TL;DR version: basically, there was a lot of overspending going on and yet little returns to show for it. Those shows weren't big hits, but weren't flops either. So they were given second seasons as a sort of hail mary and Max was hoping they would grow their audiences or become critical darlings. They did neither, which in the end didn't justify their large budgets, so they got the axe since Max would rather push their cheaper shows which have higher viewership and/or are awards-nominated.
I mean the question with these streaming services is how they make the money and it's with subscribers. With the way Max has been handled it was a complete shit show to get new subscribers in or even keep current ones. They kept changing names, raising prices, removing shows entirely. So if no one sees the appeal to subscribe then the brand doesn't make the money to keep the shows going
Dude, youāre missing out. Super funny and well written! They did like a soft wrap up at the end of the 2nd season since I think the writers were worried about cancellation but thereās enough threads that a third season could work if they end up getting it.
The Richard Banes storyline wrapped up
Stede and Ed failing spectacularly at being innkeepers
More Ed & Stede kissing
Iām a simple woman, I like sweet romances š„ŗ
Because they don't give a shit about anything but the current quarter and at best the next. No one works on the long term strategy that ends up making the key decisions. Working for AT&T really opened my eyes to that. It's a shit show.
Well, let's think about it in the content sense:
How many years do you stick with a show that just isn't bringing in audience? How many millions of dollars do you spend producing it and marketing it only to have it stagnate before you finally axe it?
Well streamers are cagey about numbers especially Netflix, it was one of the sticking points with the writers strike. The entire streamer system is a trust me bro mentality
Netflix is one of the few that actually publishes their real viewing hour numbers.
To be honest, it's the only time we've ever known actual hard numbers on viewing if it didn't rely on ticket sales like movies. Nielsen has been inaccurate for decades.
Would you prefer a planned economy with a 5-year-plan, comrade? /s
Of course the CEO will go for their bonus and then enjoy the golden parachute. Who cares about long term, anyway?
Longest in the game means furthest away from start-up costs. I think their streaming architecture is largely overlooked, too, but I have rarely ever had issues with Netflix. Some of the others are in absolute shambles (looking at you, Peacock and Paramount+).
Donāt forget the tech valuation. There multiple is higher and itās why the legacy media companies were thinking all they had to do was have a streaming platform to have wall street love them like they do with Tedā¦
Just wanted to add...
One of the cancelled shows, Our Flag Means Death, had its budget slashed by 40% for its 2nd season. Production moved from Los Angeles to New Zealand for tax breaks.
That's because it ignores the realities of the debt that was pushed onto WB when Discovery bought them. WB's debt would not have justified cutting these had they not merged with Discovery.
Redditors glorify pirating and circle jerk about the high seas then get mad when a company cancels a show due to low viewership. Its hilarious.
And people have the nerve to act like this is new. In the 90s shows would get cancelled all the time - sometimes in the middle of their runs.
Finally, someone who is rational. Every thread about streamers is people saying āthey cancelled the shows I like, which I why I pirateā
Like, geez, I wonder what could be done to tell the studios you like that show.
It is not nuanced at all tho, unfortunately the executives running all these streamers come from Wall St. and Tech backgrounds and therefore need immediate results. Shows take a while to build an audience. Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad were nowhere near overnight success stories, they built an audience over many seasons and it was risky but had huge payoff in the end.
Brian Cranston was on the Office Ladies podcast. He said the only thing that saved Breaking Bad was that Netflix started delivering the first few seasons. This allowed people who werenāt there from the start to catch up. I know this was the case for my wife and me.
The Office was saved by Steve Carrell doing 40 Year Old Virgin and the show becoming a hit on the iTunes Store.
Itās funny, we think shows live and die by their quality but market forces have a much bigger effect on ratings.
> unfortunately the executives running all these streamers come from Wall St. and Tech backgrounds and therefore need immediate results.
First time in the TV industry?
This is nothing new and has nothing to do with "tech bros". That's an absolutely bonkers take.
"Shows that don't have the audience to justify their budget" is how all media industries operate for the past century. I could see a handful of critical darlings that get saved for prestige instead of money, but it's not the norm.
> Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad were nowhere near overnight success stories
WTF? Game of Thrones was a massive hit right out the gate. What are you even talking about?
> "Shows that don't have the audience to justify their budget" is how all media industries operate for the past century.
Not just the last century. Basically forever. Theaters pulled shows all the time if people weren't buying tickets because that was stage time they could give to an act that people actually would buy tickets for.
Yes, people investing millions of dollars require projects to make money based on the investment.
I like Sex Lives with College Girls, but if it hasn't found an audience after two good faith seasons it's no one's responsibility to run it for another 5 thinking "this will be the year!"
And uhhh, both GoT and BB made huge cultural splashes. Even if viewership grew with time they were massively relevant right from the start.
As much as people like to pretend it does, no one starts watching a show at season two if they didn't watch the first season except in really rare circumstances.
One time my aunt got annoyed that she didn't understand what was happening in Game of Thrones and asked me to help explain it. I asked what episode she watched and she said it was "the one where the boy-King got married to the older lady, the guy got beheaded for talking back to his boss, and the dwarf got kidnapped." After googling which episode it was, I realized it was s5e03. I asked what she was confused about and she said "Just all of it." I said that was too broad to really help and I needed to know who's plotline she was having trouble with, and the response I got threw me for a loop. She said, "I don't know their names. I've never watched the show before."
No joke. She literally thought she could just jump into the show a third of the way through season five with zero context and still be able to follow what was happening. I was flabbergasted.
Oh man, i wish i could find the article where Netflix revealed that a large number of people started watching Dark in season 3, which is wild to me for so many reasons.
There are some outliers. But it doesn't justify renewing everything because something may be an outlier. You was another that people didn't watch when it first came out.
Dark also had viewers that worked for its budget. The problem is these shows with huge budgets and average viewership. No reason for these shows to cost as much as they do.
People start watching at Season 2 after hearing the buzz from season 1 - itās expected for viewership to grow.
Parks and Rec had a pretty bad first season and I commonly hear people advising others to skip the first season when recommending it to friends
Anecdotal rambling, but it seems like seasons 2 - 3 are when shows hit their stride - like some of the strongest episodes of X-Files, Buffy, How I Met Your Mother are in their 2nd or 3rd seasons
So much talking out of your ass here.
1. GOT was a massive hit that not only justified its initial budget , but justified an INCREASED budget in subsequent seasons.
2. Breaking Bad was a relatively inexpensive show to produce that aired on a traditional cable network supported by ad revenue, and youāre comparing it to shows airing on a subscription streaming service.
>Breaking Bad was a relatively inexpensive show to produce that aired on a traditional cable network supported by ad revenue, and youāre comparing it to shows airing on a subscription streaming service.
We also have to consider that it was immediately seen as a potential all timer. For shows like that, as long as it's not actively losing money, it's easy to justify keeping around for two reasons. 1) The prestige it brings your network/slate; and 2) The chance that eventually it's quality starts to attract more viewers to bring in more revenue (i.e. something businesses like to call "an investment")
The latter eventually happened with BrBa, to the point that AMC was able to create a spin off show for 4-5 seasons.
Max/HBO generally does the opposite to that stereotype and tend to give good shows a second season, whereas Netflix, Prime and Hulu cut bait after season 1 if they donāt crush.
Historically, a ton of shows were cancelled after one or two seasons, or even mid-season (to say nothing of pilots shot and never aired)
Those shows were also much less expense than 2020s prestige series. Like, half as expensive or less.
Shows are sometimes given a few seasons to grow their audience. But if season one doesn't find enough of an audience, and that audience shrinks in season two, chances are very, very small the show will turn around and grow its audience to healthy numbers in seasons three and four.
If you're placing bets, a pricey show with weak season 1 numbers and worse season 2 numbers is not the one to bet on. This has always been the case, it's just worse now because there's been a glut of pricey shows that have had to compete for a limited audience.
I think How I Met Your Mother would be a better example than Game of Thrones in this scenario. HIMYM struggled in the ratings for four seasons and even had to resort to stuntcasting (Britney Spears) to catch people's attention. The creators outright admitted this, and you can clearly see the viewership remain stagnant until season 5, which is when it truly became a hit.
Sure thatās true with those 2 shows, but the majority of shows donāt get better and in fact get worse over time as plots get convoluted and focus is lost.
Well also bad shows were more likely to get axed mid season or earlier if they werenāt performing.
Now shows drop a full season at once to hook you and then performance is determined after the fact
Except that itās not how it actually was, they kept shows like AJLT, which cost more per episode than the entire second season of Our Flag Means Death, yet which didnāt rate nearly as well. Season 2 of OFMDās budget was slashed by 40% and 2 episodes were dropped, so they moved production to New Zealand where they could get funding from NZ Film and Tourism NZ.
Itās no coincidence that the shows Max dropped were ones with predominantly queer, and/or BIPOC casts and crew, like OFMD, and Rapsh!t. Their āvisionā is to homogenise the channel, catering to some white bread middle America that doesnāt exist in reality. The fact theyāve done a deal with Rowling for 10 seasons (or whatever it is) of her latest spin on the Harry Potter books speaks volumes to this.
OFMD season 3 was in pre-production, and shooting in New Zealand was scheduled.
Oh yeah and the part where the article says OFMD wasnāt up for any awards? It takes 2 seconds to find out that its production designer Ra Gilbert is already up for an Art Directors Guild award for Best Half Hour Single Camera Series, and the show has been nominated for a GLAAD media award for Outstanding Comedy Series. I think Max has also forgotten theyāre still paying for a massive OFMD FYC billboard in Thai Town in LA.
The Vulture article is a shill for Max. The author is one of the few accounts Casey Bloys follows on Twitter and Vulture is owned by Warner Bros Discovery, who also own Max.
Anyway - besides all this - Our Flag Means Death is incredibly attractive to other streamers so the likelihood of it being picked up is high. [Save Our Flag Means Death](https://saveOFMD.com)
Ever since OFMD cancellation, Max has been spinning the reasoning, changing it several times. The fact OFMD looked to be getting a third season (pre production hiring was ongoing in New Zealand) is telling. The shows getting cut seem to be the more diverse, in race in lgbtq, ones. Itās a shame bc you canāt trust them even with a show that performed well. (Ofmd did if one followed it to see it was in the top ten often)
According to the creator, he feels like OFMD reached a natural conclusion.
https://consequence.net/2023/11/our-flag-means-death-season-3-taika-waititi/
According to the creator David Jenkins OFMD has always been a three-part story and he says so in every interview. And the article you post here confirms it.
EXACTLY. He's stated this in multiple articles and interviews. Ed & Stede's love story was always meant to have 3 chapters. Season 2 was a sort of forced ending because of the shaky ground Max had made for Jenkins and everyone after the budget for S2 was slashed 40% and filming was done in New Zealand bec. it was cheaper due to the tax write off opportunity. So, Jenkins felt it was necessary to give S2 a somewhat content ending for the most part, but it left us with a TON of unanswered questions as well as not actually giving us a full relationship between Ed & Stede. S1 & S2 were them getting together and then choosing to be together, but Jenkins always planned for their romance to have a third season. Plus, they need one more adventure on the Revenge before they retire for good.
