#tv nerd

[sorryididntdothedishes]

when i make a pop culture reference i expect people to be like “wait oh my gosh you’re so funny that’s so fitting for this situation +10000 aura btw give me a kiss” but usually nobody gets it and they just give me a weird look instead

[lac3y-p0pp3t]

i would journey into the fairy world to rescue my father and the unravell a deep family secret related to my mother, Johanna, and the nature of the fairy realm, but you're not nerdy enough to understand.

[laurie-ipsum]

Is S&B Getting Canceled? 

Buckle up. This is long.

I’ve worked in entertainment for most of my career (never at Netflix, though, and I’m not important or famous; I’m just a cog). But here and on Twitter I’ve seen a lot of theories, so I want to talk a little about what might be going on, how the decision is being made, and why it’s taking so long (even without the strike).

So… How do networks/streamers make the decision to cancel or not cancel something. 

Back in the day it was all about ratings – basically how many people and also how many people between the ages of 18-49 or 18-34 watched the show. This was because a show’s value was really about how effective it was for advertisers to reach their desired audience.

The bigger the audience, or the bigger the attractive audience, the more likely a show would get renewed. These ratings were created by Nielsen, based on sampling, and they were public. It’s important to know that “big” is actually kind of relative. What’s an awesome rating on one network (say a cable channel with limited distribution like MeTV or FYI) would be nothing to a more widely distributed channel like NBC or HGTV. So, most channels have a rating or viewership number that they want a show to be above. 

The idea of what is successful is very similar at streamers that are ad-supported, but instead of needing Nielsen to tell them about how many people watched, the streamers know that data for themselves and they don’t like to make it public. 

But when you look at streamers like Amazon and Netflix that are subscription based, the calculus of what success means is a little different. 

First of the demographic, or age, of a user matters less. A subscriber is a subscriber is a subscriber. And the sheer tonnage of viewership also matters less - or matters in a different way. For instance a show on Netflix might get 50 million people watching something (which is A LOT - roughly 115 million homes in the US have a TV) and it still might not be a slam dunk to get renewed. 

Why?! 

Well, it’s because with a subscription service it’s about how important the show is to acquiring subs (getting new people to sign up) or retaining subs (keeping people from canceling the service). For a long time, when Netflix was just focused on getting new users, their most important metric was “what was the first thing people watched when they signed up” because they attributed the sign up to a desire to watch that series. 

But now Netflix is the biggest SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand) service in most countries. Acquisition is still important in some countries (e.g. Hotstar + Disney + and Amazon are bigger than Netflix in India – a huge market), but retention is more important in others like the US. 

Ted Sarandos (Netflix’s Co-CEO and former Chief Content Officer) once told the board at a place I used to work that he knew how many of each type of movie or show he needed to keep groups of users happy and subscribed to the service. 

So, to put it another way… Netflix most likely separates its users into clusters. The subscribers in each cluster have similar behavior and Netflix has defined how much content and how much of what type of content each cluster needs The people at Netflix who decide on what shows to greenlight and what shows to renew are probably looking to “fill up” those clusters. 

It gets trickier because some shows probably fill up several clusters. Some shows may fill up a cluster, but are more expensive than a similar show that satisfies the same audience. Meaning the cheaper show is more likely to get made/renewed. 

There are other performance metrics that they probably care about and benchmark against. A big one is “decay” or the loss of viewers from season to season or episode by episode. I wasn’t surprised to see Lincoln Lawyer get quickly renewed because it gained viewership from season 1 to season 2 which is not common for Netflix series. 

This is also why I think a lot of their reporting of “minutes watched” is a metric that doesn’t really matter to them and isn’t really how they judge the value of a series. But that’s just my theory. 

Why don’t they just tell us already? 

The truth is, they probably haven’t made the decision yet. 

If Netflix is as data-driven as they say they are, they probably want to delay greenlighting shows for as long as possible, so they can collect more data. If they wait, they can air more shows and see how well they do and if they “fill up” clusters better, or more cheaply. 

Waiting also gives them time to understand their new normal. With subscription fluctuations and the changing landscape of streaming the metrics that make a show appear to be good or bad can change (for example 1M viewers per episodes might have been an average in 2020, but in 2023 the new average might be 500K). 

There are other things besides the obvious that impact how much a show costs. For instance everyone involved usually gets a raise after a certain number of seasons (there’s a reason a lot of shows get canceled after 3 or 5 seasons). Would the SoC spin-off count as season 1 for the actors? Or season 3?

Another reason to wait is that they likely have deals with all the key people involved that keep them from being able to do anything else - that way delaying the decision until those holds are up costs Netflix nothing and puts them in no danger of losing their actors, etc. In my experience its the timing of these holds that really drives decision making. 

Of course the strike only complicates things even more in ways I can’t imagine. 

[meep-meep-richie]

Is the release of a new season a good reason to take a day off from work, asking for a friend

[themetalheadhippy]

Prepared to completely go off the grid as my shift doesn't finish until midnight and I won't be able to watch Moon Knight on time ⛔📴📵🪟

[thecitykeepsevolving]

IDINA’S SONG “SMALL WORLD” WAS PLAYING ON THE SUPERGIRL SEASON 2 FINALE. I MEAN I ALREADY KNEW BUT I DIDNT WATCH THE SHOW THEN AND OMGG IT SOUNDED SO GOOD AND WENT SO WELL WITH THE PLOT DFKJGHDKFH I CANTTTTT

[xenxenwithmen]

Rory was never more proud of anyone than when Jess wrote that book. 

[oupacademic]

Word of the Day: poindexter

n.  An overly diligent student, an extremely intelligent person. (also) a person lacking in social skills.

Image credit: “Sheldon Cooper doing the vulcan salute, stencil graffiti on a wall in Volgograd, Russia” by Ufo Snake. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.