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

[author_by_night]

Your "really long movie" comparison is interesting, and maybe not all that far off. I definitely think they're relying on binging, rather than character development and arc development. Which some shows suffer for. Like One Day at a Time - I like the show a lot, but I do think it was weaker for having a lot more "special focus issue" episodes rather than longer lasting arcs and character/relationship development. However, I don't think the format really allowed a smoother ride. I don't think it needed to be cancelled, I think it had more viewership than they admitted, but I wonder if it would've been more popular if so many of the episodes hadn't been in Very Special Episode territory.

I also wonder if Netflix went over on its own head. It was a great place to watch movies, and then it tried original content, now they seem to be questioning what kind of original content that want, plus what older stuff people want. (I have to say, their idea of what people want is... odd as far as movies go. They barely have any popular movies, instead seeming to have more obscure ones. It could be a rights thing, of course, but I have to wonder.)

[frelling_tralk]

I wonder if there’s been a change behind the scenes at some point, because I definitely get the impression that they are now chasing the youth demo hard in this past year or so, and catering towards viewers who they see as having a limited attention span and just wanting to speed watch new content all the time. That seems very limiting to me though, because surely they’re never going to be able to produce *that* many new tv shows every month, especially while still trying to balance the money that they are spending. And as I’ve mentioned in several other comments, it definitely seems to be the case that most people are finding that it’s the older network shows that they’re happiest to rewatch the most as ~comfort shows~ almost, and that’s just not the kind of shows that Netflix seem interested in doing. That is going to present a problem once Netflix starts losing the rights to shows like Friends and The Office though, even young viewers are watching those shows on repeat by the sounds of it, and are not as obsessed with new content as Netflix might imagine. Their originals are not the most popular shows on their platform

And they seem to be trying more for prestige movies with their own content, I get the impression that it’s really important for them for their movies to win awards and be respected. And definitely they’ve never been great for picking up popular movies I’ve found, I suspect that that’s a cost thing maybe?

[author_by_night]

Yeah, to be fair, I even remember trying to have a Netflix night with a friend years ago, and nothing was on Netflix that was really worth watching. It was a lot of movies that probably, in their day, spent a week and a half at major theaters before slinking to DVD. Or even just went straight to DVD.* This was probably five, six years ago. You could rent the more popular movies, but they weren't on instant watch.

*Although apparently not all straight to DVD movies are bad. But it's not good if a movie intended for cinematic release pretty much falters to DVD. At least if that's always the intention, there's a chance it's quite good and just didn't have the funding or leverage to get past DVD/limited cinema release. I'm not a film expert, this is all conjecture based on what other film people have told me. :P

I wonder if there’s been a change behind the scenes at some point

I feel like that happens a lot, and in general, not just with companies like Netflix. Or more or less the same people are there, but are pressured to make changes.

It makes sense to me that people prefer comfort shows. I know I tend to watch Netflix at night as I'm going to bed; I prefer lighter comfort shows because I watch them right before going to sleep. It wouldn't surprise me if that's true of a lot of people.

[frelling_tralk]

I definitely find that comedies especially are the kind of shows that you never get sick of re-watching, but then it’s weird to me that Netflix are prepared to spend a ton on having the rights to air Friends for a year, even though in other respects they do seem to want to focus more on original content and see that as their future, so why then are they not investing in setting up some original comedies to run for longer than a few years? That would seem to be a no-brainer to me when all that money they spend on Friends can only benefit them for a singe year.

They seem to have picked up some lessons from comedies being binge-watched in that they have apparently been pushing lately for shorter episodes, but then I’m not sure that really benefits them when the total content of their shows is so much less than shows like Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and The Office which have ten seasons or more with so much episode choice that you will never get sick of it, you can’t spend much time on a couple of seasons of 6-10 episodes in comparison

And I’ve honestly never understood why both Netflix and Amazon Prime waste so much on these really dire movies that hardly anyone cares to watch, I get that they’re cheap and some people must watch them, but for me it makes it a lot less interesting checking out what new content has been added each day when I know that most of it will be very low-rated garbage frankly. It would make more sense to me to make it more of an event with adding a couple of really cool new shows and movies say once a week (and actually promoting on Netflix itself that this is what’s new this week), instead a lot of very good content gets overlooked because of there being tons of new stuff added all the time, whether it’s any good or not