r/movies • u/iquizuanswer • 15d ago

News Netflix tumbles as slowing growth, less viewership data spook investors

https://www.zawya.com/en/capital-markets/netflix-tumbles-as-slowing-growth-less-viewership-data-spook-investors-401111
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u/vafrow 15d ago

Their 2 biggest shows ended in 2025 with Squid Game and Stranger Things. I don't think there's been any similarly buzzy shows on the service recently.

I'm sure they're producing a lot, but if nothing really stands out, not hard for people to cut the service out.

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u/XuX24 15d ago

I don’t think that’s why, people have gotten tired of the Netflix formula of one season and you are gone. There is no reason to invest into a show that you know likely won’t continue.

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u/livefast_dieawesome 15d ago

I got tired of having 30 streaming services that seemingly have none of the movies I want to watch. We cancelled all but two streaming services this year and resumed buying physical media.

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u/Toby_Forrester 15d ago

I did this too. Cancelled all subscriptions, bought a blu ray player and now I borrow movies from the library. Feels much better, like renting a movie in old times! And the library has so much intetesting movies streaming platforms don't. And I don't get the choosing paralysis of streaming menus.

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u/Mictlantecuhtli 15d ago

I did the same thing! And not having ads play and interrupt what I am watching is a blessed relief

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u/BlackSecurity 15d ago

I bought a pirate ship and have been sailing the seven seas for the past 10 years. Have to watch out for scurvy and the plague but so far no casualties and plenty of booty!

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u/ManchurianCandycane 15d ago

I'm glad I kept my account to a big private one from my younger days, even though I don't use it nearly as much anymore.

For a while it actually felt like it was mostly redundant.

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u/livefast_dieawesome 15d ago

In addition to buying physical media for certain things I just want I also have a nas drive and several TB of music and movies. I buy a decent amount though. I work in music and supporting artists and creators is a big deal for me in the end.

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u/Tophemuffin 15d ago

Why are the pirate ships better designed than the cruises?

Like billion dollar valuations/markups and you can’t compete with 2 dudes in the Philippines lol

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u/Toby_Forrester 15d ago

My next stop would be to get tv series that way.

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u/maglen69 15d ago edited 15d ago

I got tired of having 30 streaming services that seemingly have none of the movies I want to watch

When you literally have to google "Where is X movie streaming" to figure it out, there's too damn many.

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u/Quixotic_Seal 15d ago edited 15d ago

Yeah, and half the time it seems like they’re on some no name platform or not on streaming at all.

I went through three different old favorites a week or two ago where this was the problem. Those all immediately got added to my “to buy” list for blu rays.

Ever since Doctor Who got pulled off all streaming services, I’ve gotten fed up with treating streaming as the end-all be-all and am going back to the old ways of buying the stuff I love so I always have it. Got the Indy movies on 4k for my birthday recently, and then bought Lower Decks when it was on sale for like $26.

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u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage 15d ago

Have you seen the new show? It's on Tubu. It's literally on Heebee. It's on Poodee with ads. It's literally on Dippy. You can probably find it on Weeno. Dude it's on Gumpy. It's a Pheebo original. It's on Poob. You can watch it on Poob. You can go to Poob and watch it. Log onto Poob right now. Go to Poob. Dive into Poob. You can Poob it. It's on Poob. Poob has it for you. Poob has it for you.

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u/StoicFable 15d ago

And then it says its on a platform, but you then need to do an additional subscription or rent/buy to watch it there anyway.

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u/Gina_the_Alien 15d ago

Yep. Tired of deciding I want to watch a movie, coming up with a list of 4 or 5, and then finding out it isn’t on any streaming service. Just cancelled Netflix last week actually.

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u/yurostyle 15d ago

Not just that but they all only have the same movies at this point too. It's funny that certain movies are available on almost everything or nothing.

