Netflix does drop more shows than other studios. It cancelled 11 per cent of its US television series last year, while Disney and WarnerMedia dropped 9 per cent, NBCUniversal 8 per cent and ViacomCBS only 4 per cent, according to Ampere.
BINGE FACTOR IS KING
Perhaps the best insight into Netflix’s strategy was in a letter to a UK House of Lords committee. The company said that it focuses on “completers” – people who watch all of a show in the first 28 days after it is released – which would probably put quieter, slow-burning shows at a disadvantage.
Or put simply: Netflix rewards bingeing. While Hulu and HBO Max have been releasing episodes staggered over time, Netflix has stuck to its all at once, binge-drop strategy.
Most Netflix shows end after two or three seasons, and the company’s priority is adding and retaining subscribers – not selling advertising. A new show is probably a better way to find new subscribers than one that has already been around.
All this breeds an ephemeral nature to the platform. A Netflix show can be popular for a few days or a week and then is quickly supplanted by the next release.
These details might seem trivial on an individual level, but with hundreds of shows a year, Netflix has become the largest commissioner of television in the world. It is the Godzilla of the business it once disrupted.
This is why people like Shukert – and Hollywood at large – agonise over figuring out what Netflix wants.
There has been a long-simmering frustration that Netflix is an opaque conveyor belt of content. I am told that a few more painful cancellations are coming soon. Did not enough people binge them?
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