OTT giant Netflix has intermittently been in the news regarding the cancellation of its original shows and some of them just after the completion of the first season itself. A perfect recent example is that of the mystery sci-fi series ‘1899’ from the creators of the highly acclaimed German series ‘Dark’.
Although ‘1899’ couldn’t garner the cult following of ‘Dark’, the show has still got a critics’ score of 76% on reviews aggregation portal Rotten Tomatoes. On IMDb too, ‘1899’ has received a decent user rating of 7.4/10. So, the point is: the Netflix series was immensely liked by a sizable segment of OTT audiences and multiple critics. However, despite a whopping number of around 80 million viewing hours during the first week, ‘1899’ was eventually cancelled by Netflix.
So, what can Netflix do in order to prevent these cancellations of its original shows without letting them complete their whole stories? Because it ends up disappointing a huge segment of fans, which potentially reduces its subscriber base.
One potentially efficient way of avoiding these cancellations is that Netflix could adopt a modus operandi through which it can check the quality and acceptability of a planned series before taking the plunge by approving a full season. What we are suggesting is making pilot episodes for a show before the rest of the full season is greenlit.
By creating a pilot episode for a show, Netflix can probably find itself in a better position to gain insight into the show’s potential, the number of streaming audiences it would attract and most importantly, how many of those viewers will watch the entire show till the very end. Because incomplete viewing is the most likely reason for Netflix cancelling its shows every now and then.
Moreover, Netflix also has the option to launch the pilot episode of a particular show on its OTT platform and gather audience feedback directly. This way, Netflix can check how many viewers opted to watch the pilot and how many of those actually completed the pilot from start to end. Doing that can potentially eliminate the possibility of Netflix shows getting cancelled at pretty early stages.
Pilot testing for shows is not a new phenomenon for content creators. Before the advent of OTT platforms in a big way, several networks used this method not only as a marketing tool but also as a way of selling their shows to popular entertainment channels. For instance, some of the most memorable shows of all time such as ‘Breaking Bad’, ‘Game of Thrones’, ‘X-Files’, and ‘The Walking Dead’ had one thing in common. They all had successful pilots.
Interestingly, Netflix has recently ordered its first ever pilot episode for a comedy show titled ‘Little Sky’ starring Samara Weaving in the lead role. So, it seems to be going in that direction. However, that’s just a start.
So, Netflix can take a few steps back for good by bringing back the once-popular television pilot culture for its OTT platform with the intention to reduce cancellations, keep its audiences happy, and to eventually retain and increase its subscriber base.