Netflix Report Indicates that Long Hiatuses Can Reduce Viewership

Who hasn’t finished a first season and felt anxious about having to wait for the second? When that wait drags on too long, a series can lose some of the ground it gained with audiences. The connection to the story weakens, plot details are forgotten, and when the new episodes finally arrive, not everyone has the same enthusiasm as before to start watching again. 

A new report from Luminate points to exactly that trend. According to the analysis, gaps longer than a year and a half between seasons are usually accompanied by a drop in viewership, at least in the United States market. The company analyzed different hit series and found declines in views after long breaks.

The impact seen on Netflix

One of the examples cited by Luminate is Netflix’s live-action series Avatar: The Last Airbender. The second season arrived more than two years after the first and recorded a 60% drop in estimated U.S. viewership, falling from 6.2 million to 2.8 million in the first seven days.

Stranger Things also appears in the analysis. The fifth and final season arrived after a gap of approximately three and a half years and recorded a 13% drop in estimated viewership compared to the previous season in the first 12 weeks. Even so, the series remained one of streaming’s biggest phenomena.

Another case mentioned is Bridgerton. The fourth season posted a 30% drop compared to the third after another extended gap.

Finally, the report looks at The Night Agent. The third season saw a nearly 40% drop in viewership, even after what was considered a short gap. That caught Luminate’s attention because the series had already posted a similar decline between the first and second seasons, when it went nearly two years without new episodes.

Some exceptions

Luminate notes that long gaps can also have a positive effect: shortly before a new season, some viewers may go back and watch earlier episodes to refresh their memory of the story. Even so, when the company compares the performance of different series, the overall result points to a trend of losing viewers after prolonged breaks.

For the company, one of the main characteristics of recent streaming hits is precisely the ability to release a new season every year. As an example, Luminate cites productions that grew after shorter gaps, such as The Pitt, which rose 172%, and Landman, which more than doubled its viewership from one season to the next.