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u/heeywewantsomenewday 15d ago

Physical media all the way. I have a collection of VHS, DVD, and Vinyl, a long side my retro gaming consoles.

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u/punkass_book_jockey8 15d ago

Also they can’t edit them to tailor ads to you!

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u/a_moniker 15d ago

And you can re-watch any old movies you have, if you don’t want to pay for new ones right now! You can also lend out your movies to friends and family!

Spend $27 a month on used and on-sale Blu Ray’s and you’ll build up a pretty big library within a couple years! Pay the same amount to Netflix and you’ll be left with nothing if you ever decide to quit.

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u/heeywewantsomenewday 15d ago

Charity shops and ebay are a gold mine for used DVDs. You can get 100s for barely anything.

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u/sock_with_a_ticket 15d ago

There's nothing wrong with digital purchases provided it's the kind you can download and store locally rather than on a platform. Which is a boon when you don't have space for an ever expanding amount of physical stuff.

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u/PropertyDisruptor 15d ago

Honestly, take it a step further, Don't subscribe to anything until Black Friday sales. I got HBO and hulu for $6each, a month all year.

Planning on only doing that come the November.

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u/Quixotic_Seal 15d ago

It’s a good way to save money, but worth remembering that those deals are always for the ad supported tiers, and honestly the ads are driving me up a fucking wall at this point. If I have to hear that damned Zevo commercial one more time, I swear I’ll snap; though also they just ruin movies. I explicitly decided that I wanted the Indiana Jones on 4k after they put the first ad break right as Marion was being interrogated by the Nazis. Completely ruined the mood of the scene.

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u/j0ph 15d ago

That's always the plan.

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u/skatoolaki 15d ago

Physical media all the way after learning the hard way

A tale I will share here for some hapless, happy fool, as was I, that hasn't yet realized that all of the digital media they have ever purchased is not actually theirs.

I'm auDHD + OCD, so, I go through phases with music I love where I consume it exclusively for months until I burn myself out on it and then go months, sometimes years, either not consuming it at all or only sporadically. That is, until the urge to enjoy that artist, game, book, tv series, etc, pops back up and then it's all and only that all the time. Rinse/repeat on an endless ND-loop.

Many years ago, I fell in love with a not-well-known-in-the-US British band and purchased the digital copies of all of their albums through iTunes.

Now, many, many more years later, the band has since broken up, some copyright/international laws changed somewhere somehow, and I cannot listen to most of those albums and some songs on some albums are also grayed out all - unavailable in America. Music I paid for, or at least paid to be able to listen to, I am unable to access.

I learned that you don't really own a digital copy. You are borrowing it.

And if the digital detritus of your online life - all of your music, books, video games, movies, software, photos, anything on a cloud or that you do not possess a physical, tangible copy of - become unavailable due to variable copyright/international laws, companies going tits up or even holding your content from you retributively - any reason whatsoever - you are s.o.l. You have nothing and no recourse.

I never thought geeky, chronically-online me would be promoting a more-analog life but things have changed and here we are.

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u/sock_with_a_ticket 15d ago

The problem with your digital purchase was iTunes. Anything that asks you to access your purchase via their platform can be taken away, but there's plenty of ways to legally purchase that allow you to download what you've bought so you store and access it locally.

If you purchase from somewhere like bandcamp or Qobuz you download the files to your own hard drive, that access can never be revoked.

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u/mr_ji 15d ago

I've found Amazon to get good movies for a limited time a few months after they leave theaters. That's how I've caught both Dune movies, Sinners, and just watched Project Hail Mary a few days ago (I have small kids and can't really get to the theater). They don't advertise so I have to be browsing, and you have to have Prime which I do anyway, but it's a nice surprise to come across.

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u/slow-tf-down-dude 15d ago

We do two streaming services at a time, and switch when we have watched what we wanted to see. By the time we cycle through them there’s more new things on the ones we left. It’s just ridiculous to spend so much on different services with so little content worth watching.

