Streamers canceling popular shows: cruel, unfair, but money always wins

There’s little we can do about major streaming platforms canceling popular or expensive shows soon after debuting them – even if these projects where what tempted us to sign up in the first place.

Before writing this down, I told my editor this was going to be a rant about big business, capitalism, or whatever. Is there anyone who actually enjoys the way streamers have been misbehaving recently?

They cancel shows left and right, and they don’t seem to care if a series is a hit. Take 1899 on Netflix, for example. To me (and millions of other viewers), the show was great, and the first season ended in the classic manner of making us want to hibernate until the second one drops.

Then, the genre-juggling supernatural horror show was abruptly canceled. Who knows why? It seemed cancel-proof. Even the ratings were solid. People were mad, and I was too. But I had a feeling this was just the beginning.

However, I happen to be in a decent enough mood not to moan too much. It is what it is, right? There are thousands of shows I can choose from. Yes, maybe I really wanted to find out who dies in the end or something, but there are thousands of deaths on other series to worry about.

Yet the big question mark remains – are we witnessing the birth of a new kind of cancel culture in streaming? Just give us four or five seasons, a consistent yet original script, and no stress over the potential axing of the show. Is this too much to ask?

Killing content means staying alive

It is. I feel terrible repeating a tedious mantra – but times have changed. They will change again but here’s what we, the army of picky content consumers, have to deal with now.

Cancellations are not a fresh phenomenon, but they’re something new – and worrying – for the streaming universe. Its starships, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO Max, were, until recently, churning out content to win the battle for attention against their competitors.

But the streaming wars are over. Platforms have stopped rushing to announce ever more shows simply to attract as many subscribers as possible. But why? Well, the problem is that consumers can count. They realize that it’s impossible to pay for six or eight different platforms every month and that there are other, more pressing economic priorities in life.

This means that companies need to find new ways to find profitability. The answers are, respectively, raising membership prices and curbing spending. Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Disney have all announced they will produce lower volumes of content.

And because raising prices is not the best strategy to maintain growth, however slowly, killing content is seen as the best option. You’ve got to keep investors happy afterall, and it’s impossible to do so if you’re bleeding money.

Yes, expensive stuff is still produced. You can’t lose with a Game of Thrones spin-off, and millions will keep watching Amazon’s The Rings of Power – because Gandalf is always the winner.

According to Deloitte’s Annual Digital Media Trends survey, nearly 47% of US consumers are frustrated by the growing number of subscriptions required to watch what they want.

But the streaming giants, perfectly aware that the golden age is now over, can also be cruel. Some shows – Netflix’s Marco Polo, HBO’s Westworld – were huge before the bell rang; some never even had the chance.

1899 might have become a cult show. HBO’s Raised By Wolves could have exploded in popularity. Some shows were already in the can but never made it onto screens, and others are removed from platforms because the firms seek to avoid paying residuals in the future.

The golden age is dead, long live the golden age?

My semi-educated guess is that the streaming world has entered the chaos era. So many shows are released that, unavoidably, many of them are canceled after receiving next to no attention. 599 scripted TV shows were released in the US in 2022 – is this really sustainable?

It’s certainly not a great time to be a consumer either – it’s impossible to attach yourself to modern day lovable characters like Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman.

What’s more, this epidemic of cancellations is unfair to subscribers. If you, for example, only decided to subscribe to HBO Max last year because you thought the platform was amazing and would keep constantly premiering better-than-elsewhere content, you must feel duped now.

That’s because HBO’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery decided to remove 37 titles, including 20 originals, from HBO Max’s library last year. The corporation needs to reduce its estimated $50 billion debt (or is seeking tax write-offs), and that’s the route it has chosen.

But then they act surprised when subscribers jump ship right after binging on the one or two shows they signed up for. Why wait and be disappointed? Also, it’s expensive to subscribe to, say, eight platforms that might release ten shows worthy of your attention in a year.

According to Deloitte’s Annual Digital Media Trends survey, nearly 47% of US consumers are frustrated by the growing number of subscriptions required to watch what they want.

The same poll reveals that audiences have started to crave a comfortable “lean back” experience – an easier, more passive way to access content without the stress caused by an overabundance of choice. In the US alone, there are currently more than 300 content-streaming websites.

No wonder people are whispering that streaming consolidation might not be the worst scenario. Indeed, back in the day when cable was king, it was all very different. Writers had to work years to become showrunners, and scripted TV was limited to just a handful of channels.

The owners of these channels battled each other just as hard as streaming giants do now, sure. However, for the moguls of the past, quality, not quantity, was the weapon of choice – The Sopranos, The Wire, Lost, or Mad Men blew our minds.

It didn’t even matter that we had to wait the whole week for the new episode because that hour was so precious. Bluntly speaking, we now binge on shit.

So maybe it’s actually ok to suffer through the cancellation spree now because the future might be different – and better. Less content could allow streamers to run shows for longer. Let alone produce shows where it doesn’t look like ChatGPT has penned the script.