Netflix is famously secretive with announcing viewership and ratings for its original content, and it has generally worked out in their favour. It’s difficult to judge their hit-or-miss ratio when only they know which shows are hit-or-miss. As a result of this, there is now a perception of Netflix only putting out quality content. In addition to that, Netflix are quite famous for giving many of their new shows a second season very quickly and it seems like this attitude has somewhat taken its toll.

Having recently cancelled The Get Down and Sense8 if you thought Netflix was done with its latest round of the purge, you’d be wrong. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings had this to say:

“Our hit ratio is way too high right now. So, we’ve canceled very few shows … I’m always pushing the content team: We have to take more risk; you have to try more crazy things. Because we should have a higher cancel rate overall. [By taking risks] you get some winners that are just unbelievable winners, like 13 Reasons Why. It surprised us. It’s a great show, but we didn’t realize just how it would catch on.”

For a long time it was quietly understood that Netflix had the ability to renew shows that weren’t doing so great in terms of viewership in comparison to network TV which cancels shows ruthlessly every year. However, with Reed Hastings’ most recent comments it seems like the threat of Amazon and other streaming services is catching up to them.

Season 5 of Netflix’s House of Cards released on May 30th 2017. Image via Twitter.com/HouseofCards

It’s certainly not all bad, Netflix’s new direction continues to include their desire to give a voice to original creators and content. In order to do that they have continued to honour their pledge to invest at least $6 billion into original programming each year.

What do you think about Netflix’s new direction? Should they be cancelling more shows to make room for new ones?

Source: The Independent

Published by Qamar Shafiq

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