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Netflix’s latest data dump has given more insight into its decision-making process when it comes to renewals and cancellations.
While the streamer has always said those decisions come down to performance vs. cost, its third What We Watched report is beginning to crystallize what some of the thresholds are for various genres, as well as what “performance” means to Netflix beyond just raw viewership numbers.
Obliterated and Dead Boy Detectives were the two shows to get the axe this year that drew the most views from January to June, though it was clearly not enough to keep either show alive.
Obliterated was No. 1 among cancelled shows, tallying 13.3M views in the first half of the year, coming in 83rd for all titles. The show was released at the end of November 2023, and it accumulated 27M views through the end of December, which actually put it among Netflix’s Top 25 titles for that previous streaming report.
This new data set indicates that long-tail viewing plays a part in the streamer’s renewal considerations, as Obliterated experienced a sharp decline in viewership in the new year, putting up just half the viewership in six months that it managed in the month it premiered. Compare that to My Life With the Walter Boys, which premiered in early December and was one of Netflix’s most-watched titles in the first half of the year with more than 30M views.
Netflix had canceled Obliterated by February, which is likely when it began to crystallize that viewership was shrinking rapidly.
As for Dead Boy Detectives, Netflix gave it about four months before announcing it wouldn’t continue in August. From its premiere date in April, the series racked up 12.6M views through June.
That doesn’t encompass all viewing up to the cancellation, given that viewership figures for July and August aren’t included. However, this does show that the series got off to a slow start and didn’t manage to pick up much traction. As Deadline has previously pointed out, Netflix has a fairly high viewership threshold for renewing higher cost, genre series, compared to comedies and reality series.
Buying Beverly Hills and Buying London were also canceled this year. The former managed about 5.8M views from its debut on March 22 through June, while its UK sibling show generate 4.2M views in the month it was available during this data set.
While the threshold for renewal for these series is much lower than a more expensive scripted series, when spread out over several months, it becomes clearer that these two real estate shows didn’t pop with Netflix viewers the way others have.
For comparison, Season 7 of Selling Sunset put up just over 11M views in its first two months on the streamer last year and subsequently received the green light for another season.
