At this point, Netflix is just about as famous for canceling shows as it is for the ones that remain on the service. Over the last several years the streamer has debuted so many different shows that it can be difficult to keep track of them all. But with the volume of shows has come mass cancellations, including many to high profile programs after only one season. However, the CEO of Netflix says the company has never canceled a successful show.
That’s probably hard to believe, based on the fan outcry that has been heard when certain shows end up on the chopping block. And yet, new co-CEO of Netflix Ted Sarandos tells Bloomberg the company has “never canceled a successful show.” In this case, his definition of success is a ratio of the show’s audience to budget. A show that has a large budget, but a small audience, is not a success.
As far as that goes, it certainly makes sense. No company is going to spend a lot of money if they don’t think they’re getting a return on that investment. While many of these shows that get canceled clearly have vocal audiences that make their displeasure known, that doesn’t mean that the show had a large audience. A line is being drawn here between popularity and success. A show that is one, is not necessarily the other.
At the same time, it’s basically impossible to know what Netflix is considering a large audience in this case. The more expensive the show, the bigger the audience apparently needs to be, but since we generally have no idea how many people are watching any given Netflix show, it’s impossible to figure out what a show needs to accomplish to survive.
All we have to go on is a show’s ranking, as listed by Netflix. When a show like Wednesday comes along and remains the most popular show on the service for weeks straight, we can be fairly sure that Season 2 is coming, but beyond that, nobody really knows. Considering that Netflix has more than 230 million subscribers worldwide, the expectations for global viewership of any given series could be quite high.
And of course, the metrics of streaming are different than other forms of entertainment, People are not buying tickets like movies or watching ads like traditional broadcast TV. In this case, the money has largely already been spent by the viewers in the form of a monthly Netflix subscription. The question isn’t so much, will enough people watch another season of the show, as it’s how many people might begin to subscribe to watch the show or how many subscribers might the service lose if there is no Season 2?