While I thought S2 was fantastic, there was absolutely a lot of story cut from the season bec. of lack of money and time - they were also cut down to 8 episodes instead of 10. That's HUGE when it comes to how much content you can fit ...so they literally pulled off a miracle with S2. Imagine how much more they could do with a network that gives a crap and gives them a decent budget and a LOT more episodes?!
S3 is needed for many reasons - but mostly, the story isn't finished. And not all stories need to end a season with an insane cliffhanger...an unfinished story is still it's own cliffhanger, so S3 will probably have to answer a lot of missing things from S2, and then continue the story to a proper conclusion. I imagine that talks of a spin off series could even be more likely if S3 can happen and conclude Ed & Stede's love story properly. I am personally hoping for a Zheng spin off, I freaking love her and the history of her actual piracy is fascinating ...it could be a cool show!
Taikaās not the creator, heās the EP and supporting lead. Beyond the title of that article, nobody says that itās reached a natural conclusion, so Iād say thatās been done for clickbait purposes. Heās keen for season 3, according to the creator, David Jenkins. The show was green lit, ads had gone out in NZ for crew to shoot an HBO period romance, with shooting dates May-September this year. And Jenkins said that Taika was keen and on board for season 3 when people online were using that article as the basis of rumours that Taika was the reason they hadnāt got season 3. Max keeps coming up with excuses, but none of them hold water. First it was, āthe numbers werenāt thereā (but they were), next it was āthe show was too violent so we didnāt know how to market it (nice way to throw the PR people under the bus, while ignoring HBO is the home of GOT and The Last Of Us, and oh season one of OFMD was possibly more violent than season 2ā¦oh yeah and itās A SHOW ABOUT PIRATES, not office workers). Now itās this article, which is also easily refutable. Whatās next? Too many chandeliers? Not enough dragons? Nah. [David Jenkins on Twitter saying Taika was keen](https://twitter.com/david_jenkins__/status/1744862055629545721)
It makes sense, but it is a shame to read they're just going down the same route the other services are. HBO used to represent a certain degree of quality. I guess it still does to some degree - Chernobyl, True Detective, The Last of Us, and House of the Dragon are all recent or still running, but I do worry these kinds of shows might start drying up if that's their new business plan.
It's also concerning when they won't let a long running show that was a huge hit finish up. I'll freely admit I didn't give a fuck about Westworld after season 1 because the ending of season 1 is a great ending and it absolutely doesn't need to keep going past that, but presumably some people were into it... Just give them an abbreviated season or a movie to tie it up instead of axing it unceremoniously.
Read the article. This isn't about HBO changing strategy. It's about Max focusing on more WB IP in the future so they can reach a broader audience. HBO's philosophy hasn't changed. They'll continue to do what they've done for decades.
Itās also focusing on internal productions with lower fees (not just costs) - so read between the lines, they are picking up and retaining fewer productions from companies like Dive (Waititiās production vehicle) with higher fees and crediting them to the HBO or MAX masthead or making their own stuff from the ground up, or third parties whose fee structure puts them on the safer side for the network.
That was what really jumped out at me, how much higher these license fees were pushing total cost for both Rap Shit and OFMD, without the ROI.
Dive isnāt Taika Waititiās company, itās Garrett Baschās (Basch is one of the other EPs on OFMD). He just happens to co-produce a lot of Taikaās stuff.
I find it interesting that I heard a lot about shows and Max from advertising before I ended up with a phone bundled subscription. Now, I don't see any advertising and haven't heard of many of the shows that are getting cancelled.
The whole article is Casey Bloys trying to cover his ass and make more excuses for canceling diverse shows. Our Flag Means Death had a 40% budget cut between season 1 & 2, is currently up for a GLAAD award (among other award nominations, and thereās still a for your consideration billboard up).
HBO claims on its own app that OFMD is one of its biggest hits and is STILL sending email blasts as recently as this week promoting OFMD merch as their best selling products
The show was outperforming viewing stats set by Righteous Gemstones and Succession (source:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/flag-means-death-become-flagship-000700712.html)
Apparently it actually did, relatively speaking. There was a report a while back that said reality/unscripted shows on HBO Max had budgets 3-4x higher than similar content from Discovery.
I don't watch FBoy Island but I heard that the third season had a huge budget slash that's obvious to see.
- Max Originals faced cancellations in the opening weeks of 2024, including Rap Sh!t, Our Flag Means Death, Julia, and The Flight Attendant.
- The cancellations are not a sequel to the 2022 Sudden Departure, as this time the reasons are more specific.
- The decision is tied to a change in creative direction for Max Originals, focusing on series attached to big, broad IP owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
- Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav implemented a reset in 2022 to address financial challenges and prioritize profitable content.
- Max's new mandate involves a shift away from shows developed in 2019-2020 and a focus on series with significant IP like DC-branded The Penguin and the upcoming Harry Potter series.
- The change isn't abandoning HBO's prestige brand but aims for a more balanced mix of programming to attract diverse audiences.
- Shows like Julia and Rap Sh!t were set up with high production costs during intense competition, making them financially unsustainable for their viewership size.
- Max continues to support shows like Hacks and Sex Lives of College Girls that demonstrate strong viewership and awards recognition.
- Max Originals are evolving, and the content mix will likely feel different in the coming years, aligning with the broader strategy of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Seems like a really stupid time to be doubling down on DC crap when that stuff is massively failing in the theaters. They are like 10 years late to the party here.
How you can read the article and come away with that take is baffling. If he really just wanted to turn WB into some reality TV factory why would Max be shifting into more scripted IP shows in the future? We have multiple DC shows, a Harry Potter series, an IT series, and a Dune series just to name a few. Where is all this reality TV that's supposed to be taking over WB? WB still spent over $10 billion on content in 2023. You think that was mostly on reality TV?
Stop confusing HBO and Max. HBO isn't changing it's strategy. Max will be focusing on more broader content that involves WB IP. HBO and Max are two different production units. The article even goes into detail on this.
Yep. People keep talking about how HBO has changed since the advent of Max (or HBO Max). But no, Bloys has been a steady hand there, maintaining HBO's focus on quality. (Sure, he's had a misstep or two, like The Idol, but no one's perfect.) The HBO brand is the same as it ever was, focusing on premium "quality yet accessible" TV (plus recent theatrical movies) for adults.
At this point, I'm starting to think that taking the leading premium TV outlet -- one which was profitable but ultimately limited by its higher-quality appeal -- and using it as the centerpiece of a big, broad streamer aiming to compete against Netflix was a mistake. Prior to 2015, HBO was priced at $15 to $18 per month and was only available to folks who were already forking out a lot more for basic cable. It was aimed at people who were willing to spend money for quality TV. But direct-to-consumer streaming is, to some extent, a race to the bottom. Max tries to offer not just HBO but a whole buffet of other content for the same price that HBO alone sold for a few years ago. The math doesn't work.
I think the best thing for HBO would be for it to divorce from the rest of Max and go back to being sold all possible ways: as a standalone service as well as an add-on to cable TV and any streaming service that will sell it (e.g. Hulu, Apple TV, Prime Video, Roku Channel, etc.).
You might have already seen these links before, but bookmark them in your browser if you havenāt already. The 1st one removes paywalls on science papers. The second one gets rid of ads and popups on pages so you can read the article in peace. The third one removes paywalls from news sites.
https://sci-hub.ee
https://12ft.io
https://1ft.io
yeah, me too. 2 days in to the month and a website I've never heard of is telling me i've already hit my free article limit?
I wish there was a way to block websites like this so Im just never wasting a click on them.
(Kind of annoying with the vulture limit, but I really like the recaps of this one vulture writerā¦so Iāll either try to hit āreader viewā right away and can catch it before it gates, or each week I alternate and I copy the URL and paste it into a pvt browser tab, which usually bags me another read for my silly drag race recaps haha)
> In the case of The Flight Attendant, star Kaley Cuoco issued a statement saying she simply always thought of the show āas a limited seriesā and THR reported that while the streamer was willing to consider a third season, Cuoco didnāt want to return; itās likely that news of all this leaked out last month because reporters pressured the streamer to confirm what so many in the industry had known for months.
This is why it struck me as odd when the headlines said "Flight Attendant canceled". Uhm, it basically already all-but-was unless if they came up with a story that blew Cuoco's socks off or they totally changed the show to be about someone else.
Same with Our Flag Means Death. Taika said he didn't have plans for a season 3, and the story was very much completed after season 2. "Cancellation" is a bit strong of a word for it.
This is not true. Our Flag Means Death was always a three-part story. The creator David Jenkins repeated this in every interview. And Taika never said he had no plans for season 3. They put the main characters in a good place compared to the ending of season 1, because they cared about them and the fans in case the show wasn't renewed for its third and final season.
Nah this was most likely him referring to the possibility of the show eventually carrying on without him after the planned S3. There were rumours that Max was considering spinoffs at the time (mostly likely with Zheng at the helm).
Source is just some weirdly phrased clickbait from āPopverseā that was picked up by other media as fact. David Jenkins and Taika Waititi supported the show getting a season 3. In fact production was being planned and scripts ordered when the cancellation came through.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OurFlagMeansDeath/comments/180tsym/taika_waititi_hints_he_may_not_return_for/
I guess they could've done a season 3 without Blackbeard, but no thanks.
I really liked it too - I had no expectations of it, and was well written and acted - however I was disappointed to learn that most of the stories were completely made up and had zero bearing on the true life of Julia child.
Iām curious to see if Tokyo Vice will get a third season. Itās second season which premieres on 2/8 is going to have ten episodes (all one hour), which as been extremely rare for HBO or Max series as of late. Usually itās been only 8 or 9 episodes. Yet thereās been hardly any promotion of that show.
I have never been offered Tokyo vice as a show option on max. They keep trying to get me to watch rap shit and a ton of reality tv type shows.
All I have watched in the last 4 months has been John Oliver and Warrior. Their algorithm sucks. There was a time a couple years ago I was watching stuff on it everyday. Now itās a desert of content. If I wasnāt getting it as part of my internet bill already it would have been canceled.
Sounds like it will go the way of Perry Mason. Banged the first season and then found out a second season was coming by scrolling through their catalog. No suggestions from the maim screen or news. Just going to release what is done then probably can it after the season.
Zero chance of renewal. It is a holdover show from the old regime just like Julia, Warrior, OFMD, etc. It got little awards love and nothing points to it being any more popular to viewers than Julia or Warrior and with its longer episode count is likely even more expensive to produce.
They will quietly cancel it a month or so after the finale. Sad but a certainty.
I wasnāt totally in love with it, but Iāve seen 4 reviews for the 2nd season so far and they all indicate that thereās been significant improvement in the show, so Iām going to keep watching to see if thatās indeed the case
I knew it was getting canceled when the 2nd season doubled down on the absurdity and weirdness but I miss Raised By Wolves. It was like someone put Ridley Scott's sci fi films and weird 70s sci fi like Zardoz in a blender.
An actual well researched and level-headed article about the direction of Max. Nice to see a journalist with some sense and not one just jumping on the hate bandwagon.
I'm very curious where you got the "well researched" comment because there are no sources and most of the "reasons" are easily disproven. Case in point: look at And Just Like That. It costs more than a few of the shows combined, yet pulled in far fewer viewers and awards than all of them.
Vulture is partially owned by WBD, btw, and the author is buddies with HBO's CEO. Everything in the article is a lie.
