I've been a Netflix user for a few years now, and I'm happy to take advantage of the service (even though I don't have much time for it). Being able to watch movies and series at any time without annoying commercials ultimately ensures that I don't shed a tear for analog linear television, and am rather ashamed to read online how one TV show after the next flops and is discontinued. (Pro7 digs its own grave, Only 850,000 viewers: RTL lands massive prime-time flop, Only 400,000 viewers: Pro7 has two flops in a row)
In February 2022, I finally had the opportunity to buy Netflix stock. But why do I want to sell these shares now? The background is that due to the last years and months, the quality of Netflix has declined sharply and series seasons have partly only 8 episodes or less. Where 10 years ago series seasons had more than 20 episodes. At Netflix, a series is then sometimes gladly canceled after one season and after a few episodes, where you can hardly accommodate content.
What particularly bothers me is that the series are canceled because quota is missing. Why? Why not set a fixed budget for a series, with a fixed season length and then the series is finished or is extended if it runs better. But to cancel a series after 8 episodes? Unfortunately, I see the problem that newer series are simply less good, because watching them is like Russian roulette, you never know when a series will be canceled. I only watch series on Netflix that are already airing a second season, too often I've been burned by having loved a series and then it was canceled.
A series which I like to take as a reference I Battlestar Galactica (75 episodes in 4 seasons) or Stargate, both "niches" in the world of scifi series, which are positioned between Star Wars and Star Trek. Battlestar Galactica had an average of 1 million viewers in Germany in its first season in 2006. If one considers that today already with a television show with 850,000 spectators of flop one speaks, then a niche topic such as Sci-Fi would be probably scarcely thereby also to be stopped and/or today probably no more would be produced, because the danger would be too large one minus makes.
And that's a problem, because this strong look at the profit, leads in artistic works such as series or films to the acting new talents have it much harder and at the same time you scare away so the user to start the series at all, which then results in weak ratings and eventually by so much new and strangely abstruse added to lead to the fact that a series like Riverdale (episodes + viewer ratings) is cannibalized and milked, so to speak, and viewers just shake their heads and switch off.
There are few series that become endurance runs like The Big Bang Theory (279 episodes in 12 seasons), How I Met Your Mother (208 episodes in 9 seasons) or also Two and a Half Man (262 episodes in 12 seasons) where, in the latter, almost consistently every episode reached more than 2 million viewers, despite advertising on linear TV.
I don't know where the journey is going, but I am sad about this development, that you pay Netflix, but there is only crap fabricated. Most recently there has me the series Wednesday convinced of the quality, but again there were 8 episodes in one season, whether there is a 2nd season of Netflix? Probably, due to the popular characters and the almost non-flattening interest in social media, but is a 2nd season guaranteed or known to be in the works? No, it isn't. And so, once again, I'll be worried about having grown to love a series, only to end up feeling the knife of Netflix in my series heart.
Addendum 06.01.2023: Netflix has the Season 2 of Wednesday via Youtube confirmed with a teaser!
For this reason, I'm selling my share of Netflix, because I like streaming on-demand, but I don't agree with the methods. Well, maybe you can save the money again in the subscription and switch back to linear TV, at least reruns of great series are still running, which are already more than 10 years ago....
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