any Netflix show that is not already finished. I understand that Netflix is a highly data driven org but this reliance on metric driven cancellation -- regardless of where the show is at narratively -- is part of what is alienating their userbase. That doesn't show in the data until it's too late and the trust is gone.

Following the Google path. "Data shows that this product isn't meeting usage expectations, time to kill it." Except in the process they don't realize that their actions (cutting products/shows) is training people not to invest in subsequent products in the first place for fear they'll disappear one day. They're basically tainting all of their future data collection. If Products A and B (or shows in Netflix's case) were ones I heavily used then were unceremoniously canned, I'm not going to want to try Product C, regardless of how good it is.

This is why I've started watching a lot of Asian entertainment. Kdramas and cdramas are nice in that they generally are planned to last for 1 season and one season only. it's nice to go into a show knowing you'll definitely get a resolution.

We did the same. But there are so many trash in that genre though, we dropped more than a few

And to your point, showrunner Mike Flanagan does a similar thing, limited 1 season series like House of Usher and Midnight Mass.

Sounds like you just like movies, but longer.

The defining feature of a movie is its length, so no. Movies are narratives condensed into a time frame sized to match the audiences bladders. Its why adaptions of novels are difficult. Short stories are a better fit. A good adaption of a novel length narrative seems to take 6-20 hours of screen time. Holding a coherent story together for a novel or trilogy is difficult, and how we end up with soap operas which twine different stories together into a never ending rope.

It's an art to do this well. When making a movie, every second counts. You have to make compromises. Some people flat out refuse to accept that movies drop a lot of details from the book, but I appreciate both. It is my clipboard understanding many people in the US dislike Forrest Gump as it's been shoved into their faces by media over and over again, but even after reading the book I still think it's just a really good movie.

I think I might actually like televised books. I also love cbs or USA type procedurals. Shows like psych or bones or person of interest where you really got to know the characters over 24 episodes and those characters lived in a real fictional world and you knew that the next season was only a year away.

I haven't really been able to enjoy the netflix 8 episode model. Feels like you get 8 episodes of people on plot rails every 2-3 years and half of them get cancelled on a cliffhanger.

I think the fundamental problem is that Netflix has too many show, and follows the "see what sticks" philosophy.

I think they should be more like (formerly?) HBO or Apple and try to make fewer, better shows.

I thought there was a missed opportunity for Amazon to assert a distinct identity, of acquiring shows and letting them finish out their arcs (The Expanse) and make a credible commitment to either giving shows a "soft axe" (a notice that they get one final season) or a compromise like a send-off movie.

I don't know that they necessarily think this way, but it could have been a distinction they could have gone for. Like you feel better about having The Expanse, or for that matter any other show, in the hands of Amazon than Netflix.

That would be an interesting production skill for an org to build out. I don't think anyone is really good at it and wind-down seasons are all over the place. Freed from the need to fit into the season templates you could also wind shows down with partial seasons or even an audiobook.

2 fun examples of coping with winding down are HBO's Rome, that "telescoped the third and fourth season into the second one" (https://www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/idUSTRE4B00VV...) and Blacklist's final episode before the pandemic shutdown that filled the gaps with animated storyboards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0nF4njky94

There's the opposite phenomenon where, for instance, Legend of Korra was ordered as a miniseries then extended to a full show, resulting in some trouble in season 2's production.

Futurama might be the best at handling cancellations now, lol.

I hadn't even thought of an audiobook. But, to your point with HBO, they have dabbled in creating companion podcasts, and did a wind-down with Rome, so a companion podcast could at least be something.

Yeah that would be an interesting niche, but there are only so many opportunities to pick or good shows or novels, and they picked up a lot already.

Agreed, I either wait until a show is complete and get a recommendation from a friend to binge the whole thing or just check one of the Disney+ "safe bet" brands.