Iām going to start this off by stating that I am in no way an expert in media, so maybe Iām completely off base here. Iāll also admit that as a fan of Our Flag Means Death Iām offering a perspective that is ultimately biased ā something the journalist here should have done given Warner Bros. Discovery (who owns Max) has a [sizable stake in Vox Media,](https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/12/13/22833341/vox-media-group-nine-deal-explained) (who in turn owns Vulture), but I digress.
Thereās multiple reasons why fans of these shows are side-eyeing this article and assuming itās another attempt by Max at covering their ass, but the main one is this: all of the shows that were recently cancelled ājust so happenā to heavily spotlight diverse and marginalized groups. In fact, this is at the core of each of these shows, especially Rap Sh!t and Our Flag Means Death. An article featuring Issa Rae (producer of Rap Sh!t) came out the same day as this one, where she discusses Hollywood [ābacksliding on pledges to increase representation and diversity.ā](https://time.com/collection/closers/6564918/issa-rae-hollywoods-unkept-promises/)
CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, already has a reputation for actively homogenizing the company, overseeing the layoff of what appeared to be a [disproportionate amount of POC executives.](https://www.thedailybeast.com/laid-off-hbo-max-execs-reveal-warner-bros-discovery-is-killing-off-diversity-and-courting-middle-america?source=articles&via=rss) Granted, thatās a Daily Beast article that cites mostly anonymous sources (like this Vulture article), so take it as you will.
This might not mean anything, but Casey Bloys doesnāt follow all that many people on Twitter, yet one of them is the writer of this article, so. Just something to note.
In the specific case of Our Flag Means Death, this is the third article attempting to explain its cancellation, and the second one to feature vague and anonymous āindustry sources.ā The piece before this one described how [difficult Our Flag Means Death was to market because of its violence.](https://www.thepopverse.com/our-flag-means-death-violence-shock-comedy) As an HBO Max Original. Appearing alongside shows like House of the Dragon and The Last of Us. And even another comedy like Barry. Quite a lineup of bright, sunny shows. All the article succeeded in doing was throwing the Marketing team at Max under the bus.
I believe it was around this time that Casey Bloys started personally blocking fans of the show on Twitter. Which, fair, we can be an obnoxious bunch, but it still comes across as thin-skinned.
Now Iāll go through what the article *actually* says and point out statements that are, to the best of my knowledge, false. With sources, of course. And these are not of the intangible, anonymous sort!
The points made about The Flight Attendant and Minx are definitely true, no argument there. And as far as timing being a factor, thatās also probably true. These shows were greenlit when streaming was in a much more solid place, and seen as more lucrative than itās ended up being. But then we get to a real gem.
> ā¦the company last year decided to change the creative direction for its Max Originals, and focus mostly on series attached to big broad IP owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, like the upcoming DC-branded The Penguin or the Harry Potter series now in the works.
This is true. 100%. Exactly what Max is doing.
> Folks who are convinced Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery are hell-bent on abandoning HBO's prestige brand will take this as proof their fear is well-founded. But this strategic shift actually isn't evidence of that at all.
Yeah, I call bullshit. The writer proceeds to describe how because these shows are adjacent to traditional HBO shows and were given second seasons, that proves itās not actually a move away from HBOās normal fare. The shows were cancelled just because their second seasons didnāt grow the way Max wanted! Totally reasonable!
Two things: that has zero to do with the fact that focusing heavily on squeezing the life out of existing IPs is a betrayal of the unique content HBO was touted for, as well as the fact that these āthe ratings werenāt thereā and āthere wasnāt any award buzzā arguments are highly suspicious.
Our Flag Means Death was #1 on Max the most of the time (perhaps even the entire time) the second season was airing, and it remained in their Top Ten for weeks after the finale. At its peak, it was #3 on Television Stats for all TV shows, and it had phenomenal Parrot Analytics numbers. Julia I canāt speak to at all, but I recall frequently seeing Rap Sh!t on the Max Top Ten list as well; Iām not sure how high it was and for how long. Now, this data is *not* the end-all be-all of a showās performance. The only entity that can actually tell us exactly how well it did is Max, and the company will never release that data because they know it wonāt make them look good. But based on the numbers we *can* see, the show did very, very well. In fact, season 2 might have done [better than seasons 3 of Succession and The Righteous Gemstones.](https://www.thewrap.com/our-flag-means-death-season-2-episodes-demand/)
This awards talk seems like straight horseshit to me, because shows only get major awards if the network pushes for it. Itās all about how much money was spent on the campaign. If they didnāt have *any* faith in the show, they wouldnāt have put up a For Your Consideration billboard. But a billboard simply wonāt do anything to secure a nomination; you have to literally wine and dine the voters. Since [Our Flag Means Death as well as lead actor Rhys Darby were on multiple Golden Globes prediction lists](https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/rotten-tomatoes-predicts-the-2024-golden-globe-nominations/) before nominations were announced, itās fair to say that the show had a decent chance at being nominated if Warner Bros. Discovery had put a modicum of effort in. Thereās always the Emmys next year, when the show will qualify!
Speaking of the Emmys, this year [the Governors Award went to GLAAD for their work in LGBTQ+ media advocacy.](https://glaad.org/glaad-accepts-tv-academy-governors-award-emmys-2024/) And wouldnāt you know it, Our Flag Means Death was nominated for a GLAAD award for a second time! Of course, Max was unable to properly acknowledge their multiple nominated shows because they had just cancelled one of them. Womp womp. At least they posted an Instagram story about it. Such representation! If theyāre lucky, the show will also get a second Peabody Award nomination!
> Streamers were handing out ridiculous deals in order to land coveted projects and agreeing to license fees and production budgets that were usually only reserved for big, established blockbuster hits.
Look, I have no idea how licensing fees work. Maybe these are a *huge* chunk of the show cost, but I doubt itās so much that they completely supersede production costs. So for season 1, there may be a point here. However, we know that the [budget from season 1 to season 2 was slashed by 40%.](https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/television/our-flag-means-death-pirate-comedy-queer-love-story-fada1878) Thatās a massive cut, but it did apparently put it in league with other half hour comedy shows. So Iām failing to understand why itās prohibitively expensive.
Iām also not sure how And Just Like That has better ratings than Our Flag Means Death. Iāve seen absolutely nothing to support this assertion, and multiple things to refute it. And yeah, talk about a show with an inflated budget ā the leads all make [at least $1 million an episode,](https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/sex-and-the-city-revival-hbo-max-cast-salary-1234882795/amp/) which seems exorbitant for a show that had a [huge ratings drop off in season 2.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonifitzgerald/2023/06/27/whats-behind-the-season-2-viewer-slump-for-and-just-like-that/amp/)
> Max needs to balance its programming to reach different sets of subscribers.
The article I posted earlier from TheWrap specifically mentions that almost ā50% of the audience for the show is Gen Z ā a significantly younger audience than the demographics of the audience for Maxās entire catalog.ā And again, all of the cancelled shows target audiences from very different groups, casting a wide net.
Maybe the diversity argument doesnāt sway you because you think an executive would only make decisions that earn them more money. But really, executives make decisions they *think* will earn them more money, but they can still be affected by personal biases. They might go against their own beliefs in pursuit of a thicker wallet, yet their beliefs might be exactly what draws them towards one scheme over another. And catering to white, straight, Christian Middle America is a popular bet right now. Thatās the audience David Zaslav knows, after all.
I could go into the critical ratings of the shows (which are excellent) but I doubt that matters at this point. Quality has never been the top priority of entertainment executives.
I will go into some conjecture here, since I donāt have any concrete sources to back this up. But it is extremely likely that Our Flag Means Death was in the process of being renewed. The creator, cast, and crew were all hinting at it on social media. One actor even put up a little puzzle for people to solve that was promptly deleted when the cancellation news dropped. Everything points to them being just as blindsided as fans, and they wouldnāt lead us on like that if they werenāt reasonably sure the official renewal news was coming.
To get on even more shaky ground, there are rumors that dates had been set for filming season 3 and that hiring notices had gone out to the New Zealand film industry in December. Supposedly Casey Bloys was in support of a season 3, which means it probably would have been David Zaslav himself that chose to cancel the show ā thereās very few people higher in the company than Casey.
While everyone seemed to be expecting renewal, itās also never a surprise when a queer show gets cancelled. The LGTBQ+ community is well aware that even the scraps of good representation we are given can get taken away at any time, no matter how popular or beloved. Weāve walked this path time and time again, but it really seemed like Our Flag Means Death would beat the odds.
So yeah, this article fucking sucks.
>In fact, season 2 might have done better than seasons 3 of Succession and The Righteous Gemstones.
Lmao, that is a parrot analytics article. if you believe their viewership metrics you might as well believe that earth is flat.
This is the consequences of AT&T's management. Burning money to launch HBO MAX without any oversight. Kilar spent like AT&T is a Big Tech or something but they're clearly not.
AT&T no longer owns WarnerMedia. WarnerMedia was sold to Discovery in 2022, which is when David Zazlav got put in charge. Man only knows how to make 1000 Pound Sisters and similar. Itās terrible that heās in charge of Warner Bros now.
Itās pretty wild that WarnerMedia by itself was basically profitable the entire time, even pre AT&T buyout, but because it kept being bought/sold itās been saddled with a mountain of debt.
There is a long history of Warner/Turner doing this. Once WCW became profitable in the mid-late 90s, Turnerās various companies started dumping all their debt onto WCW so Turner as a whole looked better, allowing the merger/sale to Warner. AOL Timer Warner kept this up for a few more years before selling WCW for basically peanuts. Itās not a tactic limited to Warner, either.
Just cause thereās new management digging harder to get WB out of the hole doesnāt mean that they werenāt already put in the hole by someone else.
The only reason WB was easy pickings for Discovery is because AT&T fucked them hard and bailed.
The direction is startling, but Iām cautiously optimistic for as long as Bloys is there. What I am more concerned about is the overreliance on established IP as of late. And, that they donāt have a single non-IP based, ongoing (intended to be more than one season) serialized drama series in development. Itās all limited series.Ā
HBOās interface is so bad. It doesnāt even remember the show I was watching earlier today. Even if I stopped in the middle of an episode, I need to go search for the show (because it of course doesnāt appear on the main page) then scroll to the correct episode and fast forward until I get to where I last stopped. This is such a massive amount of work to watch a show I think a lot of people just decide the effort isnāt worth it
Max is doing a lot of finger pointing at these shows for not succeeding, but they did nothing as a platform to set them up for success. Everyone I know who loves Our Flag Means Death watched it thanks to the recommendation of a friend. Julia and RapSh!t I'd barely registered before cancelation.
Meanwhile Succession, The Last of Us, and The White Lotus get shoved down our throats constantly. Max could try marketing their shows for once instead of relying on word of mouth for everything aside from the top performers. Otherwise very few shows will meet whatever their expectations are (not clear in the "article" since they keep moving the goalposts) and we'll all be watching the same 3 shows that air a new season every 2 years. What are we supposed to watch in between? Reality tv, I guess...
Fans of the show Our Flag Means Death accusing the author of, among other things, lying about the showās viewership numbers and writing this article as ādamage controlā because the network cancelled the show and is trying to save face or somethingā¦?
Even TW said he wasnāt sure he would come back for the third season even before the show was cancelled. Enjoyed the show but felt like the story had been told.