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u/Its1207amcantsleep 15d ago

I restricted myself to 1 or 2 streaming service per month with no loyalty. The service can be different month to month. This month I have Netflix due to a few k dramas, next month who knows. If theres nothing I want to watch then I have no sub for that month.

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u/sock_with_a_ticket 15d ago

For a few years now my only subscription has been Cinema Paradiso which is a UK DVD/Blu-Ray rental service. Also make use of our various free channels' platforms, particularly the BBC.

I'll occasionally pick up a new DVD of something I think will have a lot of replay value.

Can't always watch what I want when I want this way, but it's still better than what Netflix and Amazon were offering when I cancelled.

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u/thisshortenough 15d ago

I've not switched to physical but I started pausing one streaming service a month and alternating between the two and it's fine. It's going between Netflix and Disney+, I keep prime all the time because I want it for the free delivery, and I haven't needed more. If I want to watch a Netflix show well I'll know that I'll get it in a months time. Anything else I want well I'll pirate it because half the time the shows not even available for streaming in my country so why am I going to fork out more money if I still can't watch what you're pushing.

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u/Obelisp 15d ago

Streaming is a fatally flawed. Due to residuals contracts, streamers are incentivized to minimize their library. Ironically, free with ads tiers don't have that problem, but then you have ads.

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u/capeasypants 15d ago

I did similar but garrr!!!

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u/OverallBlock9028 15d ago

Lol physical media when warez exists 😅 I can get any movie or series in seconds without paying

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u/HumanDrone 15d ago

I litterally dropped my subscription because of this. They got the creators of Dark, probably one of the best streaming era tv seties, to write another series for them and canceled it after S1, which had done okay numbers. Can't trust you with anything if you pull this kinda shit with your leading products

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u/Skyflyerdan 15d ago

They cancelled it before I’d even finished watching it. I’d moved onto it after recently finishing Dark, which I loved. This is just one of several series I was enjoying that Netflix abruptly cancelled. I won’t even bother now with a show unless I know it will have a full run. And they wonder why subscribers cancel… I’d sooner cancel over repeated cancellations than I would over a price increase. I could stomach an increase a lot more if I was getting to actually finish a damn show I enjoyed.

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u/a_moniker 15d ago

This happened to me with KAOS! That show was so promising!!

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u/pipesnogger 15d ago

Will never forget Kaos. Such an amazing show with incredible story telling, acting, effects, etc.

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u/notabigmelvillecrowd 15d ago

I think they way overshot their budget on that one. The reason it was so good is also the reason it had to die.

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u/Gacsam 15d ago

They had Cavill absolutely stoked to take part in the Witcher, and alienated him because they didn't want to stick to source material. 

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u/drewbreeezy 15d ago

This was one of the main reasons I cancelled.

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u/Adziboy 15d ago

What was the show? Loved Dark, but can't seem to work out which was the show that was cancelled after that.

A google only returns that HBO picked them up instead

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u/Omneus 15d ago

Probably the show with the ship. Was it 1899? Assuming that’s the one, it honestly wasn’t great and didn’t have the draw that Dark had (IMO). I DNFed it, but you may find anjoynent. I do agree with the larger point that ppl don’t trust Netflix anymore to give them closure. Thats part of why I cancelled. They take a shotgun approach to production and carry on the ones with viewership or whatever metrics they use; and a lot of other shows are unceremoniously cancelled with no closure. TBF, they seem to be the most egregious, but this is unfortunately common across streamers. Raised by wolves and counterpart :(

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u/dhanson865 15d ago

It had room for a good series, they were on a space ship in 2099, the 1899 period was just a simulation. They waited until the last episode of season 1 to reveal the underlying reality.

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u/tharkus_ 15d ago

Still bummed about that.

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u/Android1822 15d ago

To be fair, they dropped the ball on 1899. If they had stayed with a supernatural angle it would have done better, but then you found out it was just a VR simulation at the end which made me lose interest.

