I am the opposite. Almost none of the new Netflix content appeals to me, but I watch re-runs of things like The Office and Seinfeld.

Ha ha, I'm a bit like you but I instead scour YouTube for even older shows like "Route 66" or the old "You Bet Your Life".

I'm definitely stuck in the 60's through 80's for television shows, and tend to watch my favorites over and over. But honestly, I've downloaded and stored most of the stuff I like because I'm terrified of it disappearing off streaming sources.

Interestingly, "You Bet Your Life" highlighted the fact that Groucho Marx got old, and it's weird in kind of the same way that Elvis getting old is weird.

Interesting in other social ways as well — Groucho was allowed to (literally) "cat-call" the attractive female guests on his show.

I suppose there was a sieve that their guests went through but it is still fascinating to see the parade of suburban Los-angelites: housewives, people with strong ethnic ties to the "old country" that had yet to be melted into the pot that was 1950's America. Who knew door to door salesman really was a typical working class occupation?

Oh yeah, all kinds of baggage attached to the last bits of the vaudeville Borscht Belt. That's also something that makes the transition from Allan Sherman to Weird Al Yankovic so jarring; they did the same act, but even aside from production values, Weird Al didn't bother dragging a previous audience along, and was willing to go anywhere.

Two years is about the length of time required for me to consider a show on Netflix. They kill a lot of shows after two seasons. I don't want to invest the time in a storyline that Netflix is going to axe without a natural conclusion.

That may be true but network TV regularly killed TV shows early in their run too--often in the first season even.

True but networks have a severe time slot constraint, in addition to the same production costs as Netflix, so it's a lot more understandable. Maybe my perception is off but Netflix seems even worse about killing new shows after 1-2 seasons, which is pretty ridiculous IMO.

Netflix seems overly reliant on small scale KPIs at the expense of the overall experience. Of course it's possible that they know exactly what they're doing and I'm just far away from their target consumer.

Wired had an article about this a year or so back [0] that said shows get more expensive after the first two seasons, so Netflix is inclined to kill them in favor of new shows. It also said viewership during that initial window also heavily influences the renewal process. Netflix has a lot more data than network television ever has and I think it leads them to be a bit overzealous with their decision making. Most shows I've really enjoyed have a weak first season as they find their footing.

[0] -- https://www.wired.co.uk/article/netflix-originals-cancelled-...

I don't know the numbers but Netflix probably kills shows faster.

>Of course it's possible that they know exactly what they're doing and I'm just far away from their target consumer.

Maybe. So long as a show doesn't get canceled at a completely unnatural point, I'm actually fine with just a couple seasons a lot of the time--especially with the historical network model of 20 episodes per season or so. And, conversely, by the time a show hits 4 or 5 seasons I'm done with it even if it's still pretty solid. I'm just tired of it.

There are a bunch of network shows I liked that stayed pretty good but I just stopped watching them at some point.

And that is where we learned not to trust TV shows in the beginning, but at least TV stations can only carry so many shows.

Firefly fan forever.

I'm this way _for Netflix_. HBO Max and Disney both have an awesome back-catalog of things to revisit, and I'm constantly finding myself watching an old 90s or 00s movie I had forgotten about on a whim, because it's there. The catalog is curated enough to focus on including good stuff, and HBO Max also has all of Batman: TAS.

That would indeed be very interesting, but back when I joined Netflix that was almost all they had, and I watched a lot of content. From time to time the special effects are bad enough that it breaks immersion (TOS), but for the most part if the movie/show was any good when it was written it is good today. So why not watch it?

I didn't get to see Buffy until it was on Netflix and I enjoyed it as much as I would have when it was new, I think. Granted the computers and cellphones are obviously dated (but if you think of it as a period show, it is fine) and it is a bit grating how everybody is always fully covered during/after sex, but the stories are as great as they were back then.

In recent years I'm too busy to focus on watching something new, so usually I'll put on something I've already seen a hundred times for background "watching". Currently rewatching Silicon Valley, before that was Saved By The Bell (ahh, nostalgia).