The original post: /r/television by /u/EmekaEgbukaPukaNacua on 2026-01-13 01:30:19+00:00.
I figure these studios have to think it’s more profitable.
Is it as simple as that they would rather have one set of cameras/writers/costume designers/studios/VFX studios, etc, rather than paying the extra cost to get things done faster and having to hire more people, buy more stuff, etc.
Or is it that they figure “if someone will buy Netflix because it has 5 shows they like… whether we release 5 new seasons of those shows every year, or 1.5 seasons every year on average, in the end we make no more money because most people will stay subscribed for the whole 5 years in either scenario.
Like let’s say it costs 3x the amount to do a season once a year compared to once every 3 years. Are they really going to be making 3x the amount of money from subscriptions to justify releasing one season per year? Probably not.
I see everyone complain about it, but never really hear the reasoning for why it happens, and was thinking maybe the above are it. And if they are the reason… doesn’t seem like it is an accident, or that the underlying reasons for it being the case will change any time soon. Maybe they literally just don’t want to release them fast, because they aren’t like movie theaters or Televsion, where they make money based directly on “how many people watch”, but rather based on the much more murky “stickiness of subscribers”. And as long as people stay subscribed in between seasons… they are incentivized to spread them out far like they do, to minimize cost. In the end their goal is to spend as little as possible to keep people subscribed.