[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.