this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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We should all know that Netflix's method of "throwing money at the wall and hope one of the shows becomes a hit, cancel immediately after a season if it doesn't work out" is completely unsustainable at this point, as this kind of dehumanizing disposablilty of production is the exact " industry disruptive" approach to expect from a bunch of arrogant Silicon Valley techbros, so this cost increase should not come as a surprise.
Many long running shows have had pretty bad first seasons, "Parks and Rec", the US version of "The Office", and "The Simpsons" comes to mind, and these shows would never have even gotten off the ground if Netflix was running them, because as with all industries, it takes a while for people to find their footing and get to know each other to work together effectively.
The real sad part is, the industry that has copied Netflix's "disruptive" approach are now finding out that the emperor has no clothes and are desperately trying to pass the cost off to anybody else for their own survival, which is why it is more important than ever to fight for the dignities of the people who worked on your favorite shows for your entertainment.
I could very well be mistaken and please correct me if I am. I remember reading that canning a show before season 3 or so was a way of getting around union costs that kick in for a 'longer' running show. A very anti labor strategy designed to cash in quickly then drop it so Netflix wouldn't have to share the wealth.
I thought it was a balance between new shows getting better engagement than old shows, and contracts lasting 3 seasons, which required re-negotiations in favor of the talent. Basically a business model hyper-focused on subscriber growth metrics instead of subscriber retention.
Imo they're really poisoning the well. If they pump out shit show after shit show what will happen (and is likely already happening) is consumers wait until the second season for a show releases to make sure they're not wasting their time getting invested into a show that will be canceled anyway. That will then lead to fewer and fewer shows actually becoming successful, eventually leading to people cancelling the subscription because the last time they watched anything (good) on Netflix was 10 years ago.
I agree, but IMO part of the problem is people watching just whatever to pass time - and this is also going into the stats.
To be frank, I don't think they care about anything else other than keeping people on the platform. Which is not such a bad goal to be had if they tried to achieve that with quality of service, good offering of entertainment, etc. What they are doing is desperately trying to create some long running series where on which people will get hooked and won't be able to leave even if everything else starts sucking. Should this ever happen I think we can fully expect their next step to be reduced amount of licensing towards other shows and movies.
But as you rightly put it, you can't grow forever and ever increasing revenue can only be had in dreams.
Actually, I don't think they care about retention at all, because to the industry retention = stagnation. They only care about new subscribers because that "shows" growth. They much prefer hearing "We increased subscriber counts by 10%!" over "We kept 100% of subscribers YoY!"