The quantity argument cuts both ways though: more content also means more chances for niche, weird, brilliant stuff that would've never gotten greenlit by a traditional network.
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Are binge-worthy shows getting worse because streaming platforms prioritize quantity over quality?
50% PRO
50% CON
Pro 5
Con 5
More shows means more swings, and yeah some miss, but the ceiling has genuinely gotten higher — you just have to actually look instead of complaining from your couch.
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I genuinely teared up watching The Last of Us last year, so no, I'm not buying that streaming killed quality — some of these shows are hitting harder than anything I watched in the 2000s.
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Survivorship bias is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this argument. People forget that for every prestige cable show from the 'golden age,' there were like 40 absolute duds nobody remembers.
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This take completely ignores that we literally just got Severance, The Bear, and Shogun back to back — if that's what 'worse' looks like, I'll take it.
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I've worked in production and trust me, when a streamer orders 40 shows a year the notes get rushed, the rewrites get skipped, and showrunners are stretched across multiple projects. The audience can feel that sloppiness even if they can't name it.
When your business model depends on keeping subscribers from canceling EVERY single month, you need constant fresh content, not slow-crafted masterpieces — so of course quality takes the hit, it's basically baked into how these platforms survive.
It genuinely makes me sad because I remember when a new streaming show dropping felt like an event. Now I scroll for 20 minutes, watch half an episode of something mediocre, and give up. There's too much of everything and almost none of it feels like anybody cared.
Netflix went from 30 original series in 2016 to over 180 by 2022 — you cannot tell me the writers' rooms, budgets, and creative oversight scaled proportionally. The math just doesn't support quality staying consistent.
I literally cannot finish anything anymore — every show has a great first season and then falls apart because the platform already greenlit three more before the writers knew if the concept even worked. That's not storytelling, that's a content factory.