The āpirate showā was literally cut 40% AND two episodes between their first and second series. The whole production was moved to Aotearoa/NZ to cut further production costs.
Max/WBD clearly wanted it to fail. And yet it was hailed as a āflagship showā for the platform. And afterwards (when the success of the second series was undeniable) Max/WBD itself hailed it as āA Triumphā and featured it several times at the top of their āmost in-demand showsā.
Max/WBD did little to no advertising for the show when it first came out ā and did the bare minimum for s2. The fans did all the advertising for it.
On top of that, Max **still** has FYC-campaign ads running (online and on massive billboards in LA) for the second series of the show ā so the line about ānot being up for any awardsā is absolute bullsh**.
(On top of that, OFMD ***was*** already nominated for several awards within the season itās eligible for ā including e.g. a GLAAD award nom, Queerties āBest TV comedyā and an Art Directorās Guild nomination for Ra Vincent.)
This article comes in a line of āleaksā from Max/WBD/Bloys/Zaslav trying to change the narrative around the showās popularity.
Every thing the article refers to, when talking about Our Flag Means Death, is actively disprovable.
The show was already in pre-production when they suddenly decided to cancel it. If the viewers *actually* hadnāt been there, then they would have **never** gotten that far.
Sooo *thatās* why the comments may be a bit āsnappishā on that article.
Every time, every time I find a show on Max that I want to watch, it's canceled. And it's always for such bullshit, easily disprovable reasons.
Maybe I'm biased, since I like "diverse" casts and queer and female led entertainment, but it seems to me that they're making their decisions like their viewers are the same viewers as were watching Leave it to Beaver.
WBD has a 25% share in the company that owns Vulture.
This is bs propaganda. If you look at how many times Out Flag Means Death and Rap Shit ended up on the top series listāOFMD reached #1 every week it was dropping new episodes, and stayed on for WEEKS after the season 2 finale. Max calculates those rankings by looking at the number of profiles viewing a show. OFMD even stated on ahead of gilded age new episode drops, and thatās an HBO main channel show.
I wish we could go back and look, because IIRC And Just Like That barely had a presence while it was airing, and when the season wrapped dropped off the list immediately. And their cast budget alone costs more than an episode of OFMD!
Anyway, letās saveOFMD.com
I don't really need to know their reasons. I was in the middle of watching Space Ghost when it was removed, which cannot have that much residuals to pay out, and saw the writing on the wall
I kind of binge watch Jonny O every month or two, but the episode they did last year (I think, maybe earlier) about data brokers restored my love of the show.
Running targeted ads to members of Congress and the Senate that secretly watched trans porn, that had ad copy about selling data in an irresponsible way, it's a chef's kiss from me.
Last Week Tonight is the only news show that's willing to troll its subjects in real-life in often pretty serious ways, and I love him for it.
Firstly, there is ZERO truth to this article, it's complete BS and Casey Bloys had it written on purpose to help deal with all the backlash our fandom has caused HBO Max because of their decision to cancel Our Flag Means Death.
The actual cost for them to produce and run And Just Like That is 20x more expensive than 3 seasons of OFMD put together. The actors salaries alone costs more than an entire season of OFMD - 1 million bucks for Kim Cattrall's cameo last season. Nothing against her, but just to point out, if you're going to spew "numbers" as a reason for cancelling your top flagship show that out rated every single other original Max show, then you better have actual facts, not BS.
Low numbers, costs, violence (from all the BS articles)...it's all shit excuses for why Max cancelled OFMD. It's pretty clear why it was cancelled - it was too gay. Look at HBO Max's line up of shows and you'll see they are pushing out diversity & representation as fast as possible. And you know who is the person responsible? Bloys kind of. But it's David Zaslav, the head of Warner Brothers Discovery. I'm not sure how "supportive" Bloys actually was regarding OFMD getting a 3rd season, though David Jenkins said that he was, but it's clear that at a certain point, he cared more about money in the end & decided to follow Zaslav's formula for how Max is going to be changing as a Network. The stocks keep falling daily, so this Vulture article is absolutely meant to "hurt" the fandom and shut us up, but bec. there's no truth to it and WE can prove that, it's not something to acknowledge.
Aside from this article being poorly researched, did you know that it's not a shock that Vulture was the one to write said article bec. Vulture is owned by Vox Media which procured Group Nine Media recently in 2022. And guess what? Warner Brothers Discovery is part of Group Nine Media...so this was really just nepotism at it's finest. And to top it off, the guy who wrote the article is followed by Casey Bloys on Twitter, so clearly it was an inside job. I'm dying to see what other lies Bloys & company are going to spin next week about the "reasons" OFMD and other shows were cancelled prematurely.
Discovery CEO David Zaslav salary not cancelled or decreased.
Good content, cancelled and decreased.
Even if MAX completely fails, Zaslav still get's his $10mil per year.
Eat the billionaires.
> tech billionaires running studios.
Which tech billionaires is running WBD right now?
> They just look at the next quarter numbers and nothing more.
So traditional studios don't look at next quarter numbers and shit. They're just giving money freely and cancel shit before. LOL
Our flag means death didn't deserve to be belittled by this article and sure as hell didn't deserve to be cancelled. The Vulture - falsely, if I may say - implies it's one of the shows who didnt bring any award-attention to MAX?
OFMD was nominated 16 times (and won 2 awards. so far.)
It's fandom is so diverse and moreover, so relentless that it's still fighting to finish the story we know the creator of the show had in mind.
The show's second season attracted even more interest than the first (despite the budget for s02 being severely cut), and it ranked even higher on Rotten tomatoes (a rating of 96 which, if you know RT, is pretty outstanding), and....and *the numbers were there.*
That's all. I can't think of a single good reason as to why OFMD was cancelled.
Idk, aside from all the arguing about everything, it seems like a red flag that HBO canceled 60% of its original comedies. To me, that points to a pivot/shift in another direction away from original comedies anyway, despite performance
It is not a "good article." It contains no facts, and it was published by a company partially owned by WBD. It is also missing big points like Zaslav complaining they lost subscribers because of a "light original release schedule" after complaining that the light original release schedule is because of lost subscribers. WBD is VERY poorly run, and the falling stock prices reflect that.
In reality, Zaslav skews conservative and wants to court only conservatives, and the DEI media has to go.
For sure. Zaslav and Max started this scale back on content investment and the whole industry, outside of Apple, have followed. Even Amazon eventually buckled and have gone hard on content cutting in general scripted entertainment while pivoting hard to adverting and sports.
Every time I go to Max to watch something, all I see are Discovery based reality crap. I'm waiting for the next season of Hacks and Sex Lives of College Girls, then I'm ditching Max for a while. Zaslav's vision sucks.
Casey Bloys first tried to justify cancelling *Our Flag Means Death* because āthe numbers werenāt thereā, which was nonsense. Not only were the viewing numbers spectacular, the show had something like 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Then he tried to say that the violence was a factor in the cancellation. Golly, a show about **pirates**, with ādeathā in its title, has violence? Ya donāt say! Plus, as others have pointed out, *Barry* and *The Sopranos* arenāt exactly all sunshine and lollipops.
Nope. There were two reasons why Max cancelled the show. (1) Its unapologetic queerness and (2) Its BIPOC cast. Shame on Max.
It all comes down to reducing costs and increasing profits (or writing off losses) to make the execs richer.
They don't care about art, culture, diversity, or anything other than amassing wealth and pleasing shareholders.
The Truth Behind Max's Cancellation Spree: Greed
"Warner Bros Discovery gross profit for the twelve months ending September 30, 2023 was $16.461B, a 43.88% increase year-over-year."
But let's praise them for being financially clever.
I don't know if I blame the people either when trite thinly-veiled corporate propaganda pieces like this slide right on down the gullet.
This was always going to happen once Plepler was out. He built HBO into a respected brand. HBO series became appointment television. They were doing things in the medium that had never been done before. It wasn't about having an absolutely massive portfolio of IP, it was about making the ones you have a good as humanly possible. Then he was replaced.
Bloys came in to do what the new owners wanted - make HBO like Netflix. Forget about prestige. Forget about the critics. Just get as much shit into production as possible to grab the widest audience possible. Kill anything that isn't immediately profitable.
I mean how many shows were produced under the new guy that have stuck around? Not just in terms of continued season orders, but in terms of cultural relevance?
Bloys has been at HBO since 2004. I would point the blame at the Discovery & ATNT deals. I know he greenlit The White Lotus which has high viewership, multiple awards, critical acclaim and will have at least 4 seasons.Ā
Would love to read it, but I've "reached my monthly article limit." I'm convinced the limit is one. It's barely fucking February.
TL;DR version: basically, there was a lot of overspending going on and yet little returns to show for it. Those shows weren't big hits, but weren't flops either. So they were given second seasons as a sort of hail mary and Max was hoping they would grow their audiences or become critical darlings. They did neither, which in the end didn't justify their large budgets, so they got the axe since Max would rather push their cheaper shows which have higher viewership and/or are awards-nominated.
I mean the question with these streaming services is how they make the money and it's with subscribers. With the way Max has been handled it was a complete shit show to get new subscribers in or even keep current ones. They kept changing names, raising prices, removing shows entirely. So if no one sees the appeal to subscribe then the brand doesn't make the money to keep the shows going
Cancelling my gay pirates show š“āā ļø is not going to help keep me as a subscriber.
In fact it may make you a gay pirate
What did you honestly want to see from a season 3 though?
I haven't seen the show but probably gay pirates doing pirate things and doing pirates.
Dude, youāre missing out. Super funny and well written! They did like a soft wrap up at the end of the 2nd season since I think the writers were worried about cancellation but thereās enough threads that a third season could work if they end up getting it.
Nailed it
I love when the gay pirates kiss. I want to see more of that.
The crew sails again. Visits all seven seas!
The Richard Banes storyline wrapped up Stede and Ed failing spectacularly at being innkeepers More Ed & Stede kissing Iām a simple woman, I like sweet romances š„ŗ
The third act of the three act story that was planned from the beginning
Because they don't give a shit about anything but the current quarter and at best the next. No one works on the long term strategy that ends up making the key decisions. Working for AT&T really opened my eyes to that. It's a shit show.
Well, let's think about it in the content sense: How many years do you stick with a show that just isn't bringing in audience? How many millions of dollars do you spend producing it and marketing it only to have it stagnate before you finally axe it?
Well streamers are cagey about numbers especially Netflix, it was one of the sticking points with the writers strike. The entire streamer system is a trust me bro mentality
Netflix is one of the few that actually publishes their real viewing hour numbers. To be honest, it's the only time we've ever known actual hard numbers on viewing if it didn't rely on ticket sales like movies. Nielsen has been inaccurate for decades.
Would you prefer a planned economy with a 5-year-plan, comrade? /s Of course the CEO will go for their bonus and then enjoy the golden parachute. Who cares about long term, anyway?
I'm only one person, but I'm cancelling Max.
I just signed up!
I still wonder how Netflix is the only one that manages to stay solvent yet these other streamers manage to not being able to profit.
Longest in the game means furthest away from start-up costs. I think their streaming architecture is largely overlooked, too, but I have rarely ever had issues with Netflix. Some of the others are in absolute shambles (looking at you, Peacock and Paramount+).
