The Streaming Wars Are Making TV Shows Worse – And I’m Tired of It

Is it just me, or does it feel like we’re drowning in content but starving for good stories I was trying to catch up on the latest season of a show I used to love on Netfli, and I realized I was just forcing myself through it. The magic was gone. It got me thinking about the state of the TV industry right now, and I have some thoughts I need to get off my chest.

The biggest shift I’ve noticed is this relentless push for volume over quality. Every streaming service is in a race to have the biggest library. Netfli, Disney+, HBO Ma, Apple TV+. they all just keep churning out new shows.

But how many of them are actually memorable I feel like I watch a new series, and two weeks later, I can’t even remember the main character’s name. It’s disposable entertainment. They greenlight a hundred projects hoping one becomes the net ‘Stranger Things’ or ‘The Mandalorian,’ and the other ninety-nine just fade into the background noise of the platform.

And what’s with the trend of canceling shows after one or two seasons It’s infuriating. I invested hours into ‘1899’ on Netfli, and they just pulled the plug. No resolution, nothing. It happens all the time.

It feels like the algorithms decide a show’s fate based on immediate, eplosive growth, not on building a loyal audience over time. How is anyone supposed to get invested in a new story when there’s a 50/50 chance it will just end on a massive cliffhanger This model is training us not to care, and that’s a terrible long-term strategy for storytelling. Then there’s the ‘content blob’ problem.

Remember when a new season of a show was a genuine event Now, shows just appear and disappear in the feed. There’s no cultural conversation around them because the release strategy is so fragmented. Some drop all episodes at once, which kills weekly water-cooler discussion.

Others release weekly, but with so many other shows competing for attention, the conversation fizzles out quickly. It’s overwhelming. My watchlist is a monument to my aniety, not my ecitement. I work in digital marketing, so I see this from the other side too.

The data is everything. Studios are making creative decisions based on engagement metrics and completion rates. They see that people skip intros, so they make shorter title sequences. They see that viewers drop off at the 20-minute mark, so they restructure episodes.

It feels like we’re engineering content, not creating art. The soul of television is getting optimized out of eistence. What do you all think Am I just being a grumpy old fan, or are you feeling this too Are there any recent shows that actually felt like they had a coherent vision from start to finish I’m genuinely curious if people are happy with this constant churn of new shows, or if you, like me, are starting to feel a bit burned out by it all.