> [Netflix] now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third and later seasons don’t do much to retain or win new subscribers.. Ending a show after the second season saves money, because showrunners who oversee production tend to negotiate a boost in pay after two years.. Netflix’s strategy is straightforward market power exploitation.. cancelling shows that subscribers like, so it won’t have to pay creators the amount they would otherwise be able to get for making good commercially successful art.
> [Pre 1990s] The Paramount Consent Decrees and the Fin-syn rules were designed to break creative industries into a three-tiered structure: production, distribution, and retailing. Producers were prohibited from vertically integrating into the traditional distribution business. That way, there are fewer conflicts of interest in the content business; producers had to create high quality work, and if they didn’t, distributors could choose to sell someone else’s art. Policy removed power as the mechanism of competition, and emphasized art..
> We should aim to restore open markets for content again. This means separating out the industry into production, distribution, and retailing. We should probably ban predatory pricing so Netflix isn’t dumping into the market. And we should probably begin a radical decentralization of chains and studios. This is all possible. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.
The Americans (6 seasons, 75 episodes)
Battlestar Galactica (4 seasons, 88 episodes)
Borgen (3 seasons, 30 episodes)
Burn Notice (7 seasons, 111 episodes)
The Shield (7 seasons, 88 episodes)
Slow Horses (5 seasons, 30 episodes)
WestWorld (4 seasons, 36 episodes)
The Wire (5 seasons, 60 episodes)