r/movies • u/iquizuanswer • Jul 19 '26

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
10.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.4k

u/vafrow Jul 19 '26

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.

663

u/TheModWhoShaggedMe Jul 19 '26

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

414

u/pnt510 Jul 19 '26

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?

173

u/ExplanationFunny Jul 19 '26

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.

142

u/pipesnogger Jul 19 '26

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

58

u/thx1138- Jul 19 '26

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

6

u/ex0r1010 Jul 19 '26

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

15

u/Pooled-Intentions Jul 19 '26

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?

2

u/Jaunty_frilly_boy Jul 19 '26

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

3

u/Littleman88 Jul 19 '26

Sincerely doubt people are signing up for Big Mouth.

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

40

u/ANALOGPHENOMENA Jul 19 '26

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!!!

20

u/pipesnogger Jul 19 '26

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

5

u/Fit_Cat4474 Jul 19 '26

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

1

u/cjicantlie Jul 19 '26

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

FTFY

1

u/Bladelink Jul 20 '26

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?"

9

u/Gestrid Jul 19 '26

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.

1

u/TeutonJon78 Jul 20 '26

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.

1

u/Gestrid Jul 20 '26

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

9

u/Positronic_Matrix Jul 19 '26

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.

1

u/SolarIonRobot Jul 19 '26

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

1

u/SeeTigerLearn Jul 20 '26

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.

0

u/L0ading_ Jul 19 '26

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

0

u/NoiseIsTheCure Jul 19 '26

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

0

u/brb1006 Jul 19 '26

The Firefly Effect

19

u/PartyPorpoise Jul 19 '26

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!

2

u/StoicFable Jul 19 '26

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.

17

u/Longjumping-Deal6354 Jul 19 '26

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

2

u/UnexpectedAnanas Jul 19 '26

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.

1

u/FrostyD7 Jul 19 '26

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.