Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, Film and TV, Entertainment
Joe Harker
If you're wondering why Netflix has cancelled your favourite show when you were sure it still had plenty of tales to tell and was reasonably popular, there's a hidden reason why they wielded the axe.
Netflix has been on a bit of a cancellation spree recently, axing shows like 1899 even as fans were desperate for a second season and shuffling off much-loved series Warrior Nun despite rave reviews.
Plenty of other shows have been dropped by the streaming service even as they picked up strong reviews, and some of them boasted a pretty strong viewership in terms of overall hours watched.
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Plenty of Netflix viewers have been mystified by this, struggling to figure out why a seemingly popular show was getting cancelled when other less viewed shows got the nod for a second season.
Many are unhappy that what they saw as high quality TV was getting cancelled, while others are saddened that a show they had high hopes for would have no more chances to fulfil its potential.
Some shows are so popular that there's pretty much no chance of them being ditched, but Netflix has a pretty big pile of promising shows which were axed when they still had plenty going for them, and there's a key reason for that.
According to Forbes, one of the big reasons behind Netflix choosing to ditch or renew a show is a metric called 'completion rate', which measures how many viewers actually watched a series through to the end.
While the overall number of hours a show was viewed can give you an idea of how long audiences spent on a show, completion rate can suggest whether those numbers would translate into a strong viewer base for future seasons.
They pointed towards the example of First Kill, which got cancelled after the first series despite having more hours watched compared to a series like Heartstopper, which got renewed for two new seasons.
While Netflix viewers spent much more time on First Kill, it seems as though only about 44 percent of those watching saw the whole thing while 73 percent of Heartstopper viewers watched through to the final episode.
They reckon that the magic threshold a Netflix series has to beat to get renewed is hitting 50 percent on completion rate, with well regarded shows like 1899 only scraping about 32 percent and getting dropped as a result.
The streaming service understandably doesn't want to throw their money at new seasons of shows if the majority of the audience couldn't even make it to the end of the current one.
While measuring a show on completion time might be a key part of Netflix's decision to keep or drop a show there are likely several other factors they've got to consider.
If overall viewing figures are in the toilet or review scores are terrible, it's unlikely to make a compelling case for a show's renewal, even if those who did tune in made it through to the end.
UNILAD has contacted Netflix for a comment.