It appears every time there’s a new television show you can binge-watch and fall in love with on Netflix, Hulu, or HBO Max, it’s suddenly canceled with no warning or true final ending. This can leave viewers confused about what happened to their favorite shows.
Some recent examples of cancellations include The Sex Lives of College Girls, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, Resident Evil, and The Society.
With original series from streaming platforms not lasting long, it begs the question: why do all these shows fail? What happened to the old days when television shows had four or more seasons with about 25 episodes a season? Now we’re stuck with shows that have maybe two seasons with eight episodes each. And even then, it takes a good couple years for new seasons to come out because production seems to take so long now.
One of the reasons most new shows get cancelled could be production budgets being cut. When shows have a high production cost but low viewership, the show is ultimately losing out on money, causing the show to just be canceled altogether. But regardless of the production cost, I think that low viewership overall plays a huge role in a show ending early. There are many things that go into why viewership has increasingly gotten worse, but I feel like the main reasons have to do with binge-watching, shorter attention spans, and pay walls.
With streaming services dropping whole series at once, viewers are able to watch a whole season in one sitting, or over a weekend. This then leads to shows becoming very popular for about a week and then just fading into oblivion. On the contrary, traditional television had longevity with their audience because the once-a-week episode drops meant viewers had to wait for new content, which kept them on their toes and better engaged. It allowed viewers to be able to look forward to something consistently, which isn’t always a given with today’s shows.
Shorter attention spans can also play a role in television shows not working because when viewers have tens of thousands of shows to watch, it can be hard to settle on just one at a time and remain focused on it for the duration of the series. With so many shows out there, people may start multiple series at once and not actually be able to finish any. I’m personally super guilty of this — I can’t even tell you how many shows I have started across different platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+. With so many options, it’s just so easy for a person to start watching a show, get bored after a couple minutes, and say, “Nah, I’ll just watch something else.”
On an unrelated note, streaming services are also starting to crack down on sharing accounts, which can lead to less viewership. Services like Netflix and Hulu are now not allowing more than a certain number of people to stream shows at once and are limiting viewing to only the people within a specific household. I personally hate this because if we’re already spending so much money on subscriptions, shouldn’t I be able to share my account with family?
Lastly, the most dreaded paywalls. I mean, with the hundred different streaming platforms that are out right now, how many am I expected to pay for? I’m tired of wanting to watch something on Hulu just for the show to be locked and require me to pay an extra couple of dollars to get the Starz or Paramount+ premium add on. And in this day and age, it’s especially hard to subscribe to just one streaming service because of how many shows are spread out everywhere between different services, which can cause people to just not pay or stream at all.
After all this, could traditional television possibly make a comeback, causing people to ditch their streaming services and turn back to cable? It’s hard to tell for sure because both cable and streaming have their advantages and disadvantages. So, it’s truly up to each individual viewer’s choice.
The only thing I hope for in the future is for streaming services to stop canceling shows on cliffhangers. I’m tired of becoming emotionally attached to a character and their storyline just for both to be ripped from me without any warning….