Series such as The Get Down, Bloodline, Sense8 and Marco Polo have all ended up on the cutting room floor. While Netflix CEO Reed Hastings believes the streamer should go even further, Ampere Analysis’ Richard Broughton says the move is likely to be linked to the average declining quality of its titles.
“Since 2015, Netflix’s catalogue of Originals has dropped in quality by roughly 4%, as estimated using Ampere’s own quality measure,” says Broughton. “The shows which Netflix has cancelled have all fallen below a cost versus interest threshold. Ampere has calculated a simple cost-effectiveness ratio for Netflix Originals (weighing up show cost relative to the volume of quality-weighted IMDB reviews) which illustrates that Netflix’s cancelled shows (with the single exception of Bloodline) all fall below the levels of cost-effectiveness achieved by its renewed titles.”
Based on this analysis, Broughton says Stranger Things is the most cost-effective series to be released by Netflix, followed by 13 Reasons Why and by Narcos. By contrast, The Get Down achieved only average viewer interest, but was expensive to produce, making it the least cost effective show.
When it comes to genres Ampere estimates over a third of Netflix investment has been in drama, while over a quarter of the original spend has been in comedy.