Netflix defends its cancellation rate, says we’re looking at it the wrong way

Of late, Netflix has gained a reputation for cancelling beloved shows. Are we making too big a deal of it? If you ask the execs, yes.

Once upon a time, when Netflix was getting its original content arm up and running, it had a reputation for approving everything and cancelling almost nothing, leading to a flood of content you could spend your whole life getting lost in.

More recently, the streaming service has gotten flak for cancelling too many shows, with fan favorites like Ozark, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Sense8, GLOW, Mindhunter, I Am Not Okay With This, The OA, The Society, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Santa Clarita Diet, Dark, Tuca and Bertie and One Day at a Time all getting cut down in recent years.

So what the people in charge have to say for themselves? Speaking at the Paley International Council Summit, Netflix’s Global Head of TV Bela Bajaria said that the streamer’s cancellation rate is pretty run-of-the-mill.

“If you look at season twos and more, we actually have a renewal rate of 67%, which is industry standard,” Bajaria said, according to Deadline. “We also do make a large amount of first season shows, which sometimes feels that we have more first season cancellations but if you look at the renewal rate it’s really strong. I also think you have to look at The Crown, with season four launching now, Grace & Frankie and The Ranch, we’ve had long running shows and we’re always going to have a mix that are great to be told in a limited series form and shows that go on for multiple seasons.”

"I’ve been in the business a long time and been on all different sides of those cancellations. It’s always painful to cancel a show and nobody wants to do that. We order straight to series in the first rather than make pilots, which results sometimes in more season one cancellations. Even with that, I still believe a season order is still a better creative expression of a writer’s idea so I still think that’s the right model for us."

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, meanwhile, thinks it’s “disproportionately” big news when a Netflix show gets canceled, and that the media is being too old-fashioned when thinking about this topic. “It seems like in this new age of television, the business model is a little different,” he said. “The things that marked success prior to Netflix and OTT really had been getting to syndication, that was the goal and anything that didn’t get to 100 episodes or past the four seasons didn’t feel like a success, whereas I think many shows can be a success for being exactly what they are and you could tell that story in two seasons or one season or five seasons. I think it gets talked about so much because it’s measured against the old way of doing things.”

I get some of what they’re saying here, but I think a lot of the ire over the rash of cancellations is because a lot of shows are cancelled without a conclusion. Sure, a show can be complete with only one or two seasons…if it’s designed that way. But what about all the shows Netflix cut off at the knees before they had wrapped up their stories, like GLOW and Mindhunter? I’d be fine with a 67% cancellation rate if the shows getting the axe were chosen a little more carefully.

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h/t CBR