[high_derivative]

This article has incredible annoying spacing (one sentence per paragraph). Is this meant to read like an unrolled Twitter thread?

Content wise: I recently cancelled my Netflix again because despite a flood of new shows, all feel incredibly generic and formulaic. I like shows across genres, from teenage romance to sitcom to thriller, and I am looking forward to watching e.g. Narcos new season when it hits, there are also great one-offs like Maniac.

I just don't believe in the strategy of flooding their platform with their own content at this volume. Or rather, the type of content. If I remember correctly, plots and artistic decisions are made by committee, and it just shows very hard how plots are made to be subtly educational, not offend, just a lowest common denominator of what the data says.

Not sure it works. After finding myself browsing through too many evenings in a row, I always cancel until something I know I want returns for a new season, then resubscribe for a month.

[com2kid]

> I recently cancelled my Netflix again because despite a flood of new shows, all feel incredibly generic and formulaic.

Altered Carbon, Love Death Robots, Russian Doll, all recent standout Netflix originals.

Heck even their Anime is on point, and I am not the largest fan of Anime cliches. Castlevania was incredible, and Ultraman was above average.

Flavorful Origins is the best food show I've ever seen.

But then again, I only watch ~4-6 hours of TV a month, so a trickle of high quality content is just fine.

[snuxoll]

> Heck even their Anime is on point

They’re impressing the hell out of me recently here, especially with the announcement that they’re helping produce another season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

I don’t think Netflix has something for everyone these days, but they are really hitting certain niches out of the park and will be just fine as long as they keep this core subscriber base. Especially hard sci-fi that almost everybody else has given up on.

[AznHisoka]

Same here. I find myself going from series to series trying to find something that captivates me, and nothing sticks. I thought I was goingd to watch more Netflix now that Thrones is over but it is the opposite. I expect more and Netflix isnt delivering so I will cancel my subscription soo .

A 5-episode series of Black Mirror every year isnt going to cut it. I honestly dont know why they dont release an episode a week. Its pure laziness on their part, imo. Make the consumers happy. stop pushing out random junk that doesn’t stick and double down on what works.

[DanBC]

They couldn't maintain quality when they went to 5 episodes a year, which is why they've gone back down to 3 episodes.

[oplav]

After finding myself browsing through too many evenings in a row, I always cancel until something I know I want returns for a new season, then resubscribe for a month.

I find myself doing this with my Hulu subscription. They have a built-in hold function that pauses your account for up to 12 weeks. Since I typically watch shows in bulk (or binge), only having the subscription active one out of every four months works well.

The next step I'd like to take would be to only have a single streaming service active each month.

[mrfusion]

Hmm maybe a startup idea there. Help a user plan out what to watch over six months or a year and subscribe and cancel subscriptions for them behind the scenes so they get a cheap and also seamless viewing experience.

[davvolun]

> If I remember correctly, plots and artistic decisions are made by committee

This is an extremely important point, needs to be backed up with some citation.

It's the exact condemnation of "the suits" making decisions in cable's heyday. FWIW, I've heard the opposite, that Netflix has an almost completely hands-off approach -- the Netflix execs find creators and give them a budget, then move on to finding their next creator. I don't know if that has any more truth, but I'm inclined to think so.

[AdrianB1]

Same here: I paid more than a year of subscription just to watch 3-4 decent TV series of ~ 12 hours each (some even shorter): 10 EURO/month for 3-4 hours of watching. There is a lot of content out there, most of it is brain damaging to see.