Netflix, the new CEOs talk about the cancellation of the shows

It is now known that Netflix has no particular problems with cancel tv shows; even if, at least apparently, they enjoy a rather large success. Among the most recent cases we mention 1899 and Warrior Nun, abandoned after one and two seasons respectively. Warrior Nun fans even bought a giant billboard right outside Netflix’s headquarters asking the company to think again.

During an interview with Bloombergthe two new co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos released the following statement:

We’ve never canceled a hit show. Lots of those shows [quelli cancellati] they mean well but are targeting a very small audience with a very big budget. The trick is to learn to target a small audience with a modest budget, and a large audience with a big budget. If you can learn it right, you can go on forever.

Sensible and acceptable reasoning, of course, but there are a couple of observations that we think are worth making. Meanwhile, that the public could have a problem of perception of the success of a show, and it’s a problem created by Netflix itself. For example, according to public statistics, just watching a few minutes of an episode of a show causes the system to consider the entire season as “watched”. But how many of these actually complete it?

It is clear that the audience number will inevitably be higher and will be more effective in terms of marketing, but it is rather obvious to imagine that Netflix also knows how many people have actually completed a show, and that this parameter is decisive for establishing the renewal or cancellation of a project. The problem is that the general public doesn’t know this, and will continue to cite the only data they have available to support their hypothesis on the success of the series.

The other big problem is that there is a way and a way to cancel a show. For those who are passionate about the characters, a minimum of conclusion is needed. The ending is an important part of any story, although it can be argued that the journey matters most. Of course, here too everything is governed by economic considerations and opportunities, but it would be very nice to have at least a hope, if not a guarantee, that each canceled show will have a worthy conclusion – be it a special episode, a feature film (as happened at the time with Firefly and Serenity, for example) or whatever. This could encourage subscribers to try new shows without fear of being “hung up” on an end-of-season cliffhanger that will never be resolved.

In short, summarizing: Netflix could appease several controversies by offering more transparency on viewing data and a worthy conclusion for canceled shows. It is difficult to establish whether there will be any movement in this direction, because naturally in practice both have rather significant negative implications – less appeal on the marketing side on the one hand, the need to spend additional resources on the other.