At least you know somebody has put a marginal amount of thought and effort into how the latest Star Wars or Marvel shows fits into things. It might tell a little story from start to finish or slot into the larger narrative, doesn't really matter, it will usually be "complete" in the sense that it told the story it wanted to tell.

Which I mean, I'm aware it's not breaking any barriers and I would definitely prefer to watch another "Dark" instead but I actually find it exhausting to get invested in a show and have it just be dropped without a satisfying ending.

>That doesn't show in the data until it's too late and the trust is gone.

Yes, this seems to be a problem at this point that stretches across many entire sectors at this point. I know there have been plenty of observations over the years around the dangers of hyper optimizing towards measurables while completely discounting immeasurables yet it seems to be a hard thing still to avoid long term. And in cases like this, or Google say for an even bigger example [0], it can also easily turn into a real doom loop. Initial engagement with services/platforms always entails risk on BOTH sides of the equation. Yeah the business is taking a risk that it won't sell, but the users investing their limited time/resources are taking a risk on its long term support too. Part of bootstrapping is always the business being willing to eat some of that and develop are reputation around doing so, such that people can jump onto v1.0 even if it has flaws and feeling trust that it will have a solid run. Which in turn gives the business the ability to iterate and refine and figure out what it truly is, and then there's a positive loop.

But when businesses forget that and start expecting hits day 1, it can all go into reverse. If everyone expects inevitably to have the rug pulled out from under them, then they won't invest in the first place even if it's promising (short of a monopoly situation where there is literally no choice). Which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, not enough "engagement", product gets killed, those % of those burned swear off doing it again and tell others too, and next time it goes even faster. I suspect an exclusive situation in some ways could make it even riskier long term by blunting signal: people feel locked into continuing to buy which looks good on numbers, but immeasurably anger is building up. Which means as soon as something else comes along "all of a sudden" people will bolt for it.

I don't know, seems to be a sort of midlife crisis thing that is particularly true of very successful firms that have only ever known major success. They somehow lose the institutional DNA of how they built their customer base in the first place, and then just cannot seem to manage to recover it until it's too late.

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0: https://killedbygoogle.com/

I wish they made one season only shows. Would solve their problem and ours. It's really rare that a show over the second season maintain the same quality (there are exceptions)

This is not at all a new phenomenon. Broadcast networks and cable channels have been doing this for decades.

I’m still sad that the society won’t get another season

I stopped my Netflix subscription after they cancelled 1899. I really enjoyed the first season and while it might not be for everyone I thought it was amazing television.

It really sucks when you get excited by a project just for it to be cancelled after a season, or worse, after two seasons.

The amount of shows Ive really enjoyed that weren't given a conclusion was just too many. It's just a business model that doesn't sit well with me. I wish they gave these shows one more season or perhaps a movie (which is roughly equivalent to 2 episodes) to wrap things up.

It's not like they don't have the money.

Same here! Once they were praised for trying out new stuff and sticking with it; now everything must be an immediate smash hit. 1899 broke the camel's back, I've cancelled and since then pirated one of their shows.

1899 was my cutoff, too. They had the nerve to recommend the show to me after it had been canceled, which I didn't know at the time. Got invested and looked for a season two release date, which is how I learned it was canceled. No longer a subscriber now.

Yeah that’s the real piss-off for me. The number of times I foolishly forgot to check whether they’d actually finally finished a show, got totally hooked and invested, then found out that there was no ending coming… ever.

The cancelling is bad enough, but continuing to list and recommend these shows as if they weren’t incomplete with no intention of completing them is a bit beyond.

At least have the decency to put a warning that the show has no ending on its listing. Or stop recommending them and only list them in a “graveyard” category or something.

But if they cared enough about their customers to do that, they probably wouldn’t be doing this all in the first place.

I honestly don't understand why they don't demand a complete screenplay of the whole series up front when they greenlight a show, and then commit to producing the whole thing, whether it's a hit or a flop. No definite beginning, middle, and end? No cash.