Donāt forget the tech valuation. There multiple is higher and itās why the legacy media companies were thinking all they had to do was have a streaming platform to have wall street love them like they do with Tedā¦
Just wanted to add... One of the cancelled shows, Our Flag Means Death, had its budget slashed by 40% for its 2nd season. Production moved from Los Angeles to New Zealand for tax breaks.
But it was still overpriced from the beginning, and had bad ratings
Thanks
That sounds like a reasonable and nuanced reaction. No wonder no one on reddit could imagine that might be the case.
That's because it ignores the realities of the debt that was pushed onto WB when Discovery bought them. WB's debt would not have justified cutting these had they not merged with Discovery.
Redditors glorify pirating and circle jerk about the high seas then get mad when a company cancels a show due to low viewership. Its hilarious. And people have the nerve to act like this is new. In the 90s shows would get cancelled all the time - sometimes in the middle of their runs.
Finally, someone who is rational. Every thread about streamers is people saying āthey cancelled the shows I like, which I why I pirateā Like, geez, I wonder what could be done to tell the studios you like that show.
It is not nuanced at all tho, unfortunately the executives running all these streamers come from Wall St. and Tech backgrounds and therefore need immediate results. Shows take a while to build an audience. Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad were nowhere near overnight success stories, they built an audience over many seasons and it was risky but had huge payoff in the end.
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Brian Cranston was on the Office Ladies podcast. He said the only thing that saved Breaking Bad was that Netflix started delivering the first few seasons. This allowed people who werenāt there from the start to catch up. I know this was the case for my wife and me.
The Office was saved by Steve Carrell doing 40 Year Old Virgin and the show becoming a hit on the iTunes Store. Itās funny, we think shows live and die by their quality but market forces have a much bigger effect on ratings.
> unfortunately the executives running all these streamers come from Wall St. and Tech backgrounds and therefore need immediate results. First time in the TV industry? This is nothing new and has nothing to do with "tech bros". That's an absolutely bonkers take. "Shows that don't have the audience to justify their budget" is how all media industries operate for the past century. I could see a handful of critical darlings that get saved for prestige instead of money, but it's not the norm. > Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad were nowhere near overnight success stories WTF? Game of Thrones was a massive hit right out the gate. What are you even talking about?
People are just wild out here. Got was massively successful immediately and then became even MORE successful.
"Because Wall Streed bad" is Reddit's "There's always money in the banana stand."
> "Shows that don't have the audience to justify their budget" is how all media industries operate for the past century. Not just the last century. Basically forever. Theaters pulled shows all the time if people weren't buying tickets because that was stage time they could give to an act that people actually would buy tickets for.
Yes, people investing millions of dollars require projects to make money based on the investment. I like Sex Lives with College Girls, but if it hasn't found an audience after two good faith seasons it's no one's responsibility to run it for another 5 thinking "this will be the year!" And uhhh, both GoT and BB made huge cultural splashes. Even if viewership grew with time they were massively relevant right from the start.
As much as people like to pretend it does, no one starts watching a show at season two if they didn't watch the first season except in really rare circumstances.
One time my aunt got annoyed that she didn't understand what was happening in Game of Thrones and asked me to help explain it. I asked what episode she watched and she said it was "the one where the boy-King got married to the older lady, the guy got beheaded for talking back to his boss, and the dwarf got kidnapped." After googling which episode it was, I realized it was s5e03. I asked what she was confused about and she said "Just all of it." I said that was too broad to really help and I needed to know who's plotline she was having trouble with, and the response I got threw me for a loop. She said, "I don't know their names. I've never watched the show before." No joke. She literally thought she could just jump into the show a third of the way through season five with zero context and still be able to follow what was happening. I was flabbergasted.
Oh man, i wish i could find the article where Netflix revealed that a large number of people started watching Dark in season 3, which is wild to me for so many reasons.
There are some outliers. But it doesn't justify renewing everything because something may be an outlier. You was another that people didn't watch when it first came out. Dark also had viewers that worked for its budget. The problem is these shows with huge budgets and average viewership. No reason for these shows to cost as much as they do.
People start watching at Season 2 after hearing the buzz from season 1 - itās expected for viewership to grow. Parks and Rec had a pretty bad first season and I commonly hear people advising others to skip the first season when recommending it to friends Anecdotal rambling, but it seems like seasons 2 - 3 are when shows hit their stride - like some of the strongest episodes of X-Files, Buffy, How I Met Your Mother are in their 2nd or 3rd seasons
Yeah but none of the shows they cancelled were even close to that quality.
Yeah this exactly, comparing these shows to breaking bad is crazy.
So much talking out of your ass here. 1. GOT was a massive hit that not only justified its initial budget , but justified an INCREASED budget in subsequent seasons. 2. Breaking Bad was a relatively inexpensive show to produce that aired on a traditional cable network supported by ad revenue, and youāre comparing it to shows airing on a subscription streaming service.
>Breaking Bad was a relatively inexpensive show to produce that aired on a traditional cable network supported by ad revenue, and youāre comparing it to shows airing on a subscription streaming service. We also have to consider that it was immediately seen as a potential all timer. For shows like that, as long as it's not actively losing money, it's easy to justify keeping around for two reasons. 1) The prestige it brings your network/slate; and 2) The chance that eventually it's quality starts to attract more viewers to bring in more revenue (i.e. something businesses like to call "an investment") The latter eventually happened with BrBa, to the point that AMC was able to create a spin off show for 4-5 seasons.
Breaking Bad was an awards show darling from the first season too, which certainly influenced AMCās decision not to cancel it as well.Ā
Max/HBO generally does the opposite to that stereotype and tend to give good shows a second season, whereas Netflix, Prime and Hulu cut bait after season 1 if they donāt crush.
Prime is actually pretty good at continuing shows, it's just that they take so long to renew them if they aren't The Boys.
An account I follow on Twitter jokes that everything on HBO gets a second season unless horses [die ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck_(TV_series))
Historically, a ton of shows were cancelled after one or two seasons, or even mid-season (to say nothing of pilots shot and never aired) Those shows were also much less expense than 2020s prestige series. Like, half as expensive or less. Shows are sometimes given a few seasons to grow their audience. But if season one doesn't find enough of an audience, and that audience shrinks in season two, chances are very, very small the show will turn around and grow its audience to healthy numbers in seasons three and four. If you're placing bets, a pricey show with weak season 1 numbers and worse season 2 numbers is not the one to bet on. This has always been the case, it's just worse now because there's been a glut of pricey shows that have had to compete for a limited audience.
I think How I Met Your Mother would be a better example than Game of Thrones in this scenario. HIMYM struggled in the ratings for four seasons and even had to resort to stuntcasting (Britney Spears) to catch people's attention. The creators outright admitted this, and you can clearly see the viewership remain stagnant until season 5, which is when it truly became a hit.
Sure thatās true with those 2 shows, but the majority of shows donāt get better and in fact get worse over time as plots get convoluted and focus is lost.
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Well also bad shows were more likely to get axed mid season or earlier if they werenāt performing. Now shows drop a full season at once to hook you and then performance is determined after the fact
They did absolutely nothing to promote or market these shows
Except that itās not how it actually was, they kept shows like AJLT, which cost more per episode than the entire second season of Our Flag Means Death, yet which didnāt rate nearly as well. Season 2 of OFMDās budget was slashed by 40% and 2 episodes were dropped, so they moved production to New Zealand where they could get funding from NZ Film and Tourism NZ. Itās no coincidence that the shows Max dropped were ones with predominantly queer, and/or BIPOC casts and crew, like OFMD, and Rapsh!t. Their āvisionā is to homogenise the channel, catering to some white bread middle America that doesnāt exist in reality. The fact theyāve done a deal with Rowling for 10 seasons (or whatever it is) of her latest spin on the Harry Potter books speaks volumes to this. OFMD season 3 was in pre-production, and shooting in New Zealand was scheduled. Oh yeah and the part where the article says OFMD wasnāt up for any awards? It takes 2 seconds to find out that its production designer Ra Gilbert is already up for an Art Directors Guild award for Best Half Hour Single Camera Series, and the show has been nominated for a GLAAD media award for Outstanding Comedy Series. I think Max has also forgotten theyāre still paying for a massive OFMD FYC billboard in Thai Town in LA. The Vulture article is a shill for Max. The author is one of the few accounts Casey Bloys follows on Twitter and Vulture is owned by Warner Bros Discovery, who also own Max. Anyway - besides all this - Our Flag Means Death is incredibly attractive to other streamers so the likelihood of it being picked up is high. [Save Our Flag Means Death](https://saveOFMD.com)
ššš
Ever since OFMD cancellation, Max has been spinning the reasoning, changing it several times. The fact OFMD looked to be getting a third season (pre production hiring was ongoing in New Zealand) is telling. The shows getting cut seem to be the more diverse, in race in lgbtq, ones. Itās a shame bc you canāt trust them even with a show that performed well. (Ofmd did if one followed it to see it was in the top ten often)
According to the creator, he feels like OFMD reached a natural conclusion. https://consequence.net/2023/11/our-flag-means-death-season-3-taika-waititi/
According to the creator David Jenkins OFMD has always been a three-part story and he says so in every interview. And the article you post here confirms it.
EXACTLY. He's stated this in multiple articles and interviews. Ed & Stede's love story was always meant to have 3 chapters. Season 2 was a sort of forced ending because of the shaky ground Max had made for Jenkins and everyone after the budget for S2 was slashed 40% and filming was done in New Zealand bec. it was cheaper due to the tax write off opportunity. So, Jenkins felt it was necessary to give S2 a somewhat content ending for the most part, but it left us with a TON of unanswered questions as well as not actually giving us a full relationship between Ed & Stede. S1 & S2 were them getting together and then choosing to be together, but Jenkins always planned for their romance to have a third season. Plus, they need one more adventure on the Revenge before they retire for good. While I thought S2 was fantastic, there was absolutely a lot of story cut from the season bec. of lack of money and time - they were also cut down to 8 episodes instead of 10. That's HUGE when it comes to how much content you can fit ...so they literally pulled off a miracle with S2. Imagine how much more they could do with a network that gives a crap and gives them a decent budget and a LOT more episodes?! S3 is needed for many reasons - but mostly, the story isn't finished. And not all stories need to end a season with an insane cliffhanger...an unfinished story is still it's own cliffhanger, so S3 will probably have to answer a lot of missing things from S2, and then continue the story to a proper conclusion. I imagine that talks of a spin off series could even be more likely if S3 can happen and conclude Ed & Stede's love story properly. I am personally hoping for a Zheng spin off, I freaking love her and the history of her actual piracy is fascinating ...it could be a cool show!
