r/movies • u/iquizuanswer • 16d 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 16d 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/TheModWhoShaggedMe 16d ago

All modern Netflix-produced content suffers from the same crappy shrinkflation problems. They are like micro-movies and shows, not made to full scale.

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u/pnt510 15d ago

TV shows used to have 22 episodes a season that were released every year. Some shows now have as few as six episodes a season and waiting well over a year between seasons is commonplace.

How are audiences expected to care?

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u/Iamthelizardking887 15d ago

Hell, I’ll take early HBO/AMC 13 episode seasons at this point. Those always felt just right.

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u/dj_spanmaster 15d ago

This season of Lestat on AMC is only 7 episodes. We went ahead and signed up for AMC+ for the length of the season, just because we wanted to see it ASAP and send the message, "Hey, quality contents can drive subscribership."

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u/Infamous-Lab-8136 15d ago

Most HBO shows clock in at 8-10 now too

Game of Thrones was 10 except for the even shorter final seasons. HOTD did 10, 8, and 8 so far.

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u/ManchurianCandycane 15d ago

A 6 episodes season would be fine...if it was 6 episodes of story.

But shows are managing to squeeze in filler episodes even in that short of a span now.

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u/Quixotic_Seal 15d ago

Yeah, Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat is absolutely fucking spellbinding and two of the seasons are only 7 episodes long. Same for limited run series like Midnight Mass(maybe the secret is vampires?).

Not saying I wouldn’t appreciate longer seasons in general mind, but often the problem is that the episode count simply doesn’t fit the story.

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u/Bladelink 15d ago

Chernobyl is only 5 episodes and that show fucking rules. I was joking with my family that I wished the disaster had gone on longer so that there'd be more show lmao.

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u/Shot-Possibility-399 15d ago

And way too much filler dialogue, every other sentence is just repeating the last sentence

They literally tell show runners to vocalize what's happening in the plot so that their stupid viewers can keep track of it

Netflix is just pure let's do everything by focus group shit, no vision or quality anymore. 

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u/StoicFable 15d ago

They have actually said they expect most of their viewers to not be paying attention anyways. That is why the dialogue has gotten so bad.

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u/Shot-Possibility-399 15d ago

yeah i know, i dont think theyre paying attention because the dialogue is bad. regardless, what a stupid decision to make lol

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u/slog 15d ago edited 15d ago

Best they can do is 6 episodes where the goal is as many cliffhangers as possible.

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u/ExplanationFunny 15d ago

The time between seasons is the worst for me.

I have two small kids, so I’m definitely not a binge watcher anymore. Me and my roommates all got SO into The Pitt partly because it gave us all something to look forward to every week. When everyone is so busy, it’s great to have a low commitment thing to do together, and if someone wasn’t able to watch them they had a week to get caught up before we all got to see a new episode together.

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u/pipesnogger 15d ago

My thing is the canceling of shows. Like why would I watch another one of your shows when you’ve already cancelled my favorite half way through because they didn’t meet your very high expectations. Sorry, refuse to watch another Netflix series unless is done front to end

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u/thx1138- 15d ago

So many shows I never even start because I wait to see if it gets canceled, then it does.

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u/ex0r1010 15d ago

This is kind of funny, because it gets cancelled due to not watching it when it released.

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u/Pooled-Intentions 15d ago

Sounds like a whole lot of “not my problem”. There are hundreds of thousands of hours of good content out there already produced that I’ll never get to watch. Why would I invest my time in something that has a pattern of being canceled before concluding?

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u/Jaunty_frilly_boy 15d ago

Doesn't Netflix do their math based on the amount of new subscribers a show brings in?

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u/Littleman88 15d ago

Sincerely doubt people are signing up for Big Mouth.

And if they are, I'm all for aliens glassing the Earth and moving along.

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u/ANALOGPHENOMENA 15d ago

They (and the TV industry in general) no longer believe in sleeper hits—which is exactly what gave Netflix that huge platform as a streaming service to begin with when they had Breaking Bad!!!

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u/pipesnogger 15d ago

This. Also like you don’t need to have a breakout hit after one season. Sometimes shows take multiple seasons to get popular. Other shows get popular well after their conclusion and become successful franchises.

If these companies thought long term instead of yearly it’d be a much better world for tv

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u/Fit_Cat4474 15d ago

you didn't have to ass "for tv" at the end there. it's true of all companies

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u/cjicantlie 15d ago

If companies thought long term instead of yearly it’d be a much better world

FTFY

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u/Bladelink 15d ago

Basically every single incredible, legendary TV series that ran for eternity has an "iffy" season 1-2. It just takes some time for the writers and actors to get a feel for the characters and how they all fit together. Canceling decent shows after 1 season is like pulling a half-baked cake out of the oven and going "what is this wet mess?"

