Median days between a show's first and last air date, for cancelled shows only. The shaded band shows the interquartile range (middle 50% of shows). Post-2013 — when Netflix launched original programming — cancellation timelines collapsed dramatically. By the 2020s the median had fallen to 42 days, down from over 300 days in the early 2000s. Red dots mark years in the streaming era.
Which genres survive — and which get cut?
▇ Cancelled▇ Ended▇ Still liveHover a card to see the longest-running shows in that genre
Each card shows the survival breakdown for that genre. The bar is split into cancelled, ended, and still live portions. Reality and Talk shows are cut most aggressively. Soap and Animation survive longest once established. Hover any card to see the top 3 longest-running shows in that genre.
Production company profiles — genre & cancellation speed
top 10 companies by cancellation count
Genre DNA — share of shows per genre (%)
Median days to cancellation — fastest cancellers at top
Left: the genre makeup of each company's slate. Most major studios lean heavily on Drama. Right: how quickly each company cancels shows. Universal Television has the shortest median (84 days), while Zone3 is the most patient at 526 days. Warner Bros. Television has the highest raw count of cancellations — 96 shows — reflecting the sheer volume of their output.
Which creators' shows survive cancellation?
top 100 creators by show count · career data from TMDB
Data note: TMDB (the source dataset) does not include demographic information such as race, ethnicity, religion, or personal age for show creators. The analysis below uses career profile data derived from show records: genres, networks, countries, career start year, and survival rates. For full biographies see each creator's TMDB or Wikipedia page.
Overview — cancel rate vs total shows (bubble size = avg popularity)
Avg cancel rate by primary genre
Avg cancel rate by decade started
Avg cancel rate by primary country
Top creators by survival — lowest cancel rate (min 5 shows)
Does a country's population size affect cancellation speed?
21 countries · log population vs median cancel days
Each point is a country. X-axis is population (log scale); Y-axis is the median number of days a cancelled show ran before being cut. Bubble size reflects total number of cancellations. There is no strong positive correlation between population and show longevity — larger markets don't protect shows more. Germany (DE) is a striking outlier: a large country with relatively long cancellation windows. Japan (JP) and Brazil (BR) are cut fast despite large populations.
The extremes — fastest cancellations & longest runs
cancelled shows vs ended/returning shows
Fastest cancelled — days before axed
Longest running — years on air
Left: the fastest-cancelled shows in the dataset (minimum 5 votes, at least 1 day between air and cancellation). Right: the longest-running shows by total days between first and last air date. The contrast is stark — the fastest-cancelled shows lasted days; the longest-running have been on air for decades.
median days to cancellation · 1980–2024
cancelled shows vs ended/returning shows