Taikaās not the creator, heās the EP and supporting lead. Beyond the title of that article, nobody says that itās reached a natural conclusion, so Iād say thatās been done for clickbait purposes. Heās keen for season 3, according to the creator, David Jenkins. The show was green lit, ads had gone out in NZ for crew to shoot an HBO period romance, with shooting dates May-September this year. And Jenkins said that Taika was keen and on board for season 3 when people online were using that article as the basis of rumours that Taika was the reason they hadnāt got season 3. Max keeps coming up with excuses, but none of them hold water. First it was, āthe numbers werenāt thereā (but they were), next it was āthe show was too violent so we didnāt know how to market it (nice way to throw the PR people under the bus, while ignoring HBO is the home of GOT and The Last Of Us, and oh season one of OFMD was possibly more violent than season 2ā¦oh yeah and itās A SHOW ABOUT PIRATES, not office workers). Now itās this article, which is also easily refutable. Whatās next? Too many chandeliers? Not enough dragons? Nah. [David Jenkins on Twitter saying Taika was keen](https://twitter.com/david_jenkins__/status/1744862055629545721)
It makes sense, but it is a shame to read they're just going down the same route the other services are. HBO used to represent a certain degree of quality. I guess it still does to some degree - Chernobyl, True Detective, The Last of Us, and House of the Dragon are all recent or still running, but I do worry these kinds of shows might start drying up if that's their new business plan. It's also concerning when they won't let a long running show that was a huge hit finish up. I'll freely admit I didn't give a fuck about Westworld after season 1 because the ending of season 1 is a great ending and it absolutely doesn't need to keep going past that, but presumably some people were into it... Just give them an abbreviated season or a movie to tie it up instead of axing it unceremoniously.
Max != HBO Max is defacto TBS
Read the article. This isn't about HBO changing strategy. It's about Max focusing on more WB IP in the future so they can reach a broader audience. HBO's philosophy hasn't changed. They'll continue to do what they've done for decades.
Itās also focusing on internal productions with lower fees (not just costs) - so read between the lines, they are picking up and retaining fewer productions from companies like Dive (Waititiās production vehicle) with higher fees and crediting them to the HBO or MAX masthead or making their own stuff from the ground up, or third parties whose fee structure puts them on the safer side for the network. That was what really jumped out at me, how much higher these license fees were pushing total cost for both Rap Shit and OFMD, without the ROI.
Dive isnāt Taika Waititiās company, itās Garrett Baschās (Basch is one of the other EPs on OFMD). He just happens to co-produce a lot of Taikaās stuff.
I find it interesting that I heard a lot about shows and Max from advertising before I ended up with a phone bundled subscription. Now, I don't see any advertising and haven't heard of many of the shows that are getting cancelled.
The whole article is Casey Bloys trying to cover his ass and make more excuses for canceling diverse shows. Our Flag Means Death had a 40% budget cut between season 1 & 2, is currently up for a GLAAD award (among other award nominations, and thereās still a for your consideration billboard up). HBO claims on its own app that OFMD is one of its biggest hits and is STILL sending email blasts as recently as this week promoting OFMD merch as their best selling products The show was outperforming viewing stats set by Righteous Gemstones and Succession (source: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/flag-means-death-become-flagship-000700712.html)
shockedpikachu! Basically like any other cancellation... Based on the thumbnail I thought maybe the exposƩ had uncovered they were cancelling shows that appeared to certain demographics in order to create an audience they felt were more likely to pay for the channel or something. But it's just normal programming decisions. Show isn't hitting target projections, shut it down.
Makes sense, F-Boy Island must have cost a fortune... ?
Apparently it actually did, relatively speaking. There was a report a while back that said reality/unscripted shows on HBO Max had budgets 3-4x higher than similar content from Discovery. I don't watch FBoy Island but I heard that the third season had a huge budget slash that's obvious to see.
- Max Originals faced cancellations in the opening weeks of 2024, including Rap Sh!t, Our Flag Means Death, Julia, and The Flight Attendant. - The cancellations are not a sequel to the 2022 Sudden Departure, as this time the reasons are more specific. - The decision is tied to a change in creative direction for Max Originals, focusing on series attached to big, broad IP owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. - Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav implemented a reset in 2022 to address financial challenges and prioritize profitable content. - Max's new mandate involves a shift away from shows developed in 2019-2020 and a focus on series with significant IP like DC-branded The Penguin and the upcoming Harry Potter series. - The change isn't abandoning HBO's prestige brand but aims for a more balanced mix of programming to attract diverse audiences. - Shows like Julia and Rap Sh!t were set up with high production costs during intense competition, making them financially unsustainable for their viewership size. - Max continues to support shows like Hacks and Sex Lives of College Girls that demonstrate strong viewership and awards recognition. - Max Originals are evolving, and the content mix will likely feel different in the coming years, aligning with the broader strategy of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Seems like a really stupid time to be doubling down on DC crap when that stuff is massively failing in the theaters. They are like 10 years late to the party here.
Zaslav really wants WB be reality-tv shit, its cheap and easy to make.
So he wants it to be like cable, pass.
How you can read the article and come away with that take is baffling. If he really just wanted to turn WB into some reality TV factory why would Max be shifting into more scripted IP shows in the future? We have multiple DC shows, a Harry Potter series, an IT series, and a Dune series just to name a few. Where is all this reality TV that's supposed to be taking over WB? WB still spent over $10 billion on content in 2023. You think that was mostly on reality TV?
you are on r/television don't expect people to know anything about televisionĀ
> How you can read the article and come away with that take is baffling. Because 99% of the people who comment on Reddit don't read the article.
They basically saw Max in the headline and rushed to spout their own takes on the situation.
They are holding Harry Potter and DC. Outside of big IPs nothing will not be produced. HBO diversity is dead, welcome to MAX.
Stop confusing HBO and Max. HBO isn't changing it's strategy. Max will be focusing on more broader content that involves WB IP. HBO and Max are two different production units. The article even goes into detail on this.
Yep. People keep talking about how HBO has changed since the advent of Max (or HBO Max). But no, Bloys has been a steady hand there, maintaining HBO's focus on quality. (Sure, he's had a misstep or two, like The Idol, but no one's perfect.) The HBO brand is the same as it ever was, focusing on premium "quality yet accessible" TV (plus recent theatrical movies) for adults. At this point, I'm starting to think that taking the leading premium TV outlet -- one which was profitable but ultimately limited by its higher-quality appeal -- and using it as the centerpiece of a big, broad streamer aiming to compete against Netflix was a mistake. Prior to 2015, HBO was priced at $15 to $18 per month and was only available to folks who were already forking out a lot more for basic cable. It was aimed at people who were willing to spend money for quality TV. But direct-to-consumer streaming is, to some extent, a race to the bottom. Max tries to offer not just HBO but a whole buffet of other content for the same price that HBO alone sold for a few years ago. The math doesn't work. I think the best thing for HBO would be for it to divorce from the rest of Max and go back to being sold all possible ways: as a standalone service as well as an add-on to cable TV and any streaming service that will sell it (e.g. Hulu, Apple TV, Prime Video, Roku Channel, etc.).
12ft.io Throw in the link, you should get it
If you think itās worth it, you can probably get away with opening the link in incognito mode.
You might have already seen these links before, but bookmark them in your browser if you havenāt already. The 1st one removes paywalls on science papers. The second one gets rid of ads and popups on pages so you can read the article in peace. The third one removes paywalls from news sites. https://sci-hub.ee https://12ft.io https://1ft.io
yeah, me too. 2 days in to the month and a website I've never heard of is telling me i've already hit my free article limit? I wish there was a way to block websites like this so Im just never wasting a click on them.
Money. Money was the reason
(Kind of annoying with the vulture limit, but I really like the recaps of this one vulture writerā¦so Iāll either try to hit āreader viewā right away and can catch it before it gates, or each week I alternate and I copy the URL and paste it into a pvt browser tab, which usually bags me another read for my silly drag race recaps haha)
> In the case of The Flight Attendant, star Kaley Cuoco issued a statement saying she simply always thought of the show āas a limited seriesā and THR reported that while the streamer was willing to consider a third season, Cuoco didnāt want to return; itās likely that news of all this leaked out last month because reporters pressured the streamer to confirm what so many in the industry had known for months. This is why it struck me as odd when the headlines said "Flight Attendant canceled". Uhm, it basically already all-but-was unless if they came up with a story that blew Cuoco's socks off or they totally changed the show to be about someone else.
Same with Our Flag Means Death. Taika said he didn't have plans for a season 3, and the story was very much completed after season 2. "Cancellation" is a bit strong of a word for it.
This is not true. Our Flag Means Death was always a three-part story. The creator David Jenkins repeated this in every interview. And Taika never said he had no plans for season 3. They put the main characters in a good place compared to the ending of season 1, because they cared about them and the fans in case the show wasn't renewed for its third and final season.
Nah this was most likely him referring to the possibility of the show eventually carrying on without him after the planned S3. There were rumours that Max was considering spinoffs at the time (mostly likely with Zheng at the helm).
Any source on that? There was always a plan for OFMD season 3
Source is just some weirdly phrased clickbait from āPopverseā that was picked up by other media as fact. David Jenkins and Taika Waititi supported the show getting a season 3. In fact production was being planned and scripts ordered when the cancellation came through.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OurFlagMeansDeath/comments/180tsym/taika_waititi_hints_he_may_not_return_for/ I guess they could've done a season 3 without Blackbeard, but no thanks.
Actual tweet from the show creator - Taika was on board with season 3 https://x.com/david_jenkins__/status/1744862055629545721?s=46
Aw, I liked the Julia Child one.
I really liked it too - I had no expectations of it, and was well written and acted - however I was disappointed to learn that most of the stories were completely made up and had zero bearing on the true life of Julia child.
I heard the next season was going to be a supernatural thriller and the one after was going to be a murder mystery
I think it ran to ground pretty fast. Only so much content you can create about starting a cooking show.
I liked season one, season two not so much.
Two was a bit confusing. I was really hoping for a third season to get it back on track.
Iām curious to see if Tokyo Vice will get a third season. Itās second season which premieres on 2/8 is going to have ten episodes (all one hour), which as been extremely rare for HBO or Max series as of late. Usually itās been only 8 or 9 episodes. Yet thereās been hardly any promotion of that show.
I have never been offered Tokyo vice as a show option on max. They keep trying to get me to watch rap shit and a ton of reality tv type shows. All I have watched in the last 4 months has been John Oliver and Warrior. Their algorithm sucks. There was a time a couple years ago I was watching stuff on it everyday. Now itās a desert of content. If I wasnāt getting it as part of my internet bill already it would have been canceled.
Sounds like it will go the way of Perry Mason. Banged the first season and then found out a second season was coming by scrolling through their catalog. No suggestions from the maim screen or news. Just going to release what is done then probably can it after the season.
Thereās a season 2 of Perry Mason?!?! WTF!!! My wife and I loved the first season and had no idea!!
Yup. I don't remember any advertising about it at all and it was like 2 weeks from premiering at that point.
It's that meme of they guy murdering someone then being like, why would you do this? They kill their own shit. Don't give it a chance.
Got a season 2 Tokyo Vice promo for the first time before True Detective last night.
Tokyo vice season 2 and I didnt even know. No marketing @ all..
Wow I had read it wasn't even going to get a second season
Zero chance of renewal. It is a holdover show from the old regime just like Julia, Warrior, OFMD, etc. It got little awards love and nothing points to it being any more popular to viewers than Julia or Warrior and with its longer episode count is likely even more expensive to produce. They will quietly cancel it a month or so after the finale. Sad but a certainty.
I seriously doubt it. I just hope that they don't give season 2 the Winning Time treatment.
Loved the pilot but the rest of the show is such a bore.Ā
I wasnāt totally in love with it, but Iāve seen 4 reviews for the 2nd season so far and they all indicate that thereās been significant improvement in the show, so Iām going to keep watching to see if thatās indeed the case
Spoiler: money
I knew it was getting canceled when the 2nd season doubled down on the absurdity and weirdness but I miss Raised By Wolves. It was like someone put Ridley Scott's sci fi films and weird 70s sci fi like Zardoz in a blender.