What they do now is like, "OK, I'll build this C++ project for you 1000 lines at a time. It will be extremely expensive, but you can pay me after each delivery and feel free to kill the whole thing at any time."

By hosing their most loyal viewers -- the ones who will stick with their favorite shows to the end -- they may not necessarily be losing money, but they are biasing the statistics that they use to determine what future shows to invest in. The remaining viewers will be those who don't mind having the rug pulled out from under them: less-sophisticated, less-discriminating people who are just looking for something to play for background noise in the living room.

It's a big problem because their catalog is also so spotty.

They should probably be ordering seasons in batches. Show runners don't really have much of a say, if they're told "okay we can give you one season and see how it goes" they're gonna say yes.

But in the case of 1899 was also a worse situation, to me, because the team had already proved themselves in another series (Dark) which was widely successful, except it didn't get successful until later on. These sort of series do require a bit more attention, people are not going to binge watch them like they do Wednesday. And that's okay (except apparently for Netlfix it's not okay).

And, I mean, I get it. Netflix strategy seems to be much more about optimizing a function that tries to minimize quality and maximize viewership. They literally don't care about high quality products. In fact, I would say, high quality products might even be undesirable as they might raise the bar of people's expectations.

I wonder if networks are comfortable with open-ended series because it lets them switch to targeting a more profitable demographic as the show runs.

For example, Lost began with no particular arc planned out, just some stabs here and there at continuity. That allowed writers in season three to heavily emphasize a love triangle among the three most romantic characters (Kate, Jack and Sawyer) which won the show a huge following from women in a key US advertising demographic, even as some male nerds were disappointed.

They could still do that. Changes to the show's initial set of screenplays could be negotiated if both parties agree that it makes sense. They could even agree to extend the contract beyond the initially-planned duration.

The only hard-and-fast rule would be that they can't drop it mid-run. Once greenlit, they are required to fund the show, and the showrunner is required to deliver it. Just like any other project in any other industry, in other words.

1899 was the final straw for me too. It’s a miracle they even renewed “Love, Death & Robots”.

I really liked 1899, but I think it had as good an ending as it was going to get. "Mystery box" shows never seem to end well. The resolution is always disappointing. The longer you drag a mystery out, either people figure it out, or it becomes incoherent.

It was some brilliant television, and I sure wouldn't have minded spending more time with it. But I think that its big ending was about as satisfying as you can possibly hope for.

For comparison I suggest their previous show, Dark. It was also beautifully shot (if less engagingly cosmopolitan). But it took them three seasons to tell a story that could have been compressed less confusingly into one. Too many characters, too sprawling a concept. Its ending was reasonably satisfying, but I felt confused most of the time and just didn't much care.

Anyway... agreed that 1899 was amazing TV, and Netflix sucks for canceling shows that are doing well. I've got a few real gripes myself. Maybe they had great places to take 1899, but I'm content with it as it was.

To be honest it's hard to take someone who liked 1899 seriously. This show is so bad on many levels. It's pretty but that's it. Pedantic boredom at best, convoluted nonsense most of the time.

I don't think Netflix cares about your type of subscriber, nor do I think they should. It is extremely niche taste, and in my opinion rather poor. You are free to like death metal but most people who rather listen to nothing instead...

It sucks and it damages their brand.

To me fox is still a damaged brand and they cancelled Firefly before Netflix was a thing.

I was hoping they would continue pushing their kibosh on sharing passwords so I would delete my account permanently (I only pay because my siblings use my account), but it seems they stopped trying to force it in Kenya.

It should be legally required to do one more episode of every show after it is cancelled. I joke, but it would be really nice if this was at least an unwritten rule.

Mine was Away with Jennifer Garner. Good first season with good characters, then BLAM cancelled. Although I suspect that one didn’t have a ton of viewers.

Netflix has already damaged their brand of original shows for me. After years of starting something and having it suddenly canceled and left unfinished I now don't bother to watch any original Netflix programming unless it's already a completed series.

