Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has admitted that the second seasons of streaming shows tend to fare less well than the first seasons. But he said it’s not as bad as the prevailing narrative might seem recently.
The streamer also touted some early results from adding video podcasts to the platform in its quarterly earnings report — but declined to reveal any specific numbers in a wide-ranging data release for the first half of the year.
The problem with the second season was sparked by a recent Bloomberg story detailing the sharp decline in viewership for several shows in their second seasons, including Beef, the four seasons and one piece. Sarandos didn’t dispute those results — which came from Netflix’s weekly Top 10 lists — but said, “Overall, we don’t see any material change in our viewing of Season 2 compared to season 1. Our second seasons are performing well within our range of expectations.”
Sarandos also said that a drop in viewership for a show’s second season is “pretty common” across the industry and offered this rationale for why this might happen at Netflix: “It’s more serious for us, because we’re launching our shows so big.” “Our global reach, our discovery mechanism, our one-time release — that allows us to find a very large audience early. Our shows tend to start out really big, whereas most other places their shows start out really small and sometimes grow from there.”
Sarandos added: “When we look at the entire portfolio…our second-season decline has improved slightly this year compared to last year.”
As for video podcasts, Netflix has been pushing the field this year, adding shows from RingingJay Shetty, Pete Davidson, Brian Williams and the New York radio show The Breakfast Club, among others. Sarandos noted that the shows over-engage with mobile users compared to soap operas and have resulted in slightly higher engagement during daytime hours.
How are they doing specifically? Good …
A note at the end of Netflix’s data release notes that all podcasts (there are several dozen) are grouped into an “Other Shows” group that also includes any series that received fewer than 50,000 views (calculated as hours watched divided by runtime) in the first half of the year. The company says this does not necessarily mean that all podcasts have fallen below this threshold. But because it’s a relatively new type of programming for the platform, Netflix has chosen not to publish statistics on any individual show.
The “Other Shows” category accounted for 757 million viewing hours from January to June — which sounds like a lot but is only about one percent of the 74.4 billion hours Netflix users spent watching all series in those six months.