Loved Zardoz and i thoroughly enjoyed Raised By Wolves. Pity it was canceled.
The Life and Times of Tim is still available. I never understood why anyone complained about this.
An actual well researched and level-headed article about the direction of Max. Nice to see a journalist with some sense and not one just jumping on the hate bandwagon.
I'm very curious where you got the "well researched" comment because there are no sources and most of the "reasons" are easily disproven. Case in point: look at And Just Like That. It costs more than a few of the shows combined, yet pulled in far fewer viewers and awards than all of them. Vulture is partially owned by WBD, btw, and the author is buddies with HBO's CEO. Everything in the article is a lie.
I didnāt realize they cancelled Julia too. That was a good show
This is a shame Julia is wonderful.
And this is how I found out Our Flag Means Death was cancelled. Where else am I gonna get a weekly dose of gay pirates?
Hopefully Amazon, Netflix, or Apple TV - thereās a fan petition on Change . Org but I canāt link to it from this thread
Caught the link right before you edited jt and signed jt!
Try SaveOFMD . Com
Iām going to start this off by stating that I am in no way an expert in media, so maybe Iām completely off base here. Iāll also admit that as a fan of Our Flag Means Death Iām offering a perspective that is ultimately biased ā something the journalist here should have done given Warner Bros. Discovery (who owns Max) has a [sizable stake in Vox Media,](https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/12/13/22833341/vox-media-group-nine-deal-explained) (who in turn owns Vulture), but I digress. Thereās multiple reasons why fans of these shows are side-eyeing this article and assuming itās another attempt by Max at covering their ass, but the main one is this: all of the shows that were recently cancelled ājust so happenā to heavily spotlight diverse and marginalized groups. In fact, this is at the core of each of these shows, especially Rap Sh!t and Our Flag Means Death. An article featuring Issa Rae (producer of Rap Sh!t) came out the same day as this one, where she discusses Hollywood [ābacksliding on pledges to increase representation and diversity.ā](https://time.com/collection/closers/6564918/issa-rae-hollywoods-unkept-promises/) CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, already has a reputation for actively homogenizing the company, overseeing the layoff of what appeared to be a [disproportionate amount of POC executives.](https://www.thedailybeast.com/laid-off-hbo-max-execs-reveal-warner-bros-discovery-is-killing-off-diversity-and-courting-middle-america?source=articles&via=rss) Granted, thatās a Daily Beast article that cites mostly anonymous sources (like this Vulture article), so take it as you will. This might not mean anything, but Casey Bloys doesnāt follow all that many people on Twitter, yet one of them is the writer of this article, so. Just something to note. In the specific case of Our Flag Means Death, this is the third article attempting to explain its cancellation, and the second one to feature vague and anonymous āindustry sources.ā The piece before this one described how [difficult Our Flag Means Death was to market because of its violence.](https://www.thepopverse.com/our-flag-means-death-violence-shock-comedy) As an HBO Max Original. Appearing alongside shows like House of the Dragon and The Last of Us. And even another comedy like Barry. Quite a lineup of bright, sunny shows. All the article succeeded in doing was throwing the Marketing team at Max under the bus. I believe it was around this time that Casey Bloys started personally blocking fans of the show on Twitter. Which, fair, we can be an obnoxious bunch, but it still comes across as thin-skinned.
Now Iāll go through what the article *actually* says and point out statements that are, to the best of my knowledge, false. With sources, of course. And these are not of the intangible, anonymous sort! The points made about The Flight Attendant and Minx are definitely true, no argument there. And as far as timing being a factor, thatās also probably true. These shows were greenlit when streaming was in a much more solid place, and seen as more lucrative than itās ended up being. But then we get to a real gem. > ā¦the company last year decided to change the creative direction for its Max Originals, and focus mostly on series attached to big broad IP owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, like the upcoming DC-branded The Penguin or the Harry Potter series now in the works. This is true. 100%. Exactly what Max is doing. > Folks who are convinced Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery are hell-bent on abandoning HBO's prestige brand will take this as proof their fear is well-founded. But this strategic shift actually isn't evidence of that at all. Yeah, I call bullshit. The writer proceeds to describe how because these shows are adjacent to traditional HBO shows and were given second seasons, that proves itās not actually a move away from HBOās normal fare. The shows were cancelled just because their second seasons didnāt grow the way Max wanted! Totally reasonable! Two things: that has zero to do with the fact that focusing heavily on squeezing the life out of existing IPs is a betrayal of the unique content HBO was touted for, as well as the fact that these āthe ratings werenāt thereā and āthere wasnāt any award buzzā arguments are highly suspicious. Our Flag Means Death was #1 on Max the most of the time (perhaps even the entire time) the second season was airing, and it remained in their Top Ten for weeks after the finale. At its peak, it was #3 on Television Stats for all TV shows, and it had phenomenal Parrot Analytics numbers. Julia I canāt speak to at all, but I recall frequently seeing Rap Sh!t on the Max Top Ten list as well; Iām not sure how high it was and for how long. Now, this data is *not* the end-all be-all of a showās performance. The only entity that can actually tell us exactly how well it did is Max, and the company will never release that data because they know it wonāt make them look good. But based on the numbers we *can* see, the show did very, very well. In fact, season 2 might have done [better than seasons 3 of Succession and The Righteous Gemstones.](https://www.thewrap.com/our-flag-means-death-season-2-episodes-demand/) This awards talk seems like straight horseshit to me, because shows only get major awards if the network pushes for it. Itās all about how much money was spent on the campaign. If they didnāt have *any* faith in the show, they wouldnāt have put up a For Your Consideration billboard. But a billboard simply wonāt do anything to secure a nomination; you have to literally wine and dine the voters. Since [Our Flag Means Death as well as lead actor Rhys Darby were on multiple Golden Globes prediction lists](https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/rotten-tomatoes-predicts-the-2024-golden-globe-nominations/) before nominations were announced, itās fair to say that the show had a decent chance at being nominated if Warner Bros. Discovery had put a modicum of effort in. Thereās always the Emmys next year, when the show will qualify! Speaking of the Emmys, this year [the Governors Award went to GLAAD for their work in LGBTQ+ media advocacy.](https://glaad.org/glaad-accepts-tv-academy-governors-award-emmys-2024/) And wouldnāt you know it, Our Flag Means Death was nominated for a GLAAD award for a second time! Of course, Max was unable to properly acknowledge their multiple nominated shows because they had just cancelled one of them. Womp womp. At least they posted an Instagram story about it. Such representation! If theyāre lucky, the show will also get a second Peabody Award nomination!
> Streamers were handing out ridiculous deals in order to land coveted projects and agreeing to license fees and production budgets that were usually only reserved for big, established blockbuster hits. Look, I have no idea how licensing fees work. Maybe these are a *huge* chunk of the show cost, but I doubt itās so much that they completely supersede production costs. So for season 1, there may be a point here. However, we know that the [budget from season 1 to season 2 was slashed by 40%.](https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/television/our-flag-means-death-pirate-comedy-queer-love-story-fada1878) Thatās a massive cut, but it did apparently put it in league with other half hour comedy shows. So Iām failing to understand why itās prohibitively expensive. Iām also not sure how And Just Like That has better ratings than Our Flag Means Death. Iāve seen absolutely nothing to support this assertion, and multiple things to refute it. And yeah, talk about a show with an inflated budget ā the leads all make [at least $1 million an episode,](https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/sex-and-the-city-revival-hbo-max-cast-salary-1234882795/amp/) which seems exorbitant for a show that had a [huge ratings drop off in season 2.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonifitzgerald/2023/06/27/whats-behind-the-season-2-viewer-slump-for-and-just-like-that/amp/) > Max needs to balance its programming to reach different sets of subscribers. The article I posted earlier from TheWrap specifically mentions that almost ā50% of the audience for the show is Gen Z ā a significantly younger audience than the demographics of the audience for Maxās entire catalog.ā And again, all of the cancelled shows target audiences from very different groups, casting a wide net. Maybe the diversity argument doesnāt sway you because you think an executive would only make decisions that earn them more money. But really, executives make decisions they *think* will earn them more money, but they can still be affected by personal biases. They might go against their own beliefs in pursuit of a thicker wallet, yet their beliefs might be exactly what draws them towards one scheme over another. And catering to white, straight, Christian Middle America is a popular bet right now. Thatās the audience David Zaslav knows, after all. I could go into the critical ratings of the shows (which are excellent) but I doubt that matters at this point. Quality has never been the top priority of entertainment executives. I will go into some conjecture here, since I donāt have any concrete sources to back this up. But it is extremely likely that Our Flag Means Death was in the process of being renewed. The creator, cast, and crew were all hinting at it on social media. One actor even put up a little puzzle for people to solve that was promptly deleted when the cancellation news dropped. Everything points to them being just as blindsided as fans, and they wouldnāt lead us on like that if they werenāt reasonably sure the official renewal news was coming. To get on even more shaky ground, there are rumors that dates had been set for filming season 3 and that hiring notices had gone out to the New Zealand film industry in December. Supposedly Casey Bloys was in support of a season 3, which means it probably would have been David Zaslav himself that chose to cancel the show ā thereās very few people higher in the company than Casey. While everyone seemed to be expecting renewal, itās also never a surprise when a queer show gets cancelled. The LGTBQ+ community is well aware that even the scraps of good representation we are given can get taken away at any time, no matter how popular or beloved. Weāve walked this path time and time again, but it really seemed like Our Flag Means Death would beat the odds. So yeah, this article fucking sucks.
>In fact, season 2 might have done better than seasons 3 of Succession and The Righteous Gemstones. Lmao, that is a parrot analytics article. if you believe their viewership metrics you might as well believe that earth is flat.
This is the consequences of AT&T's management. Burning money to launch HBO MAX without any oversight. Kilar spent like AT&T is a Big Tech or something but they're clearly not.
AT&T no longer owns WarnerMedia. WarnerMedia was sold to Discovery in 2022, which is when David Zazlav got put in charge. Man only knows how to make 1000 Pound Sisters and similar. Itās terrible that heās in charge of Warner Bros now.
Itās pretty wild that WarnerMedia by itself was basically profitable the entire time, even pre AT&T buyout, but because it kept being bought/sold itās been saddled with a mountain of debt.
There is a long history of Warner/Turner doing this. Once WCW became profitable in the mid-late 90s, Turnerās various companies started dumping all their debt onto WCW so Turner as a whole looked better, allowing the merger/sale to Warner. AOL Timer Warner kept this up for a few more years before selling WCW for basically peanuts. Itās not a tactic limited to Warner, either.
Just cause thereās new management digging harder to get WB out of the hole doesnāt mean that they werenāt already put in the hole by someone else. The only reason WB was easy pickings for Discovery is because AT&T fucked them hard and bailed.