I'm sure it makes sense in the short term to cancel things that aren't bringing in enough revenue, but when you have years of aggressive cancelations it also causes some long term damage that might end up harming the platform even more than spending a bit more to make a quick series conclusion.

They also lose out on potential long tail value of a completed show, like how arrested development wasn't the most popular at it's initial run but later made up for it in DVDs and streaming. People won't want to start watching something they know doesn't finish even if it would otherwise be a great show for them, so it becomes a complete waste of production money instead of a possible future asset.

Most corporate decisions these days seem like they're made to maximize a short term stock or revenue bump... and then the execs rake in a huge bonus and jump ship before the future fallout hits.

>Netflix has already damaged their brand of original shows for me.

Right, the cancellation of The OA was absolutely heartless, and that was relatively early on. This may be a weird parallel but it was like the Google Reader shutdown for Google, which kicked off the era of Google not making credible commitments to its own projects.

The title of this article is embarrassing. They took "best series" from a post of a random X user @MhayYhusuf who called the series "the best show on the platform".

Shadow and Bone is far from being a best anything.

I believe the title refers to the linked article [1]—which claims it topped the platform's charts—rather than the quoted tweet.

It might not be to your liking, but it's been in Netflix's top 10 lists [2] quite a few times.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/sha...

[2] https://www.netflix.com/tudum/top10/tv?week=2023-03-19

That would be a most charitable interpretation. By that logic You and Florida Man: would also be it's 'best series' since they all clocked in higher than Shadow and Bone quite a few times.

If we honestly talking about their best performing properties we are talking about the likes of Squid Game, Stranger Things, Wednesday, Dahmer, Bridgerton, Money Heist, The Night Agent, The Queen's Gambit, Lupin and The Witcher S1.

Shadow and Bone is not even close to that group.

Lupin and The Witcher S1 (and Wednesday to a lesser degree) were average adaptations of good stories. The only thing nice in the Witcher was the casting, and Lupin had great initial ideas (like the casting, too), but overall it was very average. Shadow and bones was an average adaptation of an average story.

It reminds me of this thing I saw recently where network TV shows will include blurbs in ads for the show, like "RIVETING!", "CAN'T TURN AWAY...", etc., and the expectation of course is that it's Peter Travers or whoever the hell that wrote the blurb.

Except they were just handles like "@BeckFire49" from random people on Twitter.

I’m surprised they cancelled it though, given how popular the books are.

As someone who watched S1, and enjoyed it. I never bothered to watch S2 owing to the two year delay between releases. I felt like I had probably forgotten too many plot points to fully appreciate it.

Welcome to modern journalism, where a journalist can take a tweet from any rando (of which there are many millions) to make their preconceived point and present it as some sort of consensus.

I don’t have a specific answer other than to not pause production but I feel like this is a symptom of the season based production cycle. A series captures the imagination, then it disappears for an entire year (or two or three), only to start again hoping everyone hasn’t moved on in life. Of course they lose momentum with fans.

A better model to my mind is decide to make a 20 episode series, then produce and release episodes as they are finished and don’t stop until the series is over. If the series is capable of continuing, make that decision long before the 20th episode, but be sure to be ready to end by 20 otherwise.

I generally agree with the sentiment though. In a series that has a story and an arc, ending is before an end is possible is just mean. You could at least give a few episodes grace to let the writers wrap it up. Just ending a story midway through is the height of disrespect to both the artists creating it, but most importantly, your customers who have given their life and interest to the story.

This is pretty similar to how korean dramas work with ten-twenty hour long episodes per show. The majority of shows wrap up in one season.

I guess executives aren't incentivised to avoid the long term brand damage these sorts of decisions cause. Maybe that's because the top minds in business don't think that this sort of long term brand damage can really impact the profits in a measurable way?

But surely it must? Isn't this what Disney is finally suffering?

