When Netflix canceled your favorite series, it was a very dramatic moment for you; for business leaders, it was Tuesday. Not a month goes by without several similar announcements coming out, and 2023 has started off rough with a slew of titles that won’t get a second season. Although Netflix has already explained why it’s canceling so many shows, that doesn’t help to tone down the bad drink.
The irony of the cancellation of Netflix series
In the words of Ted Sarandos, the company’s co-CEO, “Netflix has never canceled a hit series.” In other words, it seems like a simple explanation that everyone can agree with: if a show doesn’t keep audiences investing, it makes sense for Netflix to drop it.
The crux of the matter, of course, is in the definition of “successful series”, and therein lies the controversy. As various directors and creators have explained, the most important thing for the company is to get as many views as possible in the first month since the first. And to explain why, you need to understand how Netflix has changed the way we consume new content.
Netflix became famous in its day for launching all episodes of its series at once; so that people can watch them at the pace they want, instead of having to wait each week as is the case with traditional television; but this caused the birth of a practice called “binge-watching”, consisting of hitting a “binge” and watch all the episodes of the series one after the other
Ironically, the popularity of “binge-watching” has meant that Netflix no longer sees only early-day audiences as important, ignoring the audience accumulated over the months or years as usual before. This way the board can make a decision very quickly, practically in the first hours of the premiere, on whether to greenlight a new season.
How to prevent Netflix from canceling our favorite series
As they explain in my city, this situation has prompted the various groups of fans to mobilize to generate the greatest number of views in the shortest possible time. Specifically, it’s happening with one of Netflix’s latest releases, Shadow and Bone, which the Reddit community is running marathons of in hopes it won’t be canceled after the second season, as happened with so many series from Netflix.
The process involves bringing fans of a series together and agree to play the episodes of the new season one after the other and in a loop. Some have organized “virtual parties”, in which they use instant messaging applications to watch the episodes at the same time and discuss them with friends. This movement was initiated by screenwriter Michael Scully, who revealed to his followers that the future of the series depends on the number of views the second season will receive in the first 28 days on Netflix.
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