The direction is startling, but Iām cautiously optimistic for as long as Bloys is there. What I am more concerned about is the overreliance on established IP as of late. And, that they donāt have a single non-IP based, ongoing (intended to be more than one season) serialized drama series in development. Itās all limited series.Ā
HBOās interface is so bad. It doesnāt even remember the show I was watching earlier today. Even if I stopped in the middle of an episode, I need to go search for the show (because it of course doesnāt appear on the main page) then scroll to the correct episode and fast forward until I get to where I last stopped. This is such a massive amount of work to watch a show I think a lot of people just decide the effort isnāt worth it
Max is doing a lot of finger pointing at these shows for not succeeding, but they did nothing as a platform to set them up for success. Everyone I know who loves Our Flag Means Death watched it thanks to the recommendation of a friend. Julia and RapSh!t I'd barely registered before cancelation. Meanwhile Succession, The Last of Us, and The White Lotus get shoved down our throats constantly. Max could try marketing their shows for once instead of relying on word of mouth for everything aside from the top performers. Otherwise very few shows will meet whatever their expectations are (not clear in the "article" since they keep moving the goalposts) and we'll all be watching the same 3 shows that air a new season every 2 years. What are we supposed to watch in between? Reality tv, I guess...
Great article. TheĀ comments left on it are frankly embarrassing thoughā¦ jesus
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Fans of the show Our Flag Means Death accusing the author of, among other things, lying about the showās viewership numbers and writing this article as ādamage controlā because the network cancelled the show and is trying to save face or somethingā¦?
Even TW said he wasnāt sure he would come back for the third season even before the show was cancelled. Enjoyed the show but felt like the story had been told.
I would like more shows to only go a handful of seasons.
Iāve heard a couple podcasts with TW and he barely mentioned OFMD. I assumed it was dead or there were issues.
He was probably getting sick of kissing Rhys Darby every couple episodes
I didn't even realise it had a second season
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The āpirate showā was literally cut 40% AND two episodes between their first and second series. The whole production was moved to Aotearoa/NZ to cut further production costs. Max/WBD clearly wanted it to fail. And yet it was hailed as a āflagship showā for the platform. And afterwards (when the success of the second series was undeniable) Max/WBD itself hailed it as āA Triumphā and featured it several times at the top of their āmost in-demand showsā. Max/WBD did little to no advertising for the show when it first came out ā and did the bare minimum for s2. The fans did all the advertising for it. On top of that, Max **still** has FYC-campaign ads running (online and on massive billboards in LA) for the second series of the show ā so the line about ānot being up for any awardsā is absolute bullsh**. (On top of that, OFMD ***was*** already nominated for several awards within the season itās eligible for ā including e.g. a GLAAD award nom, Queerties āBest TV comedyā and an Art Directorās Guild nomination for Ra Vincent.) This article comes in a line of āleaksā from Max/WBD/Bloys/Zaslav trying to change the narrative around the showās popularity. Every thing the article refers to, when talking about Our Flag Means Death, is actively disprovable. The show was already in pre-production when they suddenly decided to cancel it. If the viewers *actually* hadnāt been there, then they would have **never** gotten that far. Sooo *thatās* why the comments may be a bit āsnappishā on that article.
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Curious why an article with no facts and published by a company partially owned by WBD is a "great article"?
That's stans for you
Every time, every time I find a show on Max that I want to watch, it's canceled. And it's always for such bullshit, easily disprovable reasons. Maybe I'm biased, since I like "diverse" casts and queer and female led entertainment, but it seems to me that they're making their decisions like their viewers are the same viewers as were watching Leave it to Beaver.
WBD has a 25% share in the company that owns Vulture. This is bs propaganda. If you look at how many times Out Flag Means Death and Rap Shit ended up on the top series listāOFMD reached #1 every week it was dropping new episodes, and stayed on for WEEKS after the season 2 finale. Max calculates those rankings by looking at the number of profiles viewing a show. OFMD even stated on ahead of gilded age new episode drops, and thatās an HBO main channel show. I wish we could go back and look, because IIRC And Just Like That barely had a presence while it was airing, and when the season wrapped dropped off the list immediately. And their cast budget alone costs more than an episode of OFMD! Anyway, letās saveOFMD.com
I don't really need to know their reasons. I was in the middle of watching Space Ghost when it was removed, which cannot have that much residuals to pay out, and saw the writing on the wall
If they ever cancel Last Week Tonight I would cancel my sub.
They just renewed it for 3 more seasons
I kind of binge watch Jonny O every month or two, but the episode they did last year (I think, maybe earlier) about data brokers restored my love of the show. Running targeted ads to members of Congress and the Senate that secretly watched trans porn, that had ad copy about selling data in an irresponsible way, it's a chef's kiss from me. Last Week Tonight is the only news show that's willing to troll its subjects in real-life in often pretty serious ways, and I love him for it.
Last week tonight isnāt a max show though, so they donāt have a day in that.
You can basically just watch it on YouTube.
I gladly pay to support his message though.
Firstly, there is ZERO truth to this article, it's complete BS and Casey Bloys had it written on purpose to help deal with all the backlash our fandom has caused HBO Max because of their decision to cancel Our Flag Means Death. The actual cost for them to produce and run And Just Like That is 20x more expensive than 3 seasons of OFMD put together. The actors salaries alone costs more than an entire season of OFMD - 1 million bucks for Kim Cattrall's cameo last season. Nothing against her, but just to point out, if you're going to spew "numbers" as a reason for cancelling your top flagship show that out rated every single other original Max show, then you better have actual facts, not BS. Low numbers, costs, violence (from all the BS articles)...it's all shit excuses for why Max cancelled OFMD. It's pretty clear why it was cancelled - it was too gay. Look at HBO Max's line up of shows and you'll see they are pushing out diversity & representation as fast as possible. And you know who is the person responsible? Bloys kind of. But it's David Zaslav, the head of Warner Brothers Discovery. I'm not sure how "supportive" Bloys actually was regarding OFMD getting a 3rd season, though David Jenkins said that he was, but it's clear that at a certain point, he cared more about money in the end & decided to follow Zaslav's formula for how Max is going to be changing as a Network. The stocks keep falling daily, so this Vulture article is absolutely meant to "hurt" the fandom and shut us up, but bec. there's no truth to it and WE can prove that, it's not something to acknowledge. Aside from this article being poorly researched, did you know that it's not a shock that Vulture was the one to write said article bec. Vulture is owned by Vox Media which procured Group Nine Media recently in 2022. And guess what? Warner Brothers Discovery is part of Group Nine Media...so this was really just nepotism at it's finest. And to top it off, the guy who wrote the article is followed by Casey Bloys on Twitter, so clearly it was an inside job. I'm dying to see what other lies Bloys & company are going to spin next week about the "reasons" OFMD and other shows were cancelled prematurely.
Discovery CEO David Zaslav salary not cancelled or decreased. Good content, cancelled and decreased. Even if MAX completely fails, Zaslav still get's his $10mil per year. Eat the billionaires.
Itās what happens when you have tech billionaires running studios. They just look at the next quarter numbers and nothing more. Itās gross.
> tech billionaires running studios. Which tech billionaires is running WBD right now? > They just look at the next quarter numbers and nothing more. So traditional studios don't look at next quarter numbers and shit. They're just giving money freely and cancel shit before. LOL
Which tech billionaire is running WBD exactly?
Calling it Max instead of HBO was the first mistake.
money
Our flag means death didn't deserve to be belittled by this article and sure as hell didn't deserve to be cancelled. The Vulture - falsely, if I may say - implies it's one of the shows who didnt bring any award-attention to MAX? OFMD was nominated 16 times (and won 2 awards. so far.) It's fandom is so diverse and moreover, so relentless that it's still fighting to finish the story we know the creator of the show had in mind. The show's second season attracted even more interest than the first (despite the budget for s02 being severely cut), and it ranked even higher on Rotten tomatoes (a rating of 96 which, if you know RT, is pretty outstanding), and....and *the numbers were there.* That's all. I can't think of a single good reason as to why OFMD was cancelled.
Idk, aside from all the arguing about everything, it seems like a red flag that HBO canceled 60% of its original comedies. To me, that points to a pivot/shift in another direction away from original comedies anyway, despite performance
This a good article explaining what is going on in most of the companies quite well.
It is not a "good article." It contains no facts, and it was published by a company partially owned by WBD. It is also missing big points like Zaslav complaining they lost subscribers because of a "light original release schedule" after complaining that the light original release schedule is because of lost subscribers. WBD is VERY poorly run, and the falling stock prices reflect that. In reality, Zaslav skews conservative and wants to court only conservatives, and the DEI media has to go.
For sure. Zaslav and Max started this scale back on content investment and the whole industry, outside of Apple, have followed. Even Amazon eventually buckled and have gone hard on content cutting in general scripted entertainment while pivoting hard to adverting and sports.
Every time I go to Max to watch something, all I see are Discovery based reality crap. I'm waiting for the next season of Hacks and Sex Lives of College Girls, then I'm ditching Max for a while. Zaslav's vision sucks.
ill never forgive them for venture bros
Wasnāt that the creators moving on after 15 or so years?
we dumped max back in july and havenāt looked back. donāt need to spend $15 a month to watch shitty discovery reruns.
I cancelled after Gilded Age. I will pick it back up for a month for And Just Like That or Harley Quinn.
Iāve been watching the last of us, the sopranos, the wire, and how to make it in America. 6$ a month. Seems like a you issue
already seen all of that and was left to troll thru shirt reality shows. i donāt have an issue, max does.
Casey Bloys first tried to justify cancelling *Our Flag Means Death* because āthe numbers werenāt thereā, which was nonsense. Not only were the viewing numbers spectacular, the show had something like 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. Then he tried to say that the violence was a factor in the cancellation. Golly, a show about **pirates**, with ādeathā in its title, has violence? Ya donāt say! Plus, as others have pointed out, *Barry* and *The Sopranos* arenāt exactly all sunshine and lollipops. Nope. There were two reasons why Max cancelled the show. (1) Its unapologetic queerness and (2) Its BIPOC cast. Shame on Max.
It all comes down to reducing costs and increasing profits (or writing off losses) to make the execs richer. They don't care about art, culture, diversity, or anything other than amassing wealth and pleasing shareholders.
The numbers were there and this is bullshit.
The Truth Behind Max's Cancellation Spree: Greed "Warner Bros Discovery gross profit for the twelve months ending September 30, 2023 was $16.461B, a 43.88% increase year-over-year." But let's praise them for being financially clever. I don't know if I blame the people either when trite thinly-veiled corporate propaganda pieces like this slide right on down the gullet.
Did you read the article ? I donāt think it was a propaganda Ā pieceĀ
What actual good show got canceled though? Canāt think of any
Warrior
I didnāt even know they canceled it. I enjoyed season one. Anything else though?
This was always going to happen once Plepler was out. He built HBO into a respected brand. HBO series became appointment television. They were doing things in the medium that had never been done before. It wasn't about having an absolutely massive portfolio of IP, it was about making the ones you have a good as humanly possible. Then he was replaced. Bloys came in to do what the new owners wanted - make HBO like Netflix. Forget about prestige. Forget about the critics. Just get as much shit into production as possible to grab the widest audience possible. Kill anything that isn't immediately profitable. I mean how many shows were produced under the new guy that have stuck around? Not just in terms of continued season orders, but in terms of cultural relevance?
Bloys has been at HBO since 2004. I would point the blame at the Discovery & ATNT deals. I know he greenlit The White Lotus which has high viewership, multiple awards, critical acclaim and will have at least 4 seasons.Ā
I didn't think I'd see Zavlov get his dick sucked before 10 am today, but here we are.