People who use the app say they received a notification that it’s closing on July 15th

That’s a situation largely of Netflix’s own making. There was a time when they were the only game in town for streaming movies and TV shows. They had the opportunity to build a gargantuan and loyal subscriber base and they blew it. Their decline is what opened the door to all this competition.

There’s competition from outside of Netflix too. Plenty of other streaming services pump out content here too.

You might be happy with all this competition but then why are we even here for this discussion? It’s clear that too much competition has led to most shows dying prematurely.

Shows used to get cancelled all the time. Including long-form TV shows.

Star Trek TNG’s show runners knew how to deal with this: you don’t use the same budget for every episode. Some episodes get a big budget, others get a small one. The latter were called bottle shows and they turned out to be some of the best episodes in Star Trek history because they had no effects budget so they had to rely entirely on writing, acting, and editing.

Even the specific Star Trek episodes with the highest budget wouldn’t come anywhere near to the usual per-episode budget of TV shows now.

But that’s only one reason why the old 20-24 episode formula has declined. Not the only reason. Actors in TV now are also regularly in movies and many other shows. Many actors now worth hiring simply do not want to tie themselves down to 20 episodes a season, and define themselves by one show.

The less choice here is key. People were more likely to be focusing on one or two TV shows at once because there were simply less TV shows being made. That’s all gone now. There’s far more competition for people’s interest now across the board. There also was much less international options too. Lost was not competing with Korean or Spanish or German shows for people’s attention.

Most shows have always failed though. Including the old long-form 24 episode shows that got cancelled all the time.

It’s because they walked away from the tried and true broadcast television model:

long seasons, often 20+ episodes

There’s far more competition in television now than in the era of regular 20+ episodes a season shows. There’s simply more TV shows, and thus more options for audiences. Actors in TV now are also regularly in movies and many other shows. Many actors now worth hiring simply do not want to tie themselves down to 20 episodes a season, and define themselves by one show. Audiences also expect higher CGI quality than you would usually get in 20 episodes a season shows.

There’s a reason it’s primarily only network procedural shows that stick to that formula.

This model was created out of necessity: the technology was broadcast television, no video recording technology cheap enough to distribute episodes in bulk. However the model had a number of advantages. First of all, it created audience loyalty because shows had a consistent and timely presence in people’s lives. People would gather around the water cooler or on the playground to talk about last night’s episode, since it came out for everyone at the same time.

I mean, the watercooler culture is also gone primarily because of the increase competition. Two avid TV watchers now could be watching an entirely different array of TV shows with zero cross-over because of the prominence and accessibility of options to audiences - especially from the Non-US world. That was simply far less likely to happen 10 years ago, Shows like Lost in the 00s were not indirectly competing with Korean or German shows. They just weren’t.

It also gave shows evolving cultural relevance, as longer runs gave the writers opportunities to respond to current events, fashion trends, or changes in technology.

Shows that try to incorporate contemporary trends within their plot tend to not age very well.

Lastly, it was immune to the “binge burnout” and “cramming amnesia” effects, two terms I just made up (but describe real phenomena). Everyone who has binge watched a season of a show knows the bad feeling you get at the end. It’s a mixture of burnout but also of grief, because you’re forced out of a world you’d immersed yourself in. Cramming amnesia should be instantly familiar to anyone who has crammed for an exam, and everyone knows that spaced repetition over the long term is much better at building memory, whereas cramming leads to forgetting.

Not all networks use the binge formula: Apple and Amazon don’t always do this. (Apple never does this).

My guess is that you don’t hook viewers, emotionally engage and capture their investment in the plot and characters by producing 8-10 episodes. Shows used to do ~24.

Some of the best shows going are between 8-10 episodes a season though. And it’s not as if any competitor of netflix now is doing 24 episodes a season. That’s mostly exclusively reserved for network procedurals.

There are some (especially in S04), but I don’t know that “Picking between the Town and Colony House” was precisely a specific plot point to be repeatedly revisited. The divisions between them ended by the end of Season 1 and it became more relaxed.

Ofcom don’t know what the Fediverse is.

They don’t need to lawyer up if they have no presence in the UK. They can just send them a meme picture of a hamster.

Lemm.ee shut down for entirely unrelated reasons.

It might be hard to enforce for every instance but even if only 1% of instance admins get strongly worded letters threatening fines if they don’t follow the law, I guarantee you that many more will just decide that it’s not worth the risk, they close their instances and we end up with even fewer users than before.

Lol, Ofcom still are stuck trying to ban 4chan. You overestimate their ability.

Quite hard to enforce that given even with growth, it would be federated.

No, it’s not.

It’s the 1980s one.

It’s not an adaptation, they’ve picked it up to be watched.

This would depend on your level of interest for internationally acquired titles, in my honest opinion. Netflix has the largest field here.

Yeah, I know. I was just trying to determine if the poster above was anti-Netflix specifically or anti watching-TV.

I simply wanted a fresh space to build new communities on a service that better promotes the visibility of content. Reddit is busy, but it’s also old and tired. Every community name is taken. All the names are used up. Some are actively maintained with enthusiasm, some are run by skeleton crews and others are mostly abandoned. Just because a site has all the people doesn’t mean you can get engagement there because more people also means more competition for visibility.

Do you like watching TV at all? There is a lot of stuff on Netflix.

I’m pretty sure the vast majority of all penned in functions were present at base before Piefed had anyone specifically scrutinising the code, before the platform was more popular. That is to say that the software itself was originally more designed in a personalised way, and then many core functions were removed. Yes, someone noticed it each time - but I am not aware of anything specifically ‘snuck in’ here.

The development of Piefed has been for default settings to be removed and detached over time, not added in.