Netflix Chief Executive Officer (CEO) recently defended the history of TV cancellations and said that the streaming giant has never "cancelled a successful show". In an interview with Bloomberg, co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters opened up on the streaming platform's decision-making process.
The executives were asked about their relationship with the creative community and viewer ire after years of premature series ends. To this, Mr Sarandos answered, "We have never cancelled a successful show. A lot of these shows were well-intended but talk to a very small audience on a very big budget." He added, "The key to it is you have to be able to talk to a small audience on a small budget and a large audience at a large budget. If you do that well, you can do that forever."
While Mr Sarandos did not make it clear how Netflix measures the success of a show, his comments sparked several strongly worded responses online from fans of cancelled series and movies. Taking to Twitter, users listed names of different shows that have either been cancelled or going to be removed from the streaming platform. Some even quoted Mr Sarandos and shared GIFs and clips from popular TV shows to express their outrage.
"Netflix, you must be joking 'never cancelled a successful show'. I don't know a single person who could say you haven't cancelled something they really enjoyed," one user wrote.
"Netflix out there saying they never cancelled a successful show... that's gaslighting Netflix, that's gaslighting," said another.
Echoing the same sentiment, a third user added, "Not Netflix gaslighting the entire world claiming they never cancelled a successful show."
According to the tweets, the fan-favourite shows that are going to be cancelled are 'The Babysitter's Club', 'The OA', 'Glow', 'I Am Not Okay With This', 'Atypical', 'Santa Clarita Diet', and 'The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance'.
Meanwhile, in the interview, the co-CEOs did not offer much more on the specifics of the cancelled series. However, they spoke about new monetization strategies taken with an ad-support tier after 2022's subscription losses.
