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

[frelling_tralk]

‘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

Comments

[honeymink]

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.

I wonder what that happy medium is and not only for Netflix shows. I really would have wished that WGN had renewed Manhattan for a third season however short but then again, less chance to screw up a really really good thing?

As for Netflix - yes, they put out a lot of content but I find it really hit or miss. I wanted to like Lost In Space more than I did, I will still watch the second season though. A lot of people on LJ were really in love with The Umbrella Academy and so I watched it. It made me wonder if you needed to know the material before hand to love it. In theory it contained so many ideas that I'd usually be enthusiastic to watch and the casting was good but somehow to me it was dragging. So to me... I don't know, apart from Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Stranger Things, Dark and The Crown? There haven't been any shows I have been truly keen on. And they got rid of the first two, and if I'm honest I can't see Stranger Things and Dark going on for many seasons without losing their 'mystery'. So in that sense you are right that a show like the Santa Clarita Diet would have been best suited to go on for say five or six seasons without losing its appeal.

[frelling_tralk]

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.

The fact that Netflix shows have so much shorter episode orders though makes it odd to me that they are apparently reluctant for a show to go on for longer than three seasons, even though that very often means just 30 episodes or less with the episode counts that they have. That’s very different from the 100’s of episodes that network tv had resulting in filler episodes. Even looking at a popular recent popular show for them like Sex Education, it had a total of 6 episodes which is great for binge watching, but also kind of awkward and limiting when Netflix are desperately trying to compete with the other network shows that their subscribers keep watching instead. It’s hard to keep up the hype for very long when you drop six episodes over a weekend, and then there’s a year or more wait for the next season, so it’s no wonder that more young viewers will be watching and re-watching network shows like Gossip Girl, Riverdale, and Pretty Little Liars instead when you look at the overall numbers and hype

Netflix has produced some interesting content for me, I was a big fan of The Haunting Of Hill House for example, but a lot of it has also been pretty forgettable. I’ve raved in the past about preferring shorter seasons that you can make your way through quickly, but yeah I dunno, I guess there is also a lot to be said for shows following a year in the lives of the characters over a longer span of time and really getting you invested, and that’s something that Netflix don’t seem to care as much about for whatever reason

[honeymink]

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.

Two other things that struck me about the article were the moratorium clause and the - a show gains popularity and therefore gets too expensive to produce (not sure I got that right though). I find both hard to understand from a business standpoint. As in, wouldn't it be beneficial to Netflix to let CBS All Access pick up their content? Perhaps with some clause in the contract that the rights will revert back to them later? I'm obviously no lawyer but... - and the second part, so again, wouldn't you want a show to be popular and therefore gain more subscribers? So why not invest in it instead of cancelling it and starting a new thing?

ETA: What I gleaned from the article though is that this is not a necessarily a Netflix specific thing. I mean Amazon has cancelled The Collection and The Last Tychoon after one season, which disappointed me greatly. And they are going to end The Man In The High Castle after the coming season.

[frelling_tralk]

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

That’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

I agree that filler with network shows is something to consider as well though, idk maybe 15/16 episodes would be a good sweet spot for some shows? You rarely need as many as 22 episodes per season, but I don’t always find that Netflix preferring 10 episodes or less very satisfying either I guess (depending on the show)

I’m not so familiar with most of Amazon Prime originals, but I got the impression that they had a few longer running shows like Transparent, but they do also seem to have a tendency to cancel after one season if they feel like a show isn’t working out for them. I haven’t really considered this before, but it makes me wonder what sort of shelf life The Marvellous Mrs Maisel has considering that it’s coming up to its third season. It’s pretty crazy though because in a lot of ways it feels to me like it’s a fairly new show/has barely just began, but I guess that for streaming services that three seasons would already seen like a decent run to them?