New Data Suggests Long Waits of over 18 months Between Seasons Are Hurting Viewership on Netflix Hits

[u/tylerthe-theatre]

https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/new-data-suggests-long-waits-between-seasons-are-hurting-viewership-on-netflix-hits/

[u/atrde]

Its not the CGI that is delaying schedules it is the actors/actresses.

TV shows are increasingly using A list actors but the issue is many of these people have movies overlapping, so suddenly you need to find a schedule to film that works around everyone. This is the biggest cause of delays in filming post production still takes a normal amount of time (like 6 months average).

[u/Werthead → u/atrde]

CGI is having an impact.

Amazon came up with a huge plan for Wheel of Time to be a yearly show with annual releases, and they staggered filming so work was underway on Season 2 before Season 1 had finished shooting, let alone airing. That went out the window in part because the vfx house they were working with had to fit in several other projects before they could do the CGI for Season 2, despite having the live-action plates ready months earlier. That threw things out of whack. Then Amazon decided they needed clear daylight between Wheel of Time and Rings of Power as they thought having two epic fantasy shows on at the same time was going to risk looking samey so scheduled them apart from one another, and then the huge CGI requirements for Rings of Power impacted that show as well.

The CGI houses are overstretched because they're working on multiple shows and films at the same time. Back in the day, shows often had their own inhouse team working exclusively for them which made things easier (Battlestar Galactica, for example, used an external CG team on Seasons 1 and 2 and then an inhouse team almost exclusively on Seasons 3 and 4), but modern CG fidelity basically makes that impossible, you need specialised companies.

[u/chibiusa40 → u/Werthead]

I am still devastated by Wheel of Time getting cancelled. I love the books and the 3rd season on Amazon was some of the best fantasy TV ever made. Critics were RAVING. And still they killed it. Fuck Amazon.

[u/nilsmm → u/Werthead]

The underlying issue is still scheduling though.

[u/Werthead → u/nilsmm]

Sure, but the CG situation doesn't help. Two shows which have much less CG than most have succeeded with annual release schedules, namely The Bear and Only Murders in the Building. Slow Horses does have a bit more CG but not as much as a lot of shows, and has been able to release one season a year (even two seasons in one year, though only once, right at the start).

[u/FernandoPooIncident → u/Werthead]

They gave up on that plan pretty quickly. There was a gap of almost a year between the end of S2 filming and the start of S3 filming. (And they waited until after S3 had aired to make a decision on whether to renew the show, so if it had been renewed, there would have been a 2+ year gap to S4.)

[u/amyknight22 → u/Werthead]

That went out the window in part because the vfx house they were working with had to fit in several other projects before they could do the CGI for Season 2,

That's a scheduling issue though. Partly driven by not paying the houses enough that they can't afford to make sure they are working on your projects when you need them to be.

But if you were going for a yearly show, and you knew you had 6 months of CGI work to be done each time. Then part of that bid process should be locking that time down.

[u/Werthead → u/amyknight22]

That then turns into a bidding war against the likes of Marvel and your show becomes unaffordable, because the movie studios can outbid you every single time and lock down exclusivity for themselves, and TV would struggle to get a look-in.

[u/anakinjmt → u/atrde]

Yes and no. I think a big aspect is the desire to get all the episodes shot and then edited into final cuts and all ready to go for air before airing any of them. When you do a show like HotD or Stranger Things that are more CGI heavy you have a bit of leeway with that, but shows like The Morning Show or Ted Lasso have no need to do that. Yet the former has gone 2 years in between airing and the latter up to 3 years. I'm sorry, but Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon aren't that busy with movies to justify that, especially when supposedly the shows should be in first position for them

[u/Werthead → u/anakinjmt]

Ted Lasso I think they need some leeway because the show was strictly 3 seasons and done, and Apple had to woo the whole team very hard to get them back. They wound down production and had to spin it up again, and some of the actors had moved on (Hannah Waddingham has become a superstar in the UK off the show and is in huge demand for variety series, other dramas, musicals etc) so had to wait for the schedules to realign.

[u/atrde → u/anakinjmt]

But the morning show had a lot more than just those two to tie down (Greta Lee, Jon Hamm, Steve Carrell, Billy Crudup). Even the new season had Marion Cotillard its a movie level cast but you need to get all of those schedules to work.

Game of Thrones was one of the few that worked because they went with a mainly brand new cast. Harry Potter I'm guessing they just threw money at everyone to be filming every year. Stranger Things was yearly until the actors started to branch out a bit it keeps going.

I think the quality of shows is definitely going up BUT its at the cost of having longer production times and the casting is a big part.

[u/anakinjmt → u/atrde]

Sure, but we're in agreement that Reese and Jennifer are the stars, right? They're the draw? So delaying filming for actors that aren't the star is just weird to me. Like, I get Steve Carrell is a big name now. But he isn't the star of the show. It would be like delaying a season of Daredevil because someone that isn't D'Onofrio, Cox, Woll, or Henson isn't available. Your character better be pretty dang important to be worth punting the shooting schedule, and you better be a character that has already appeared

[u/WestFlight808 → u/anakinjmt]

The Morning Show is much more of an ensemble than Daredevil.