When Luminate released the special report The Show Must Go Off in 2023, analyzing series cancellation rates and trends in the TV industry, the business was in the midst of a profound transformation.
Faced with the end of streaming’s glory days and roiled by twin guild strikes, Hollywood was being forced to seriously rethink its priorities — a crisis that would ultimately reshape content budgets and bring the Peak TV era to a definitive close.
Now just two years later, it’s clear that 2023 was an inflection point in Hollywood history, as a new Luminate analysis of TV cancellations demonstrates.
Given ample time to review their slates during the strikes, all of the major studios and streamers ultimately trimmed output. Accordingly, cancellations soared at almost every SVOD platform for shows released in 2023. (In the analysis below, the figures reflect titles that had a season premiere in a particular year and have since been axed.)
The lone exception was HBO Max, which spent much of 2022 culling its originals under new parent Warner Bros. Discovery. Meanwhile, in terms of gross figures, Netflix ditched the most shows by far (55), but this merely reflects the streamer’s disproportionate output. The service still releases more than twice as many series annually as its nearest competitor, Amazon Prime Video.
Proportionally speaking, the Big Red N shed less of its slate than almost any other SVOD between 2023 and 2025. Only Prime Video’s 2023 cancel rate was lower (14% vs. Netflix’s 19%), while Disney+, Apple TV+ and Paramount+ all soared past 40%.
The cancellations have since stabilized amid reduced content volume, though, notably, streamers are not always as quick to scrub shows as traditional broadcasters, which need to set fixed schedules every fall. At times, SVOD series can be held in limbo for months or even years before being officially or publicly canceled.
As such, it remains to be seen how most of 2025’s releases will fare. Just last month, Hulu issued its first cancellation of the year — sitcom Mid-Century Modern.
But it’s likely that the road to renewal for a streaming series is much more difficult than it used to be. Overall content volume remains much slimmer, and shows must justify their budgets quickly to secure subsequent seasons.
Still, perhaps there’s a mildly encouraging message here for the creative community: Streamers are still in search of new shows that can endure.
