Its not just Netflix these days. Every new show seems to start their life on the chopping block. If the first season doesn’t get enough views in the first few days its out then season two doesn’t even get made. If it does do okay then they get to start writing a second season, which means another 2 years before we get a second season and by then we have completely forgotten the show until you read about it getting cancelled 2 weeks after season 2 came out because nobody tuned in.
The costs have ballooned too much. When seasons were 18 episodes and it costs $100k per episode, it made sense to serialize. Often they were written as they were filmed. Now every episode costs $10 million and preproduction takes a year before the first scene can be filmed with massive post production. No one has really cracked the formula for making TV formats work well on streaming services. The all at once for binge watching only works if you already have a massive archive of shows to expose. The one episode a week for short boutique series that run a season every 3 years is not working well either.
Its not just Netflix these days. Every new show seems to start their life on the chopping block. If the first season doesn’t get enough views in the first few days its out then season two doesn’t even get made. If it does do okay then they get to start writing a second season, which means another 2 years before we get a second season and by then we have completely forgotten the show until you read about it getting cancelled 2 weeks after season 2 came out because nobody tuned in.
The costs have ballooned too much. When seasons were 18 episodes and it costs $100k per episode, it made sense to serialize. Often they were written as they were filmed. Now every episode costs $10 million and preproduction takes a year before the first scene can be filmed with massive post production. No one has really cracked the formula for making TV formats work well on streaming services. The all at once for binge watching only works if you already have a massive archive of shows to expose. The one episode a week for short boutique series that run a season every 3 years is not working well either.