1899 wasn't a show I wanted to rush. I wanted to pace it out and marinate in it a little.

While I was doing that, it was cancelled, so now I'm just never going to complete it at all, nor rewatch it. It's pointless.

So for a viewer like me, Netflix's entire investment in it has instantly gone down the drain. And I'm a little less likely to bother with their next big ticket project, in case the same happens to it too.

Early completion rate is easily measurable, but is it useful? People don't like Netflix's all-in-one-go releases because they want to sit down for ten hours in a row, they like it because they can watch the whole lot at precisely the pace that suits them. Netflix's tunnel vision penalizes them, and the shows that suit that kind of viewing best.

I don't think their apparent 2 week completion rate obsession makes sense, at least not for every show - not least because stuff like "Viewer trust that the next show won't be cancelled too" can't be measured in it, but absolutely have an effect on the service's appeal.

Netflix isn't like a regular "live" channel, nobody catches something serendipitously in syndication. They have to actively select it. Show by show these decisions probably feel like they make sense, but they've ended up with a library of dead ends nobody will ever bother with.