I guess if they think the engagement numbers are low enough to merit cancelling then then the number of potential cancellations isn’t enough to cause a problem

Maybe that works on one or two shows but across dozens of cancellations surely the overlap finally becomes a larger problem in aggregate to be a problem like you suggest

Or maybe they want the customer who just watches whatever has a new release banner on it without thinking too much

I've said this before but netflix should stop wasting money and honestly invest in the library. Even if a show isn't the most popular thing in the world, as long as it ends well it becomes a solid asset for them. Some percentage of people will enjoy it and feel happy that netflix brought it to them.

Shows that start and never finish will just sit in their library untouched by anyone who knows better or as something certain to piss off another customer when finally discover they'll never get a conclusion. No one watching those shows will be happy about netflix.

There are many netflix shows I'll never start because I've already heard fans were screwed over, and now many more I won't even bother to start until I hear they've concluded.

I don’t think so, to be honest. The landscape for media consumption is so much different than 10-15 years ago. Without any supporting data, I have a hunch that, shows are mostly watched within a year of its original air date. New shows aren’t on a rerun (I recall Scrubs, House being on from time to time), they are not turning into a comfort background tv show (like The Office, Friends) or have a religious fanbase that’ll just follow along because there are 20 seasons of it (NCIS, Greys Anatomy and so on.).

On top of everything, media is extremely fragmented. So much choice that there isn’t any specific shows that people watch because everyone else is watching and will talk about it on Monday during lunch (a la Game of Thrones). So all these companies are left with churning new shows trying to find a holy grail of the Stranger Things size to bring them new subscribers. Until then, anything that doesn’t stick on the wall, will get cut off.

We have a huge movie industry scene in my city, so you hear from people who jump from working show A to show B. None of the shows I’ve ever heard of and never will. But producers are still hoping for a genre defining hit somehow.

> shows are mostly watched within a year of its original air date.

This depends a lot on what else is available, but old shows can find success in steaming services. One of the most successful shows on netflix this past year was Suits, a show that was released 12 years ago. Schitt's Creek gained huge popularity two years after it's original air date.

> So much choice that there isn’t any specific shows that people watch because everyone else is watching and will talk about it on Monday during lunch (a la Game of Thrones)

That's why streaming services have started to withhold episodes and only allow you see one episode a week. They want to control who is watching what and when. When people can watch whatever they want to on their own schedule they might not get around to new shows immediately and advertisers don't like that. It also makes it harder to control the conversation on social media.

The Tick was canceled after it didn't get enough views just 6 weeks after release, but as you said, there is so much to watch right now, and so much else besides TV competing for our time, that those kinds of metrics are meaningless.

It'd be better for netflix to make sure their library is filled with quality and to have confidence that audiences will find those shows in their own time rather than worry about how many people are watching the newest thing immediately and cancel anything that doesn't show immediate success.

I'm wondering whether Netflix has found out that it's target audience is shifting, just like what happened with Facebook. It is my understanding that people aged 55+ is now the main audience of Facebook. What is now the main audience of Netflix?

Cooking shows, cartoons and documentaries cost a fraction of a tv show but are still watched.

Personally, when I have 15—30 min to watch something, I prefer some food show with no strings attached instead of having to watch a specific show and having to remember what happened last time with the protagonist and the antagonist. (i.e. Dark)

I don't expect Netflix to make shows forever, especially ones that don't gain an audience, but if I can't at least be 50/50 I'll get a satisfying ending then I'm simply not going to watch.

This attitude makes it harder for Netflix to make shows that do gain an audience, and it only gets worse every time they betray their viewers' trust.

Netflix does a remarkably poor job of advertising their own shows. Maybe if I kept the service around more I would know more about their shows, though I tend to get really annoyed when they do autoplay trailers in a banner at the top of their UI. Having liked the books quite a bit I came to Altered Carbon a season late because I just didn't know that they made it. Honestly right now I couldn't tell you what I might be excited about on netflix the only thing I know is that there will be one more season of stranger things but it was delayed even before the writers strike.

