The (Not So) Curious Case of Netflix's Shrinking Audience

The real reasons the streaming giant loses up to 70% of its viewers between seasons - and why executives can't acknowledge what must change

Netflix’s biggest shows have been losing 30-70% of their audience between seasons 1 and 2. Executives are in a panic because they can’t figure out why, but the answer is probably pretty damn obvious to anyone who’s never called themselves a “disrupter” to justify the unbelievably stupid and self-defeating thing they were doing. Because what we’re seeing here is the natural consequence of overturning every aspect of a decades-old system that didn’t require any significant improvement since it had already reached peak audience performance. But like with all cult-like thinking — which is endemic to a tech industry that leads by creating demand rather than satisfying it — it’s nearly impossible to acknowledge that your core identity is also, in fact, your fatal flaw even as audiences tell you how they really feel through their viewing behavior.

So, I thought I’d save Netflix several million dollars in consultancy fees and just break down for them what most of us already know even if we’ve never put it into words.

1. Releasing an entire season at once has always been a bad idea and damages every show you do it to. When a show is consumed without time for audiences to develop a long-term relationship with it, week after week, preferable for several months, it is emotionally forgotten almost as soon as the last episode is finished. It also prevents a series from building word-of-mouth success as audiences catch up to it (see “Widow’s Bay”). This is why all the other streamers have abandoned the “binging” model.

2. Every day an audience waits for a show to return for a second season results in audience interest shrinking. Historically, because of longer seasons and traditional year-long TV cycles, network audiences only had to wait five to six months. With cable, your wait was typically eight to nine months. But with a Netflix series today, you often wait 18 to 24 months. Sometimes even longer, such as with “Stranger Things”, which involved three-year waits in its final two seasons. I’ve abandoned at least five shows now for this reason, some multiple seasons in; I just got bored waiting around and found other things I cared about more.

3. Many audience members no longer find Netflix a reliable entertainment partner, so to say. The streamer cancels TV series after one season at an extraordinary rate, even when they’re wildly acclaimed, so many of us now wait multiple seasons before deciding to invest our valuable time in what they produce. I mean, this year’s “The Boroughs” looked like a show I would love, but I’ve fallen for that trap before so I had no intention of watching until three seasons in; and true to form, Netflix cancelled it almost as soon as it debuted. This isn’t only a Netflix issue, mind you, but the TV culture it’s produced certainly impacts other streamers more than those streamers deserve.

4. Netflix’s transition from focusing on premium television and films to what they refer to as “second screen viewing” requires scripts to be — for lack of better words — dumbed down so we can follow them even as we do other things around the house. Plot points are repeated ad nauseum, for example. Fair enough. This worked to some degree with network television, too, helping you keep up if you ran to the toilet or took a phone call. Still does if you watch network TV. But network TV involved longer seasons, typically more than 20 episodes each. We forged deep relationships with characters over time. It might seem confusing why this might matter, but the reality is you invest in characters and want to stick around for the comfort food they provide. If your season is six to ten episodes you can binge in a single day, if you even make it that far into a season, it cannot become comfort food. Consequently, “second screen viewing” becomes a barrier to audience participation rather than a source of viewing ease. In reality, most audiences want “meditative viewing” — a way to reliably relax and vacate their own lives and anxieties for 30 to 60 minutes at the end of a long day at work, school, or just life in general.

5. But maybe the biggest culprit is this point: When you treat TV like content to be rapidly consumed before shoving something else down the audience’s throat to keep them from cancelling a subscription, then your audience will unconsciously view your “content” as transactional junk food rather than necessary calories — even when you release something of high quality that picks you up a few new subscribers, too. What I mean is, it’s hard to get people to stick around for something they suspect the company selling it doesn’t respect all that much in the first place.

Everything I’m discussing here isn’t necessary, of course. It was never necessary either. And there are a lot of TV series on Netflix that deserved better than to be quickly forgotten because of a distribution model that will never make sense if your ultimate goal is to build audience loyalty to TV series and brands the way we all must now live with 29 iterations of the “___ 9-1-1” series, the 84 of the “Chicago ___” series, 129 of “Star Trek”, 592 of “NCIS”, 871 of “CSI”, and 1,982 of “Law & Order”.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to this: People — human beings — are more than viewing data. We want to spend our limited free time in relationships with stories and characters…not algorithmic content.

You can read more thoughts from me on the state of TV and our world here:

Guys, What If Peak TV Broke Our World?

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