[macspoofing]

>Money people never, ever know their place. They don't understand that culture is more important than they are, and it shows.

They know their place. They look at spreadsheets all day long, and they see that some money losing piece of culture is preventing the business from creating non-money losing piece of culture ... or making payroll.

>It started with the chain bookstores. Used to be, getting in was the hard part, but once a writer got published, he stayed published.

It was great for the writer that got published, but not so great for countless others who couldn't get a break and couldn't get into the vaunted 'club' of gatekeeping published writers.

>Then there are the literary agents, who don't even read 99 percent of the work sent to them

Because there are magnitudes more writers, than writers who can generate an income, and always will be. This is the long-tail that everyone was predicating at the advent of the web. Democratization of culture and media means that it will be much harder for most (except for the tiny few) from making any sort of living from it. You see this on Instagram, YouTube, Twitch streaming, and podcasts because the barrier of entry is so low, it means there are hundreds of thousands of people trying all the time (and those that fail at making an income, are replaced by fresh young faces willing to try). But it's also true of more traditional media, like publishing.

>I'm not surprised this is happening to Netflix

Neither am I. Every single series that Netflix invests means they have to pass on countless others. There is no other way to run this business. The funny thing is that early on with Netflix, when they did not have a lot of content, they would keep renewing unpopular series forever. As they ramped up production, they followed the same trajectory as traditional network channels like NBC/ABC/FOX.

[TheOtherHobbes]

>It was great for the writer that got published, but not so great for countless others who couldn't get a break and couldn't get into the vaunted 'club' of gatekeeping published writers.

It was also great for readers, because there was a realistic expectation that if something was in print it was at worst competent and at best outstanding. Not so much now.

>Democratization of culture and media means that it will be much harder for most (except for the tiny few) from making any sort of living from it.

Democratization of culture means that culture becomes confused with entertainment. They're actually not identical.

IG, YT, and the rest are now purely about marketing strategies. The content - which used to have to speak for itself - is now secondary to bikini ass shots and other eyeball acquisition systems.

There is something rather weird and culty about this. It's almost as if everyone who produces content is being forced to participate in a competitive reality TV show where they Market Their Brand Really Hard™ - and the content is increasingly irrelevant.

>Every single series that Netflix invests means they have to pass on countless others.

Then they need to start monitoring their pilots more effectively, and also spend a little more on up-front development so that the shows that make it out of the slush pile have some prospect of getting to the end of a natural arc.

This is the paradox that most people don't seem to understand. NF claims to be data driven, and supposedly it's economically pragmatic to cut off shows early.

It isn't at all. It's actually unbelievably inefficient, economically and also in terms of customer loyalty.

The efficient solution is to produce consistently great content. This pays off over the long-haul - because a successful series can keep generating significant income for decades.

[ghaff]

>Then they need to start monitoring their pilots more effectively, and also spend a little more on up-front development so that the shows that make it out of the slush pile have some prospect of getting to the end of a natural arc.

It's an interesting thought. Maybe if you had 3-episode arcs as a pilot and more development time, you'd have a better idea which ones have legs for a few seasons anyway. Though, as I wrote elsewhere, I don't want TV shows that go on for too long.

[macspoofing]

>Maybe if you had 3-episode arcs as a pilot and more development time

Sure ... but OP was complaining about shows being cancelled mid-narrative. How does releasing 3 episode pilots fix that? Most likely those will not be complete works, but rather end on some sort cliff-hanger, to entice viewership to stay with the show.

>Though, as I wrote elsewhere, I don't want TV shows that go on for too long.

I agree with you. I found 3 to 5 seasons seems to be the sweet spot for most shows. Once it goes past 5 seasons for many shows, the quality seems to degrade, the writers run out of ideas and just do things to fill time. There is a remake of Anne of Green Gables (Anne with an E) - and holy geeze is that true for that one when it comes to time-filler. Whereas the original series was tight with great pacing, this new series invents and explores every pointless side-story. For example, in the original, there would be a reference to Matthew going somewhere, and in the remake, because the writers have so much time to fill, you'll get a deep dive into that trip, which ultimately has no impact on the larger narrative itself.

[ghaff]

I think what the parent was suggesting was that if more time were spent up-front to maximize the chance that the chance that a show that makes it on is good, you wouldn't be pulling the plug on as many shows. I'm not sure that would actually work though. I assume they already try to do that in development where it's a lot cheaper to experiment than in production.

I only half-jokingly say that I lose interest in most series after, at most, 5 seasons. And it can be a lot less than that. A series can coast through maybe a season or two in significant part on a fresh concept, original characters, a different style, etc. Sure, the writing needs to be good too but it's not the only thing to engage the viewer. It gets harder after that and so does finding fresh stories.