Meanwhile HBO/Max/Whatever seems to do a pretty good job, even when the shows are pretty niche. Of course I see advertising for House of the Dragon or any of the big prestige HBO shows, but also for their niche Max based stuff (which seems to be going away a bit..) like Flight Attendant or Doom Patrol.

It’s especially bad because they are so quick to cancel things that they’re skewing their data to what shut-ins like to binge. If you have kids, a social life, etc. it’s pretty common for something to go from “oh, cool, I should try that after I finish my current show” to canceled.

This is my biggest problem. I'd be more than happy to pay for a Netflix subscription, but I just don't have time to watch everything that comes out immediately.

There are several shows I've watched the first few episodes of, enjoyed, then got busy. By the time I'm thinking about picking them up again I hear they've been canceled with no actual ending. If they didn't have the viewership to keep going I wouldn't be mad (that's on me, I guess), but if they don't have an ending I'm never going to finish them.

I'm happy to pay a subscription fee for months I'm too busy to use it (which seems ideal from a streaming provider's cost/benefit perspective), but if most of your shows follow this path there's effectively "nothing to watch," so I cancel.

Some shows need multiple seasons to build viewership they are not getting that on streaming. Disney pulls them off entirely to not have to pay residuals.

At this point I'm sort of wondering what the point of the move to streaming even was. These streaming companies came in and decimated the "traditional" TV industry, but they're almost all losing money, and all definitely losing customer satisfaction. And now ads are creeping in. We just had a revolution and replaced one flag with another. It's no wonder people are going back to waving the pirate flag.

Cable was a shit product and ads finally killed it off, but the networks missed that ad money and they missed having control of the culture. They still wanted the power to choose what people will watch and when.

Netflix gave people what they wanted, a single low price for everything and they could watch what they wanted when they wanted to without ads. People strongly preferred binge watching. The networks decided to kill off netflix by puling their content and running their own ad filled streaming services that doled out episodes once a week on a schedule again so that they could control what people were watching and when, maximize advertising, and better control the conversations on social media.

The same people who made TV shit in the first place have been trying to force us back to what they preferred. Now people spend as much or more on streaming services as they did on cable, they see tons of ads, and they have to wait around for permission to see new episodes on someone else's schedule. Streaming services threaten to cancel anything that doesn't get a ton of views the moment they permit viewers to watch them. Popular shows like The Tick were canceled based on views after just six weeks after release!

Steaming as an alternative to cable TV was sabotaged deliberately and netflix is so bad at producing content that they can't save us. Piracy is the future of ad free TV on your own schedule.

The pricing of cable was horrendous. As a user, I am ecstatic.

Half the country ends up paying their local cable monopoly for Internet access now, and it costs about the same as cable TV used to.

streaming is about manipulating the media, keeping files away from the end user, and limiting time place and method of viewing.

FYI:

Shadow and Bone

Agent Elvis

Captain Fall

Glamorous

Farzar

The article doesn't even contain a list, you have to read it all. This goes against all ways of correctly and efficiently disseminating information.

Oh, and the link on 'Netflix' doesn't go to www.netflix.com. It goes to the Independent. Same with 'Shadow and Bone', you'd expect it to go to Netflix' page of this show, but no, to the Independent.

I hate modern journalism.

Stuff like this does the kind of damage that doesn’t show up on spreadsheets, which is the most sinister kind.

I also suspect that this is what distinguishes particularly remarkable companies: their ability to suss out the immeasurable details that matter.

I want to find a model for the financing of "TV" show production that does NOT depend on a centralized "studio" making the funding and cancellation decisions.

That would probably look like raising funds to produce the first couple of episodes from investors, then funding the continuation of the show through episode-by-episode revenue (based on viewership) and/or donations from fans.

Funding a show episode-by-episode would be way more expensive. It saves so much money when you can do things like produce multiple episodes at once, schedule filming locations or actor's time in advance, or leave sets up for months of filming. It can take many months for a single episode to be completed.

