Netflix has a problem: No one is watching the second seasons of its biggest hits. This isn’t a new trend, but it is now becoming a dire one, with executives at the company scrambling around asking what happened and looking for new shows—new content—to fix it. But content is not Netflix’s problem, and if its execs actually used the service they operate they’d have a better idea of what happened. Because there is no one to blame but Netflix itself.
The drop-offs have been bad. Beef and One Piece both lost over half their audiences in their respective second seasons. Same with Running Point and Four Seasons. Now Avatar: The Last Airbender is dealing with a similar drop off a cliff.
Been saying it forever:
They need multi season commitments.
Look at From, it’s putting out steady quality seasons because they knew from the start it would get 5 seasons to tell the story.
They won’t stretch it, they won’t cut it if ratings lag.
“Small” streamers like MGM+ still need those big marquees shows to keep subscribers. They’re willing to keep making the show all the way thru sona decade from now they’re still the only streamer who has it.
Netflix has “enough” of those shows to keep subscribers, so if anything isn’t a home run, it gets cancelled. And because they want to know “quick” they only give season 1 a week or two before cancelling. When if they’d give most of them ~3 seasons and filmed season 2 right after 1, a good amount would have been huge franchises by now.
It’s the focus on long term growth when “small” and only quarterly profits once large.