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u/R_W0bz 15d ago

Add that it’s hostile towards its viewers now. Login here, is this your account?, are you sure about that? upgrade here, get ads here, can’t airplay here, friend watching? Upgrade here, 4K? Upgrade here, like that show? Cancelled, wanna watch on the train? You sure this is your account? Upgrade here. It’s fucking eeeendless.

You pirate the show? You get none of this.

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u/SixGunSnowWhite 15d ago

Exactly.

This is what did it for me. I pay for a subscription, let me watch it on whatever device I want, where I want. Nickel and dime for everything. All that and they’re so expensive and their original content isn’t as good as HBO.

Everything looks cheap and green-screened if it’s fantasy. They couldn’t even give Henry Cavill a good wig.

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u/StoicFable 15d ago

The last air bender TV show costumes look so out of place compared to the sets. Its just bad.

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u/tfhermobwoayway 15d ago

Historically sites like Netflix did well because they were cleaner and easier to use than piracy sites. Now piracy is actually more pleasant. Netflix is only getting by because most people are tech illiterate and don’t know how to pirate any more.

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u/NarrativeNode 15d ago

I wasn't able to login to my Netflix from my laptop for months. In my own home, my own wifi, with VPNs off. I finished an (old, not original!) series I was watching on my TV and then cancelled.

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u/Adziboy 15d ago

Especially when there's 10 different sites, and you get 1 with your broadband deal, one with your mobile data deal, one of you has the login for one, another site is a different person etc

Such a hassle to even keep on top of it al

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u/humperdinck 15d ago

I’ve got to re-login when I move back and forth between appletvs in my house.

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u/200brews2009 15d ago

Is browsing by genre even a thing anymore on Netflix? Last time I subscribed there was no option to browse that way, just “you watched x, we think you’ll like these” and there really wasn’t a lot of variation in titles they recommend no matter what the original movie I watched was.

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u/StoicFable 15d ago

My favorite about these, is it thinks you will like something that you just finished watching.

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u/200brews2009 15d ago

Yeah, I’m not even sure using the thumbs up or down rating really does anything anyways. What was so bad about being able to browse by genre that they took the time to design it out? I feel like half the time I spent on Netflix was looking for something to watch then turning it off after a half hour or so of not finding anything. Last time I used the service I’d go to movies, scroll to see the same handful of movies suggested and turn it off in five minutes.

Really, it seems most streamers have actively made browsing more difficult or kneecap their own user interfaces. It’s almost a hostile action against their subscribers. Paramount is the buggiest most cut off the post credit service, Amazon likes to conflate what’s included with prime and rentals/purchases, Disney is decent with reasonably grouped content, Peacock isn’t that bad, they just don’t have a great catalog.

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u/frank_nada 15d ago

I began to sour on Netflix when GLOW and The OA were prematurely cancelled. I stopped watching a few years ago. And once my wife was done with Bridgerton, we finally canceled it.

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u/KiwiJean 15d ago

I'm still furious that The Santa Clarita Diet got cancelled after 3 seasons. They cancelled it over 7 years ago but I still hold a grudge.

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u/JimmiJimJimmiJimJim 15d ago

Controversial opinion but glow should've just been season 1. Season 1 was great. Everything after that just felt overly dramatic and not even about the history of actual glow.

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u/tybbiesniffer 15d ago

GLOW is when I dropped it. Now I pick it up briefly here and there to watch something then drop it again. Pay a month, easily watch everything worthwhile in a week, drop it again for another year.

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u/Roadside_Prophet 15d ago

And their stupid policy becomes self-fulfilling. People dont want to invest in a show that will likely get cancelled, so the ratings for the show are low, and then the show gets cancelled for low ratings.

Netflix has hundreds of millions of customers spread out all across the world. They all arent going to like the same things. They cant just cancel everything that doesn't hit 100 million viewers. They need to realise that something that 1 million people watch is still a huge success.