Having to shut down production and fire everything up again after every episode based on the how the numbers look after every release seems like a logistical nightmare.

I think it often comes down to distribution. Now that the distributors (netflix, hbo, apple, etc) are the ones frequently funding the shows, the show dies when the distributor no longer wants to fund it. There is less opportunity for the rights holder to take that show to another network/distributor.

It would be harder to get trial, but if a pilot episode was free to watch on the show's website, then people could pay for the rest of the episodes right there. Conversion would also be lower than if it was distributed on a pre-paid subscription that someone already has, but at least the people paying for the show decide with their wallet if it continues to get funding.

I've got a concept for an animated series and I'm planning to release it on youtube. I'm hoping that if it gets enough of a following, I can make it work with just the revenue from youtube. Of course, this kind of model doesn't usually work for high production value content unless the people involved want to bootstrap it.

This was attempted well over a decade ago by the makers of Pioneer One[0] which, hardly a surprise, failed to make enough money to continue. The quality of the episodes that were made was also subpar compared to traditional television of the time, though considering how low-budget some of today’s streaming shows feel, this may no longer be as noticeable for audiences today as it was then.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_One

This is the restult of driving your business with short-term metrics. These series probably didn't hit the right taste clusters [1].

People are only willing to get burned a limited number of times with getting invested in a show and having it prematurely cancelled. At some point this will impact viewership of new shoes as people don't want to get burned. In my case, I will never forgive Netflix for cancelling Mindhunter. Even Ozark, which was very good, was rushed to finish in a 4th season, to its detriment.

I saw an author complaining about people doing this with books, arguing readers were the problem because this affects what gets published. Readers (and viewers) don't owe you a living. I got burned on book series years ago, promising to only start finished series. I started a trilogy called a Song of Ice and Fire in 2002 (of course not knowing it wasn't a trilogy) after the whole Robert Jordan decade long saga.

Google has the same problem with new projects: people expect them to get cancelled. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Apple does this much better. Apple keeps plugging away at Apple Pay and it's a payment powerhouse now after many eyars. How many iterations have we had of Google Checkout, Google Wallet, Google Pay, Android Pay, etc have we had?

IME HBO is still th eking of seeing things through. It's had some series cancelled prematurely (notably Deadwood, Rome and the abomination that was the last 2 seasons of Game of Thrones) but it has a good track record. Some Netflix series have had a satisfactory ending (eg Bojack Horseman) but so many don't. Even Prime is better (eg Bosch).

Netflix is using metrics that'll turn it into a cheap reality TV content farm.

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

One of the many reasons I don't get into new shows anymore. I wait until the show is completely finished, then start watching it. That way, when it gets canceled, I don't have to care. Then again, I thankfully have a large enough backlog of stuff I still want to watch, so I can just sit out things for a while.

I just miss the days of the 45 minute episode, 24 episode season. I cancelled my subscription after I watched Man vs Bee which is a single movie pretending to be a TV series. It solidified in my head the direction Netflix is going is 10 minute episodes.

Nothing negative towards Rowan, he's great. Netflix is not.

Funny, not me. There were so many filler episodes, so much mediocre quality.

I infinitely prefer an 8-, 10-, or 12-episode season that tells exactly how much story the writers actually have for the season, and not any more. And where the writers actually have the time to make those episodes great, rather than be forced to crank out whatever state a story happens to be in at the end of each week's deadline.

I don't ever want to go back to the weekly 22/24-episode seasons.

To follow on to this, I would love to see more fully formed 1-3 season shows. The vast majority of shows go off the rails after 4 or more seasons and at that point an ending is almost irrelevant.

I guess what I'm missing is Deep Space Nine type of writing and content. Sure there were a few filler episodes, but the writing was excellent. The dominion/Cardasian war was the best content on TV I've ever seen.

Netflix lost its value a long time back. They know it, the people watching know it. What else can they do but cancel shows and raise prices.