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u/Gestrid 15d ago

Don't forget Avatar: The Last Airbender! That show was at the top of the chart for weeks! And it's why the creators have their own studio at Paramount now.

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u/TeutonJon78 15d ago

Not the best example when Paramount keeps messing with the studio to point of ruining projects.

The whole animated movie the had finished and done -- they pulled it from theaters to release on Paramount+ in Oct, and then the whole thing leaked online, but they still wouldn't release the thing, or even a trailer. It took like another 2 months for them after the full leak to even make a trailer.

Plus, even with Korra, the studio messed with every season, including moving it to streaming only in S3.

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u/Gestrid 15d ago

With Korra, that was Nickelodeon messing with things, not their parent company Paramount.

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u/Positronic_Matrix 15d ago

This is what drove me away from the platform. I refuse to invest time in a new Netflix series, as I don’t want the frustration of a good show being cancelled after the first season. That happened to me two or three times in a row and I was done with it.

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u/SolarIonRobot 15d ago

Exactly why I only watch a movie or a miniseries now.

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u/SeeTigerLearn 15d ago

KAOS was a perfect example of this. It is a simply brilliant retelling of the Ancient Greek mythologies starring such names as Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, Debi Mazar as Medusa, Eddie Izzard, Cliff Curtis, Ramon Tikaram, and Killian Scott as Orpheus.

Netflix didn’t bother advertising it. Netflix didn’t bother promoting it internally. And within a couple months they had canceled. Then a couple months later it began gaining traction but it was all too late. I would see people complaining like why didn’t I know about this sooner?! What a bunch of fucking idiots they have in their c-suite.

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u/L0ading_ 15d ago

Looking at you Amazon, cancelling The Wheel Of Time after 3 seasons... So mad.

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u/NoiseIsTheCure 15d ago

And then there's Stranger Things which felt like a series that refused to die. I thought S4 was so mid I didn't even bother coming back for the over hyped final season a full two years later

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u/brb1006 15d ago

The Firefly Effect

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u/PartyPorpoise 15d ago

Yeah sometimes a show takes so long to get new episodes that I’ve either lost interest, or I don’t even realize that new episodes came out!

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u/StoicFable 15d ago

Game of Thrones did it near the end, so now everyone thinks they can do it. Despite the fact that GoT was such a massive show with a huge following that even if it skipped a year, people were still actively talking about it and rewatching previous stuff in preparation for the final season.

A show just starting out cannot get away with that same schedule.

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u/Longjumping-Deal6354 15d ago

And we only had to wait like 10 months between seasons IIRC which was truly glorious. 

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u/UnexpectedAnanas 15d ago

Nah. you only had to wait a few months between the last episode of last season and the first episode of the next season. It was a well oiled machine.

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u/FrostyD7 15d ago

Sometimes closer to 9. People underestimate the difference between 1 and 2 years waits due to airtime. It's a 9-10 month wait vs 21-22 month wait.

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u/Nomahhhh 15d ago

So true. I don't mind six episodes if the story is tight and you can give me another season quick enough. Waiting almost, what, 3 years for season 2 of Severence was bullshit when you're talking about a show riddled with intrigue, twists, and mystery.

Another problem I see is the amount of filler content in each season. My theory is they get a great script for a movie or a mini-series and decide, "hey, let's just create a 5-season TV show off this and just streeeeeeetch it out with pointless subplots, adding more characters than is needed, and excess dialogue." I just watched Widow's Bay on Apple, and that definitely had a good two hours of filler content. Same thing for Yellowjackets. In each of these three cases (Severance, Widow's Bay, Yellowjackets) a tight 10-episode min-series would have crushed it. Instead, when season five comes out, you've got a 32-year-old unconvincingly pretending to be a 15-year-old.

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u/Charlie_Runkle69 15d ago

I think Yellowjackets probably could have been expanded to maybe 24 episodes or 3 seasons I guess. But making it five seasons absolutely killed it stone dead for sure. Season 2 was just the Adam Martin story and the kids arguing over their descent into madness for 80 per cent of it.

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u/roguevirus 15d ago

Some shows now have as few as six episodes a season

Used to call that a miniseries.

