The biggest player in streaming is easily Netflix, but viewership data shows a surprising problem area for the company: getting viewers to come back for a second season
Netflix has a one-season problem with its biggest hits, report explains
Lucas Shaw, writing at Bloomberg:
One Piece, one of Netflix’s most-watched shows of 2023, lost more than 30% of its audience for the second season. Season two of Beef suffered a drop of more than 70%. The Night Agent shed 50% of its audience for the second season and another 35% for its third season. These figures are all through the first four weeks of a show’s release and come straight from Netflix
Adding insult to injury, the latest season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, one of Netflix’s most-watched titles in 2024, suffered a drop of more than 60% over week one. That doesn’t bode well for the rest of the month
A couple other series mentioned include comedies Running Point and The Four Seasons, both of which were renewed for third seasons despite dropping over 50% of viewers in season 2
Shaw writes that these declines are “a major to figure out why this is happening.”
This isn’t a new phenomenon for Netflix, with many shows historically performing best in their first seasons. But it’s a problem that’s been especially prevalent recently—and in ways that might be unique to Netflix
Broadcast series, for example, have generally increased in viewership over time. And Apple TV seems to be seeing similar increases with its shows
Yet with Netflix, for some reason things are different
What do you think is behind Netflix’s one-season problem? Let us know in the comments
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