Netflix has just cancelled Santa Clarita Diet, this article goes some way towards explaining why

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‘Feeling The Churn: Why Netflix Cancels Shows After A Couple Of Seasons & Why They Can’t Move To New Homes”Honestly they’re just shooting themselves in the foot because I was planning on checking Santa Clarita Diet out after season 3 seemed to get really great reviews, and I heard people on my flist were really enjoying it, but hearing that it has

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they want to just churn out a couple of ten episode seasons to watch in a weekend as the equivalent of a really long movie

You may be onto something there. I had never really thought of it that way. Then again, I'm so used to my favourite shows getting cancelled early no matter the network/platform, maybe that's why I haven't given it any thought.

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Maybe they’re not consciously thinking of it in those terms, but that seems to be how it works out when they are so focused on the initial numbers and buzz for the first couple of seasons, and then want to drop shows after that, it’s not how tv has been traditionally watched at all. Even on their own platform it’s not what’s producing the most popular and most watched shows, hence their desperation to hang onto Friends, even though it was produced by another network and they’re likely going to lose it eventually anyway

The most popular shows on Netflix are Friends, The Office, Parks And Recreation, Grey’s Anatomy, Supernatural, Gilmore Girls etc, none of which would have survived for even a quarter as long if they were Netflix’s own shows. Interestingly Orange Is The New Black seems to be their most popular original, and hmm that’s the one show that has quite a bit of content to consume, rather than wrapping up after 2 or 3 seasons once Netflix has lost interest in it. They have new movies and tv shows coming out all the time yes,

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I don't know comedy is tough - I never liked Friends tbh and was immediately turned off by The Santa Clarita Diet. I think the only two comedy shows that I have ever watched and re-watched were Black Books and Stacked. But that's not the point. I see what you are saying - it's tough though I mean I watched Girlmore Girls almost till the end (pretending when Lorelei and Christopher got married that was the happy ending) but I acknowledge that there was a decline in quality though not as terribly as with Grey's Anatomy - I stuck this out way too long until I felt completely screwed over by the new show runners last season. I mean similarly with Orange Is The New Black, I stuck it out for a few seasons - I acknowledge there was an important message there about the privatisation of prisons and the employment of unqualified personnel but it was hard to watch, especially with my favourite character being killed and then the last season seemed to be repeating old patterns in a new setting

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I know what you’re saying about Gilmore Girls, I think that five seasons would have been the ideal there maybe. But then of course network tv is going to struggle more with coming up with new storylines and drama when they have 22 + episodes a season, whereas Netflix don’t have that problem, and GG would likely have not needed to introduce forced drama like April if it was 7 seasons of 13 episodes or less

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I've read the article since my last reply and what I thought was most strange was that they try to shorten the already short 13 episode seasons to 10 episodes with the Marvel shows. I will say this, I do think that for instance with Riverdale, I enjoyed the first season much more than the following ones because it was limited to 13 episodes and thus lacked the fillers and the storyline didn't have the chance to make so many ridiculous twists and turns. Then again, there are shows where I guess fillers are not so much of an issue or where there's more of a suggestion of an underlying thread but ultimately you can view every episode as standalone for the most part: That's why Grey's Anatomy for instance can theoretically go on forever and switch out cast members, I guess - it'll be more and more repetitive and formulaeic but then it has acquired its fanbase and perhaps that's enough

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I've read the article since my last reply and what I thought was most strange was that they try to shorten the already short 13 episode seasons to 10 episodes with the Marvel showsThat’s part of what makes it feel like they’re almost more concerned with turning tv into a miniseries or an extra long movie, rather than wanting long-running tv shows, there seems to be a real urgency to their thinking and wanting to make it so that viewers can consume the content as quickly as possible? I don’t see how they’re ever going to get out of the red through if their long-term strategy is just to throw millions of dollars at a tv show, and then be disappointed in the viewer numbers and cancel it when enough people don’t race through it all in the space of a week