I just wish they would make more compact shows that tell their entire story in a single self contained season. If 1899 for example had only been given a single season from the outset it actually might’ve been a much better show.

It was a good show. And you could've easily made it self contained by not adding a cliff hanger but normal ending.

> While the first season of the fantasy series, [...] did big business for Netflix [...] season two struggled to break through in a major way [...]

Maybe that is because after two years, I've all but forgotten why I was excited about a show in the first place.

It used to be on network TV that a season ended in May and the next started in September. I can wait four month for the next season.

Now seasons are as short as 10 episodes, and then we wait for two or three years for the next season. It's like the opposite of striking the iron while it's hot. They delay a season so long that any hype and excitement fizzles out before the next installment arrives.

I realize making the financial math work for productions like this isn't easy, but this feels like they are damaging the brands that they are trying to create.

The Google of tv shows

For some time I'm thinking about cancelling my Netflix subscription. It is very bad that they are doing massively their own production if you want my opinion.

My feeling is that there is very few recent Hollywood movies that are released but a massive amount of "Netflix produced" crappy series and movies. Most of them are boring or copycat of stories that are done a thousand times.

I think that their content is now almost totally targeted at binge watching any random content.

I feel like the core problem with Netflix and similar compared to traditional TV networks is Netflix wants to provide you the bare minimum. Once you are subscribed everything else is just a cost, their ideal customer watches just a few shows and keeps paying. This is different from the old ad based model where they wanted you to pay as much as possible. Netflix and Amazon video don't compete against each other like CBS and NBC o.

I've just watched Blue Eye Samurai [1] on Netflix - season 1 was released early this month and I honestly hope they continue with this show. I highly recommend it, but I'm also writing this hoping we can boost its signal, so they don't cancel it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ciOn_4XFfE

I cancelled my Netflix earlier this year, after they cancelled 1899, killed the idea of another season of Mind Hunter, and raised their prices. Really no point in having it. It's quite expensive, and they clearly don't care about their customers. They only sparsely put out notable content.

The article leads with Shadow and Bone being canceled. First season was fantastic, but season two was an incoherent unwatchable mess. I'm not surprised it was canceled.

Honestly the only show I regretted being cancelled was 1899.

They still produce some great content. Recently watched Bodies and the Fall of the House of Usher. Both fantastic shows.

I must have very different tastes, but I found all mentioned series as well as most of other stuff they promote to me on their front page to be mediocre at best, 4-6.2/10 (on a non-normalized scale, like IMDB, with 5 not being "average" but "quite poor") on average. Something (screenwriting, acting or something else) is always breaking my suspension of disbelief, so I drop the series after the first or second episode. Surely, they aren’t that bad as I picture them to be - it’s just that I’m not their target audience.

I keep it for accidental new releases (like that new Wes Anderson’s short movies, which I found quite enjoyable; and The Killer was not bad) and some old series I haven’t yet found time to finish (House of Cards), but overall quality or the majority or their releases feels unimpressive I can’t even remember what was the last thing I’ve liked.

Just an anecdote, of course. This is by no means an objective opinion - quite the contrary, it's a very subjective data point.

I agree there's a lot of mediocre stuff for sure. The majority probably, which is really the definition of mediocre.

I'm only saying I generally find good stuff to watch on Netflix which is of course subjective. I quite enjoyed The Killer.

Disney, Apple, and HBO we pay for it when there's something we want to watch. But they don't have enough good content to keep a constant subscription like we do with Netflix.

Amazon is probably the worst of all. We only have it because it comes included with Prime.

I prefer having more different stories get an adaption than the same ones getting many seasons. Fans can buy the source material to get the rest of the story.

Literally never watched any of these because they seem to be oriented towards women. These are not even remotely close to the best shows on the platform.

This is why i like apple tv. Atleast they try to finish the show no matter how shitty it is ala Invasion. And they have some amazing shows.

Not heard of any of those except Shadow and Bone which wasn't very good.

makes as much sense as selling books with the last couple chapters ripped out

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