I can obviously only talk for myself but can say with confidence that if I'm watching a series which is cancelled without a conclusion, the likelihood of every watching another one by that publisher is miniscule at best.
It's definitely the worst business decision to do for Netflix. Either don't stop at a cliffhanger or do a final episode to bring it to an ending. If you decide not to anyway... Don't expect people to come back after getting burned once
Because at least I sure as hell won't be back
Every “publisher” in TV series does it. And most of them, including Netflix, also pick up things other houses have cancelled without a satisfying conclusion and extend them to provide one, or at least another chance at one.
The only substantive difference I see with Netflix is that they are taking far more shots at potential tentpole series than any other single outlet.
> Don't expect people to come back after getting burned once
I expect Netflix has a lot better behavioral data driving decisions than your “I can obviously only talk for myself” and then drawing conclusions from that to what is “definitely the worst business decision to do for Netflix” as if you were the whole market.
No, it's a newer integrated content & delivery service that’s far less diversified as a whole business than the corporations that run traditional cable and broadcast, so the pressures on its content to succeed in driving metrics are even more intense.
> A 2 season show that was canned on a cliffhanger? Will NOT TOUCH.
A seasons show that got canned on cliffhanger wasn't getting touched in a way which would justify the cost, anyway; they are writing in off and stopping lighting money on fire when they are cancelling it.
They don't want to invest the kind of money they put into these series for something people already committed to the platform might try out, the expensive, heavily promoted at launch series need to be drivers of the decision to subscribe or stay subscribed (there’s plenty of stuff that’s cheaper, less promoted, and probably fine for them if it's essentially catalog filler, but that's not the series that get attention.) And if it's not doing that, throwing another (even truncated) season’s worth of money to slightly boost it's value as catalog filler might make some artistic sense, but it doesn't make a lot of business sense.