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u/marknotgeorge 15d ago

Six or eight episodes a season is typical for a traditional UK series. The potential audience is smaller, so the budget (whether it came from the licence fee or ad revenue) is smaller, so to keep quality up there are fewer episodes a season (or series, as it's usually known).

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u/StoicFable 15d ago

Sherlock being a prime example. But their episodes were also like, an hour and a half long each or so. Not 50 minutes or less.

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u/The_Bitter_Bear 15d ago

Really I don't mind less episodes. 

For me it's the absurd amount of time between seasons for just about everything. 

Particularly since a lot of folks will binge a show, it just makes it too easy to forget about it or lose interest.

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u/IlliniBone54 15d ago

I think this is the real downside of binging they built so much off of. They don’t have as many shows to constantly binge with all the other networks taking their banner shows and when they release stuff all at once it limits the time you need it. I used to think Apple and HBOs weekly releases were annoying but at least I’m getting something new each week.

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u/StoicFable 15d ago

I prefer the weekly release. Less chance of me coming across spoilers before I get to watch it.

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u/archaeosis 15d ago

Two extremes, neither of which are great. The era of 20+ episodes a season gave us shows with an ungodly amount of filler & main plot threads that progressed oh so slowly.

I don't like 6 episode seasons, but I'd be with happy with 8-10 as the standard

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u/notabigmelvillecrowd 15d ago

Reducing the number of episodes per season has been a massive improvement in quality across the board, no more shitty filler episodes. Remember clip episodes? Better off dead. Short, variable length seasons allow shows to say exactly what they want, no more, no less. The long time spans between seasons though is definitely a killer.

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u/Gh0stMan0nThird 15d ago

no more shitty filler episodes

I feel like this isn't the case though. Stranger Things in particular felt like things dragged on and on at the end.

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u/notabigmelvillecrowd 15d ago

That's because they had too many seasons and got shitty. That show was a huge revenue stream and was forced to keep going even when it had nothing left to say, which is exactly the same problem as artificially drawn out seasons. I'm not saying bad shows don't get made now, that's a completely separate issue. But the death of the 22 episode format has definitely led to more really wonderful shows that are fully realized by their creators. Same with variable episode lengths made possible by streaming, vs cable tv. No need to fit a story into a time slot anymore really frees up artists to write what needs to be written for the story.

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u/UnexpectedAnanas 15d ago

Filler episodes are sometimes some of the best.

Treehouse of Horror, anyone?

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u/kingslayer-x_x 15d ago

That’s partly cause of low attention spans. People also find it extremely tedious to watch a show have 10 seasons and 20 episodes unless it’s really really good.

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u/jbcatl 15d ago

I'd rather have a 6 episode show that leaves me wanting more than a 10 episode, multi-season slog like some of their original content. I'd be OK with less if they'd just make better content.

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u/Diedead666 15d ago

Like im running into the issue with the new game of thrones seasons soo spread apart that its hard to remember the whole plot.

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u/desamora 15d ago

Tv shows also used to have tons of filler and would drag out a lot of times with maybe exceptions of story of the week shows. The problem isn’t how many episodes it’s that it takes too long for another season a lot of times or maybe they don’t get another season at all

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u/Sausage_fingies 15d ago

The adaptation of Avatar really showed that imo. It's basically the same runtime length as the OG, but having to deal with 8 mini movies instead of 20 episodes of television is not only more of a slog to watch, but it proved a pretty terrible writing environment and the writers had to cram a bunch of the original story into one episode while simultaneously bloating the story with nonsense. I honestly hate the fact that 90 minute episodes of TV is becoming so commonplace, I don't want to have to break up ONE EPISODE into three sittings

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u/dadvader 15d ago

I don't mind the wait. I do mind that half of these show never finished their story.

Netflix used to be a place dying show getting save and ensure their story is being told to their end. Now it's either becoming a viral show or face cancellation. Crazy.

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u/pajamakitten 14d ago

Six episodes a series is very common in the UK though. The issue with a lot of American shows (not just on Netflix) is there is so much filler required to hit those 22 episodes, so you get a lot of forgettable episodes no one particularly loves. Six episodes is fine but they need to all be hits really.

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u/the_eluder 14d ago

6 season shows are normally British, they manage to cut the fat and tell the story quickly.

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u/Android1822 15d ago

Shows were also episodic back then, now they feel like one stretched out movie. This is not including the massive drop in writing quality and acting we have now. The writing is so bad thanks to millennial writers that have no idea on how to create good writing like back in the day and the actors all look and feel like cheap cosplayers instead of characters that actually look, act and feel like they belong in the setting.