🙅♂️ VoD-platforms drop shows more often than traditional TV
The winds of change in the media market have dispelled the myth that streaming services are the safest home for new shows. According to "The Show Must Go Off," a study by analytics firm Luminate, major SVoD platforms renew just 44% of their series for a subsequent season.
By contrast, traditional broadcast networks retain 65% of their projects—a figure online streamers can only dream of right now.
The main driver behind the streaming giants’ strict policy is budget optimization and the curb on inflated production costs in the “post-peak TV” era.
The study highlights a sharp drop in the number of new hit shows. While original debuts accounted for half of all scripted releases on US streaming platforms in 2022, their share shrank to 42% by 2025. HBO Max was the sole major player to increase its proportion of premiere shows, while only Apple TV and Prime Video managed to expand their absolute number of new projects.
Interestingly, Netflix—long labeled the primary “cancellator” of shows—proved to be the most loyal to its originals: between 2022 and 2025, the platform renewed an average of nearly 50% of its US content, leading all SVoD competitors.
Audience retention has emerged as the decisive metric for a show’s survival on streaming. Luminate’s data reveals that if over 50% of viewers who start a premiere stick around through the season finale, the project stands a strong chance of renewal. Cancelled series, on average, saw retention sit around 44%.
Still, each service maintains its own threshold of tolerance. Apple TV, for instance, is willing to overlook modest completion rates for prestige releases that build brand cachet—the comedy series The Studio secured a renewal despite holding onto just 28% of its audience over a 120-day window.
Source: TV Technology