That and one of the great benefits of Netflix was that you could watch multiple seasons of a show, and that a season was 20 ish episodes.

Now they do 7 episodes and call it a season and frequently their shows only have one or two seasons.

And they have so many (non-'original') where they only have a few series available at the end or in the middle. I don't understand the licencing/purchasing decision that can lead to that. Seems to happen far too often for it to be different studios/licencors, obviously that happens sometimes.

BBC's QI is one example. I understand new series not being available on Netflix (in the UK) as the BBC now have their own subscription platform. But it's not just that, because Netflix don't have the earliest ones either, just a seemingly random set in the middle, perhaps even non-contiguous.

Seems like a bad example, QI doesn't have a storyline ergo you don't need earlier seasons.

That's an argument for it not mattering, maybe, but still not a reason to do it?

Why would you willingly not diversify your portfolio?

Buy what you can when you can afford it. It seems like good business strategy?

I found that to be one of the drawbacks of Netflix, and all other streaming services. A story that could easily be told in 100min or a few hours takes 10+ hours to slog through. Excessive sequences of characters getting high, or repeating tasks, or irrelevant side quests to pad the content time statistics, or make people feel like their monthly fees are worth it.

Yes, this is especially true for successful shows. They can be told in 2-3 seasons but they end up as 5 seasons. The pace of storytelling crawls to a halt in the middle seasons typically.

Short seasons are perfectly valid and have existed since before Netflix. I remember watching British TV shows in which a season consisted of six half-hour episodes, and feeling that more (and more interesting) things had happened in that time frame than a USA season of 24 one-hour episodes.

These days that’s even more of a plus. When someone recommends something to watch the first thing I check is how many seasons it’s up to, then the number of episodes, then the runtime. Shows with too many seasons of too many too long episodes are immediately ignored.

I prefer that to the older pattern—a significant fraction of phoned-in episodes out of 26 per year.

Good shows are usually expensive in their first season and always in later seasons.

Expensive is a word accounting, finance and investors really don’t like.

Who really likes the word expensive?

My wife.

But then why do the rug pull of making one or two seasons of a good show and then killing it? That serves to piss off everyone who took the time to watch and get interested in the show. If Netflix only wants to make reality tv they should just own that.

I stopped even considering Netflix shows with only one or two seasons because they almost always get killed mid-story. Which means I pretty much never watch Netflix now. Out of state relatives using the account is the main thing keeping me subscribed, so when that sharing gets cut off it'll be the end of my subscription.

It works short term to attract new subscriptions, which is what counted until last year.

Let's say you aren't alone in your subscription situation, to put it mildly.

You have to love that under "Why was X cancelled" they basically just compliment the show runner and actors for their work or cite "creative differences", rarely do they actually provide an actual explanation, such as "The show had to few viewers".

It's also becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Shows get canceled before they can conclude, so I don't watch any Netflix shows now until after the final episode airs. But the final episode never airs because there weren't enough people watching the show while it was in production.