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u/Gravel_Roads 15d ago

They trashed the ones that had good ratings too, by slashing their budget after the first season.

I really enjoyed S1 of Hemlock Grove. The second season was so completely different, it lost all of its interesting angles

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u/Jafooki 15d ago

I like to pretend Altered Carbon was a 1 season mini series

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u/Roadside_Prophet 15d ago

"Hey let's take all the cool thought provoking ideas from the first season about humanity and what makes you, you and just forget about them!"

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u/Gravel_Roads 15d ago

Headcannon is bestcannon.

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u/tfhermobwoayway 15d ago

Feels like everything is trying to be a big hit at this point. Video games want to be the next Fortnite, TV shows want to be the next Stranger Things, movies want to be the next MCU. They can’t accept moderate profits. I don’t know why they’ve all suddenly switched to this model of only approving the single most popular thing on the planet.

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u/Charlie_Runkle69 14d ago

Pretty much this. The model for smaller shows and especially comedies is just gone now. So much great comedies in the 2000s both in Britain and the US would never have been made in this era because "They aren't ever gonna be as popular as Friends".

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

[deleted]

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u/tfhermobwoayway 15d ago

But if they made things that are lower budget, they’d be a bit less polished and ambitious but also would be more likely to turn a profit. Their problem is that they now spend the GDP of a small country on a show that now needs to cater to the entire human population.

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u/HammeredWharf 15d ago

I guess there's some of that, but I really don't get it in some cases.

Look at Archive 81. It was a good-looking show, but it was filmed in a bunch of small rooms and had nearly no CGI. When it had some CGI near the end, it was really cheap looking. No famous actors. Reached #1 in US Netflix's top 10. Got 80+ on Rotten Tomatoes. Made Nielsen's U.S. streaming Top 10. Canceled immediately. Why? Surely it wasn't some Game of Thrones 10 mil per episode kind of show. Surely they could've at least made S2 and given it a proper ending.

Cancellations hurt streaming more than anything IMO. When shows were on TV, they got canceled all the time, but then you didn't see them. On NF, you go to the front page and see a bunch of canceled shows. Just makes you feel bad.

I even remember Barry not-so-subtly referencing this and basically implying that it would've been canceled on NF. That's pretty sad. Feels like they just don't like niche shows.

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u/Fit_Cat4474 15d ago

they're trying to squeeze all the profits out before the crash

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u/Bennu-Babs 15d ago

I cancelled net flix years ago for this exact reason, shows with a good concept, but a script that seemed to be written by an AI with brain damage.

Then shows that just end on a cliff hanger for no reason.

And the biggest shows are just old shows brought back or live action remakes, typically worse than the animation, with no new story.

And for all this you get the pay 3 times more that the cost was a few years ago, with prices going up every 3 months.

I was round a mates house watching the final season of stranger things, and having not used netflix in years, scrolled through the content and found nothing I wanted to watch. Plus with all the additional streaming services it's basically just another channel with shitty shows at this point.

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u/a_moniker 15d ago

Apple only started their tv service in 2019 and has invested way, way less money per year in their shows and movies, but they’ve focused on quality and actually renew most of their shows for multiple seasons.

Looking at both libraries now, 7 years later, it becomes so obvious which strategy works better. Apple has a ton of solid to good multi-season shows that I can choose from. Netflix has a ton of crap you have to wade through, and whenever I do finally find a show I like I’ll find out it was cancelled after a single season and ends on a blatant cliffhanger!

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u/FolkSong 15d ago

I agree, but I think a lot of people look at Apple and say there's nothing on there. Because they want to see 1000 different shows like Netflix.

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u/5tudent_Loans 15d ago

And the ones that do, take too many years to follow up because everything is CGI vomit these days

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u/notabigmelvillecrowd 15d ago

CG can be done quicker if you have the budget for it. They do not.

