How consumers and creators soured on streaming

When “House of Cards” premiered on Netflix 10 years ago, it was treated as a very expensive lab experiment: Would original programming get more people to sign up for Netflix, then primarily known as the company that destroyed Blockbuster? Amazon, Hulu and other streamers quickly followed suit, developing sophisticated shows like “Transparent” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” and ushering in the era FX chairman John Landgraf would famously dub “Peak TV.” In 2012, there were an estimated 288 English-language scripted series across all of TV, according to FX research; last year, that number reached an all-time high of 599, with Netflix competing against cable and broadcast networks and a slew of streaming competitors including Disney +, HBO Max, Apple TV+ and Peacock. For a while, streaming represented a decisive win for cord-cutters, who could cancel their cable subscription and get a year’s worth of free two-day deliveries — plus the new season of “Catastrophe”! It marked a symbolic turning point for Netflix: the company that revived “Arrested Development” and helped “Schitt’s Creek” find an audience on cable now was canceling shows that other networks stepped in to rescue. For Mike Royce, co-showrunner of “One Day at a Time,” Netflix’s lack of transparency around viewership data was uniquely frustrating, even compared to broadcast TV.