The Dark Crystal Prequel Series Coming To Netflix

It's a shame that Dark Crystal got cancelled. I was quite looking forward to more.
I wonder what's going on with that Labyrinth sequel.

 

The episode where a puppet put on a puppet show was not only wonderfully meta, but one of the most beautifully realised pieces of TV I've seen in the past few years.

The level of craft in the show was sublime and, for once, the story was almost up to the same level.

It probably took them a few years and a few squillion dollars to make and, inevitably, was too niche a series to attract an audience to match its budget.

Netflix has been cancelling its most expensive shows for a while now, even when reviews and views have been above average:

Sense8
Altered Carbon
Marco Polo
The Get Down
Away
Etc.

The main readon being that longer running series, as per their modelling, do not draw in new subscribers.

https://www.wired.com/story/why-netflix-keeps-canceling-shows-after-just-2-seasons/

They're endlessly looking for another quick Stranger Things, where a large segment of their viewers will watch a show, not a niche group. As a "Network" they aren't interested in the long game or cultivating and audience, like HBO/Showtime/Networks

Hugo - finds more entertainment in the Foreign Netflix productions over the US ones

 

They've got somewhere 100,000,000 subscribers you'd think that would be enough for them, and that they'd be more concerned with not losing them by getting rid of the shows they watch.

 

well as hijackings go that was kind of.. meh

I preferred Netflix when it was old repeats. But many of the shows I have enjoyed by them like the OA and GLOW didn't get a chance to finish. I'm not sure if I will continue on with them, really. I'm basically holding out for the next Better Call Saul season

 

That's the way of growth-based economy, I'm afraid. Not a fan of it, myself.

 

Of course they care about their subscribers. Cancelling a show doesn't mean they don't care. They are watching the behavior of their audiences like hawks, in a way that most networks have never been able to monitor (the exceptions are networks owned by media conglomerates that own cable systems, which have enabled real time monitoring of what channel and programs people view).

If a show-an expensive one to boot, isn't being watched by enough of their subscribers, the hard choice to end it can't be magically avoided. And all evidence to date (they've maintained an overwhelming majority of customers while adding more each quarter), suggests that the most vocal online posters may not be representing the total 195 million they now have. The media covering the entertainment industry has shown a tendency to blow news concerning NF out of the water.
They constantly sell a narrative that the reasons behind a NF cancellation are weird, strange/unfair, and inconsistent with how television has always worked.

 

Right. People always want to read some sinister motive into these things, but it's just economics 101 -- profit has to exceed loss. This is a business, not a charity. Making TV is very expensive and time-consuming and simply cannot be done if the money isn't coming in to pay for it, no matter how much a network may want to continue doing it. We all have things we wish we could do but can't afford to, so that shouldn't be hard to understand.

And profit comes from people watching a show. Audiences always want to blame the networks, but it's the audience that kills a show by not watching it. Granted, there have been cases where bad network decisions have undermined a show's ability to find an audience, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. And those are often due to things like giving a show a bad time slot, airing it on an inconsistent schedule, or the like, none of which applies on Netflix.

 

Yeah, but apparently it's not about how many people are watching it, it's all about pulling in new people. So even if a show is watched by the majority of their subscribers, but doesn't pull in a certain number of new ones, it can still be cancelled.

 

Again, it's elementary economics -- a show has to bring in enough money to cancel out the cost of making it. If most of the people watching it are people who are already watching other Netflix shows anyway, then the expense of making it isn't justified, because they'd still get nearly as much profit if they didn't make the show. It's different from commercial TV or pay-per-view where the viewership for each individual show matters. For a monthly subscription model, where you pay one fee for everything on the service at once, it has to be different, because the way the broadcaster makes money is different. This isn't arbitrary.

And yes, shows can be cancelled. That's a given. A show's survival is not an entitlement or a guarantee. It never has been, it never will be. Only a minority of shows make it past 2-3 seasons. A high percentage get cancelled after one season. A long run is the exception -- it just seems like the rule because the small number of long-running successes loom larger in our memory than the far more numerous flashes in the pan.

 

Ah, OK now I get it. I thought just keeping the numbers stable would be enough.

I've been watching TV my entire life, so I am aware of how cancellations work.