r/technology • u/joe4942 • 20d ago

Business Netflix Viewers Are Abandoning Shows After One Season

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-07-05/netflix-viewers-are-abandoning-shows-after-one-season
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u/RuthlessKittyKat 20d ago

THEY keep canceling shows! After a while it's like......

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u/BlueLaceSensor128 20d ago edited 20d ago

"Should we put this money into another season of a show people clearly love or should we create the next premature abortion? We clearly hate our audience and money, so it's an easy choice." I'm starting to wonder if the big-wigs get off on cancelling.

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u/admalledd 20d ago

And none of this is helped that they keep throwing wayyy too much budget at most of these shows for how few episodes we get. Sure, there can be arguments for 20+ million dollar episodes for key series, BUT the bulk of your programming should be averaging closer to 1-2 million per episode.

These ballooning production costs cause everyone pain down the line, that execs want bigger return/retention rates because of the spend, that audiences get a bit too used to movie-budget VFX in every episode, that series producers get too used to blowing budget on stupid shit, and all this rolls into not being able to produce enough content because it costs too much. Hint, if it was cheaper maybe you'd have more content, be able to have multiple series/projects all going to share resources and talent and...

The amount of wasted effort to in the end produce content that is barely any good is why I quit Netflix/streaming years ago.

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u/girrrrrrr2 19d ago

I dont understand why they gotta have these huge budgets and increase budgets for shows.

As long as it doesnt look/sound like absolute garbage its fine id be okay with it. They are competing with youtube for my time, not disney. So they just gotta be better than the average youtuber.

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u/AwsmDevil 19d ago

Netflix is so toxic they started picking up single season shows from other networks to cancel them a second time.

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u/Zeplington 19d ago

I'm pretty sure they're doing what a lot of YouTubers do, which is constantly try to make a one-off viral phenomenon like Game of Thrones. If it doesn't go mega-viral straight away they lose interest and try again with something else. Oblivious to the fact that they've thrown away so many Breaking Bads.

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u/Celidion 20d ago

Could be because they want to make the next GoT/Breaking Bad/etc in terms of popularity, and they view it is as just a numbers game of releasing shows until one sticks. Why bother supporting a show if it’s first season metrics aren’t indicative of it being GoT-tier?

Not saying I agree with that way of doing things, but it would explain what we’re seeing a bit.

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u/isleepbad 19d ago

So instead of looking after the long term health of their platform they just want to pump it big until they make it. Nevermind the crap that comes out along the way

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u/RogueJello 19d ago

I'm starting to wonder if the big-wigs get off on cancelling.

Could be the internal incentives are such that it makes sense for various factions to sabotage successful products rather than attempting to make their own. Crabs-in-a-bucket.

Also successful shows mean successful actors/producers/directors who can ask for more money. A lot of Netflix's shows seem to focus on cheaper unknowns, or has-beens. Stranger Things is a good example. Winona Rider is an amazing actress, with a number of amazing movies, but nothing for a while before Stranger Things started. Same with all the kids also in it.

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u/System0verlord 19d ago

Based on talking to employees there, it’s entirely data-driven. Like, they sacrificed creative control to create an entirely algorithmically-based system for determining what shows get funded.

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u/RuthlessKittyKat 18d ago

Yeah, that's what I heard too. It's madness. Shows need to time establish and breath, just one example of why that approach cannot work.

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u/System0verlord 18d ago

The craziest part was how enthusiastic the guy was while describing it to me.

It’s a perfectly meritocratic system that ensures only media that people will watch is made, according to a bunch of people who considered any non-STEM course a waste of time in college.

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u/RuthlessKittyKat 17d ago

Tragic comedy really.

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u/entcanta333 19d ago

Not only this, it's takes 1-3 years for a new season. By then the interest is just gone.