New Data Suggests Long Waits Between Seasons Are Hurting Viewership on Netflix Hits

I learned decades ago to do the same with book series.

I’m still mad about Santa Clarita Diet

not just netflix, every streaming service/studio does that now.

I really like the artist/author Brian K Vaughn. Millions of people do. One of the best selling authors of graphic novels that exists.

Just finished reading "Y: The Last Man", oh, there's a TV show?.... canceled after one season....

"Paper Girls"?..... canceled after one season...

If they try to tell me that "Saga" is in the works for a TV adaptation (which... fucking good luck) I would hardly be exited for it. Because why get my hopes up? The books are amazing anyways. The art is beautiful in the way it was illustrated. The only advantage a TV show has ever given is being able to easily share the story with family and watch together.

Yeah Kaos was the last blow to me, especially being it sounds like everyone involved in that really enjoyed it, it was the numer 1 show at the time, and the next two parts were already outlined and ready to shoot with an actual ending already in mind.

Netflix proved with Kaos that there is no actual logic behind their content decisions

that seems irrelevant to this issue. this is about people who do initially watch that lose interest.

Literally all you had to do was go to a Stranger Things subreddit/facebook group literally any time between seasons (2-3, etc.) and you'd have novellas-worth of proof.

I'm guessing the investigation was to determine how strong the effect is, to see how much money is worth spending to avoid the issue?

Don't forget the commercials, arhhh ye land lovers

more than 8 episodes. started in september ended around may. so like around 25 episodes. just give me 25 episodes every year of something like tv shows used to be. new season every year. it shouldn't be hard we had that for years before netflix.

I think you underestimate how much the average person loves to consume utter trash media.

Yeah I remember always browsing Netflix and seeing the same shit that I had no interest in showing up every time I looked for a show to watch. Shit that I was purposefully ignoring for months and months. But then I learn about an interesting show somewhere else, search for it on Netflix, and find a good show has been somewhere in the shadows the entire time with 4+ seasons and I had never come across it a single time while browsing forever and never finding anything to watch.

mostly because of bigger budgets making scheduling harder. higher profile actors, bigger crews, potential location filming, more time required for effects and post production.

I also heard writing takes longer because it has to be refined and tightened to fit in shorter seasons.

covid and writers strike also made everything worse for a while.

and part of it is probably intentional trying to milk the golden goose for as long as possible. apologies for the mixed metaphor.

Broadcast/cable TV had a schedule to fill. More than anything else, they needed to fill time slots. They planned around a calendar so annual seasons were only natural. That's also why they tended to have longer seasons, because it's easier to keep viewers coming back on schedule when they are already interested in a show. Plus it's cheaper to to make one long show than two short shows. It leads to brutal production schedules and massive creative compromises, but it fills airtime and that's what counts.

In other words, the economics of old school TV were about filling time while maximizing ratings and minimizing costs, which incentivizes making a smaller number of shows with longer seasons and regular releases.

Streaming has very different incentives. They don't care about filling a schedule, they just want you to subscribe. Every new show is a potential draw, and the more titles they have the more likely it is that one of them will appeal to you. They are incentivized to fill their catalog, not their calendar. As such, there's nowhere near as much pressure to churn out seasons like clockwork. If anything, they probably get more bang for their buck by waiting longer between seasons so that the release of each season is more of an event.

Hell, it doesn't even matter that much if it hurts the show in the long run. As long as they keep getting subscribers and have new shows (or popular old shows) to pull people in, they don't really care if an existing show dies.

For instance, Party Down got a third season 13 years after season two.

And it was pretty good, too! I'm so grateful that unexpected third season didn't taint the show's legacy.

18 months is about the amount of time it takes me to forget most of the details of a show, and therefore any sense of personal investment in it.

Season 2 was the last Stranger Things I watched, and even then I watched it years after it was released.