[macspoofing]

>IG, YT, and the rest are now purely about marketing strategies.

OBVIOUSLY! Because there are a million others vying for the same eyeballs. The question is, how do you stand out? If you were a YouTuber who wanted to make a living from YouTube content you create, how would you do it?

>Then they need to start monitoring their pilots more effectively, and also spend a little more on up-front development so that the shows that make it out of the slush pile have some prospect of getting to the end of a natural arc.

How do you know they aren't doing that? No matter how good your pre-production process is for finding good shows, ultimately, it's the eyeballs and box-office that decide it. There is no formula to differentiate a hit from a bomb. What complicates things is that season 1 of the show may have been a hit, but subsequent seasons are not. There's no magic here. At some point, you are going to be cutting something to make room for something else.

>NF claims to be data driven

I'm sure it is, but there is no formula that you can use to figure out what is going to be a hit and what will be a bomb and lose you money. If there was, you wouldn't see companies spending hundreds of millions on movies that end up bombing at the box-office.

>The efficient solution is to produce consistently great content.

This is like saying the 'efficient solution' to investing is to invest in companies that give a good return and not invest in companies that lose you money.

Pretty sure everyone wants to produce great content.

[musingsole]

I remember chatting for an insufferably long time with an individual who loudly proclaimed early in our first meeting "I prefer art to entertainment"

That person sucked, and I was thoroughly surprised by the oxygen content of their own anus.

[bnralt]

> They look at spreadsheets all day long, and they see that some money losing piece of culture is preventing the business from creating non-money losing piece of culture ... or making payroll.

In this case they're seeing something that they guess is not making as much money as they like (there's no way of telling how much and individual program actually brings in) and rolling the dice to see if something else would perform better.

The downside of this attempt, however, is that they're creating a large catalogue of abandoned projects that a lot of viewers aren't going to watch because they don't want half a story. If you complete a series like the OA, you have a decently regarded show in your catalog forever, and your large catalog can attract people even if they don't immediately watch any one particular show. The current approach may or may not create more big hits in the short run (it doesn't seem to have a ton of success on that front so far). In the long run, though, it's going to lead to a smaller number of evergreen shows in the Netflix catalog.

[macspoofing]

>there's no way of telling how much and individual program actually brings in

Sure there is. I used money as a metric, but Netflix, being a subscription business, will have it's own internal metric that correlates cost, popularity, and maybe other stuff to come up with some sort of a score that they can then compare to other shows - to figure out which ones should be renewed and which ones should not be.

[bnralt]

Even with all their metrics, all they can do is guess. Their revenue comes from subscriptions, and there is no clear correlation between the amount of views an individual show gets and the amount of subscriptions Netflix has. You can't simply say "obviously a show with more immediate viewers brings in more subscriptions."

A show with fewer viewers might attract hardcore fans who will cancel their subscription if the show is cancelled, while one that's much more popular might attract viewers who will stay on the platform either way. Someone might be less likely to continue their subscription because of these kinds of cancellations, even when they didn't get around to watching the shows before they were cancelled. A show might attract fewer viewers at first, but become a cult classic later (Netflix should know this, they purchased shows like Arrested Development), or take a few years to really hit their stride.

[macspoofing]

>Even with all their metrics, all they can do is guess.

Sure. But you have to come up with something, otherwise you'll never cancel anything, by extension, never have room to invest in shows that could drive your subscriptions.

>A show with fewer viewers might attract hardcore fans who will cancel their subscription if the show is cancelled

Sure - and maybe there is a way to have some fuzzy prediction or metrics that some show has a hardcore fan base that is worth keeping around even if it's not broadly popular.

So I agree with you it isn't perfect, but again, you still have to come up with some objective measure because you need to make decision on which shows and movies you should be investing in. You only have a finite amount of money available to produce content.

[bnralt]

> But you have to come up with something, otherwise you'll never cancel anything, by extension, never have room to invest in shows that could drive your subscriptions.

Well, positive reception is probably a good indicator of something at least. Many of the cancelled shows were received positively by both fans and critics. That's hardly a given for television shows, and re-rolling the dice is likely to leave you with a show with worse reception. And you do this while cutting the legs out from under a show that had good reception.

People being unhappy with the amount of cancellations is probably a good indicator of something, as well. And you have to wonder about the long term effects, and whether people will stop getting interested in new Netflix shows in general.

[Judgmentality]

> And you have to wonder about the long term effects, and whether people will stop getting interested in new Netflix shows in general.

Interesting point. Maybe 5 years from now nobody will care about new Netflix shows the way nobody cares about new Google products - because consumers just assume it'll be abandoned in a few years. And then both companies will be unable to create anything new because of the poor reputations they've built for themselves.