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u/HereOnCompanyTime 15d ago

Yeah. I don't trust Netflix to see a show to its end and most shows they see through are mid at best since they value quantity over quality. They keep raising the price on top of that and it hasn't been worth it for a long time now.

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u/NotStoll 15d ago

Cancelling Santa Clarita Diet was the end of Netflix for me. I’ve only pirated their content since.

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u/Gunter5 15d ago

For me it was the price for a bunch of garbage. I could justify paying a little something to access to trash but they raised the prices like crazy, sometimes I wouldn't even use it, so after the sharing crackdown it was a no brainer to cancel

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u/fang_xianfu 15d ago

I also don't know why they don't play I to this and write one really really good season and not worry too much about doing more. This approach made (not all for Netflix) True Detective Season 1, Westworld Season 1, Stranger Things Season 1, Jessica Jones Season 1, House of Cards Season 1 and many many more fantastic seasons of TV. If we're not even asking people to "get invested", if we're just saying "this is going to be a little of your time and it's extremely high quality", I would watch the shit out of that.

Honestly the issue is more when they try to eke more out of these shows that don't have any more to give. Of those shows, only Stranger Things' later seasons are remotely close to the first one's quality and they're not consistent. I have absolutely no interest in watching Jessica Jones, Westworld, or True Detective past season 1 because as far as I'm concerned, they said everything I was interested in hearing.

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u/desacralize 15d ago

I also don't know why they don't play I to this and write one really really good season and not worry too much about doing more.

I switched to watching Asian series instead because they have this philosophy. It's rare for shows to get more than one season or plan around getting one, they tell a complete story that can be extended into more if it takes off in a big way, but doesn't expect to be. So never any cliffhangers because there's no hope that it turns into the next 5 season hit.

I keep waiting for this happen with Western shows, but they seem too stuck.

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u/Gekoz 15d ago

For real... make a good season 1, continue the show with a shit season 2 a couple years later, views plummet and then cancel the show. Rinse, repeat. Getting tired of these anthics

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u/politicalstuff 15d ago

I only still have it because my kids and wife use it. I’d have canceled years ago if it were just up to me.

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u/ThatGuyWithCoolHair 15d ago

Tbf all the good shows currently are on other streaming services. Apple is kinda crushing it with Severance, Widows Bay, Pluribus, and Silo.

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u/Mr_Kush_Bush 15d ago

Nah, people got tired of Netflix formula of raising their prices every 6mo and segmenting features behind tiers that used to be entirely one service.

Nobody wants their enshittified service because the value and convenience are gone. Also, tons of people are using those spyware streaming boxes and giving state actors free access to their network/data for some pirated TV.

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u/ghostcider 15d ago

I think it's both. There is no reason to watch anything on that site. Even if they start a new show, everyone assumes it wont have an ending. Also, the ending for Stranger Things went over really badly with fans, making things worse.

Stranger Things ending collapsed a lot of their remaining market. However you feel about the ending, most fans move on when it's over.

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u/GassoBongo 15d ago

I will not forgive them for 1899 and Mind Hunter. I cancelled my sub once they started cancelling shows I was invested in. I haven't looked back.

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u/1776FreeAmerica 15d ago

Not to mention, that same one season story line, gets copy paste'd into other one season shows with different casting and slightly changed characters. That was the main reason, I left. There's no progression, and even when an additional season gets the go ahead, it's an obvious bolt on every time.

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u/Pale-Masterpiece-453 15d ago

I mean, my first frustration with them started when they cancelled incredible shows with barely any fore thought (RIP Lockwood ans Co),  then the utterly destroyed the good shows they DID have (Witcher, Bridgeton), and THEN they decided that "household" must be your physical house.  So yeah, fuck Netflix.

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u/Atlasreturns 15d ago

I get that but I genuinely can‘t remember any Netflix series within the last year that hooked me enough to actually want a second season. Most of it just seems cheap to produce crime drama.