How Netflix Became Disposable Entertainment
Binging isn't an enduring model.
I keep forgetting I have Netflix, which doesn’t entirely explain the platform’s current woes but it probably doesn’t help. Netflix is reportedly losing up to 70 percent of the audience for its shows between seasons. This includes one-time hits, such as One Piece — one of Netflix’s most-watched series in 2023, which lost more than 30 percent of its audience in its second season. Beef’s second season collapsed with a 70 percent drop from its first season. The Night Agent lost 50 percent of its audience for its second season and another 35 percent for its third. By the way, these show titles are all terrible.
Avatar: The Last Airbender was one of Netflix’s most-watched shows in 2024 but plummeted more than 60 percent in its latest season. Even well-received comedies Running Point and The Four Seasons lost more than 50 percent of their viewers in their second season.
Netflix has seemingly identified the issue: There is often far too much of a delay between installments, sometimes years, so it’s less like a new season and more like a new era. Viewers move on. For instance, Wednesday starring Jenna Ortega was a meme-worthy sensation when it debuted in 2022 but a second season didn’t arrive until late 2025. Over on Hulu, Only Murders In The Building has consistently aired every year since its 2021 debut (50 total episodes so far) and has steadily built an audience.
I think the larger issue for Netflix is one that’s perhaps core to its identity — binge-watching (a term I’ve always found odd, as it doesn’t suggest a healthy action). New Netflix series are released all at once, which is clearly a mistake. Binge viewing was once key to the success of series like Breaking Bad, where audiences discovered the show well into its run and then “binged” past episodes so they could catch up with the new ones. However, Breaking Bad was already airing weekly, like a traditional TV series.
Just as movies benefit from watching them with a large group of people, TV shows thrive when audiences watch episodes “together,” at the same time. In ancient times, popular TV shows became “water cooler” discussion the day after they aired. We collectively debated who killed Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks and discussed the ongoing conspiracy in The X-Files. Later on, reality TV show “drama” would dominate conversation the day after the latest Real World or Survivor. A show like Lost would have fizzled if episodes dropped all at once and there were years between new “seasons.”
For popular comedies like Seinfeld and The Simpsons, it mattered that audiences experienced the jokes around the same time. We were all dancing like Elaine in unison.
The weekly airings for shows like WandaVision, Severance, and Only Murders In The Building keeps the water cooler discussion going for weeks, allowing viewers to ponder and debate theories. It’s a slow tease rather than a quick hit.
Only Murders In The Building also airs from late summer through early fall — somewhat similar to a classic TV schedule (though with an abbreviated 10 episode season). I think there’s a reason that schedule has worked for generations. It’s reliable but also when people are primed to settle in and watch TV again. Netflix series schedules are more haphazard. Wednesday’s second season was split in two parts — August 6 and September 3, both Wednesdays, which is cute but that was prime summer vacation. (Viewership for the second half dropped more than 40 percent.)
The Four Seasons dropped its first season on May 1, 2025 and its second on May 28, 2025. I think that’s a big difference scheduling-wise. Although, there wasn’t a large gap between installments, I confess I was surprised to learn that there would even be a second season. The first felt, well, finished. I’ve been rewatching Only Murders In The Building with my 12-year-old and I appreciate how the finales tie up each season’s mystery while ending with a cliffhanger that leaves you talking (and guessing) about the next season. That’s another classic TV series move.
Of course, Only Murders In The Building offers a narrative with compelling, life-and-death stakes, while The Four Seasons is pretty much “Rich People Problems,” which can feel positively adolescent (and misplaced in our current dumpster fire reality).
The only original Netflix series I’ve watched regularly was The Crown, and it felt like a major event. Each season’s episodes arrived in either November or December — consistent with “sweeps” in a traditional TV schedule — and there was only a gap year whenever the cast was replaced, during which the anticipation for the new leads kept the series relevant.
Netflix can probably turn things around, perhaps enough so that I’ll download the app on my mobile devices again (currently, our son just watches old cartoons like Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe), but the platform might need to fundamentally change its identity. Binge-watching is the past not the future.
Agree with these points. Binging is still possible when you air episodes weekly (you can binge the old ones you missed) but a weekly drop at least ensures people go on the app over a period of months so they see promos for other shows or movies they might be interested in. Netflix would also benefit from having a better browsing function—it seems much more limited than their giant library would suggest. They could also likely pick up a bunch of interesting indie content on the cheap.
The other things I wonder about (depending on rights issues) is adding local news broadcasts, nightly talk shows (like a Conan style show, airing each night or weekly to keep it topical) and live sports broadcasts. These would pull in regular viewers who’d have more opportunity to find other content on the app, and many of these features just don’t exist with rival streamers. Plus, being able to get such content on a mobile device is way more convenient than using traditional TV.
I have thought for a while now that part of the slow-moving implosion of our shared reality is that we don’t experience cultural events as a community or nation anymore. I’m young enough to remember almost everyone wondering who shot JR, or crying at the M*A*S*H finale, or even excited over the upcoming nuptials of Luke & Laura. We now experience this in much smaller groups in reddit threads or on Twitter/X. It also doesn’t help that elite TV watchers are obsessed with niche programming like “Game of Thrones” when orders of magnitude more are tuned into “The Big Bang Theory” (or similar). The closest thing I can think of that we as a nation still experience and discuss collectively is the Super Bowl (no, not the stupid World Cup, the “Game of Thrones” of sports). I’m not sure how that changes, but adding yet another $8-10/month streaming service doesn’t help.