Like everything else about television, streaming has profoundly transformed how series are canceled.
While it’s now easier than ever for axed shows to find new homes on another platform or be resurrected by popular demand, the promise of the streaming era as a new age of creative freedom and permanent availability has given way to yanking shows from platforms, revoking second-season orders and, in one case, dumping a completed freshman series before it even aired.
Meanwhile, the original disruptor, Netflix, has seen its public image shift from that of a renegade TV resurrector to an ax-wielding slasher, ready to cancel viewers’ favorite shows at the drop of a hat. But does Netflix, or any one streamer, really cancel shows more often than the rest?
“The Show Must Go Off,” a new special report from Luminate and Variety Intelligence Platform, seeks to answer this question, as well as others that logically follow: How do streamers compare to the broadcast and cable networks? Are TV shows being canceled faster than ever? How are slates changing as we’re at the close of the peak TV era?
The report analyzes the TV content released by the eight largest U.S.-based subscription video on demand (SVOD) services — Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video, Max, Apple TV+, Paramount+ and Peacock — along with the major broadcast and cable networks, between January 2020 and August 2023. Luminate provided extensive data on the networks’ content output, including premiere dates, season counts, genres and renewal status, which was then put into context by VIP+.
Results show that Netflix’s reputation as a show killer is largely undeserved, with the streamer falling squarely in the middle of the pack when cancellation rates are viewed proportionally. Instead, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max surges ahead of the other SVODs, largely as a consequence of the company’s great streaming catalog purge last year.
But the networks’ topline numbers are just the beginning. With Hollywood’s new age of austerity underway, it is vital to understand the trends reshaping the content landscape in order to comprehend how the entertainment industry itself is being reformed.
