The Creator Of The Baby-Sitters Club Got Uncomfortably Honest About The Netflix Cancelation
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Netflix seems to have a knack for canceling shows that actually have a fanbase. Even the incredibly successful Sandman series may not get a second season. Fortunately for the television remake of The Baby-Sitters Club, the series did get a second installment.
But it won't get a third.
Fans were furious when Netflix announced that The Baby-Sitters Club had been canceled. The series seemed like a no-brainer for Netflix given the success of Ann M. Martin's original books, the 1990s series, and the 1995 feature film. According to showrunner, Rachel Shukert, the series was also a decent hit on the streamer. But this wasn't good enough.
While there are a couple of reasons why the series may have been canceled, Rachel claimed that embedded misogyny may have had a hand in it.
Was The Baby-Sitters Club Canceled Because Of Poor Viewership?
In an interview with Vulture, Rachel Shukert claimed that she couldn't understand why Netflix canceled her show.
"I don’t know what they wanted that they didn’t get."
The first two seasons were critically acclaimed, and, according to Rachel, the show's viewership was quite high.
"[But] I feel like Netflix’s internal metrics can change month to month. Something that was fine three months ago is suddenly not what they need," Rachel said to Vulture. "The truth is that when your show does very well in North America, as ours does, as far as Netflix is concerned, pretty much everybody who’s going to have Netflix [in North America] has it. They’re looking to drive subscriber growth in other parts of the world where this IP doesn’t have much recognition."
Rachel went on to explain that Netflix would call the week after release and give them the viewership stats. They do this again after about a month.
"Our numbers seemed fine. It was what they expected. It was pretty close to what we did [the first] season, so I wasn’t too worried," Rachel admitted. "As the decision to renew the show kept dragging on, I started to get concerned. At the same time, the show has been so critically well received."
The problem may have been that the show wasn't deemed "binge-worthy". Mostly because parents wouldn't let their kids watch an entire season in one sitting. Instead, it would happen over time.
On top of this, it wasn't a massive success like Squid Games. It didn't pull in an insane amount of viewers. But Rachel believes that it's unfair for The Baby-Sitters Club to be compared to shows like Squid Games of Narcos. They just don't exist in the same field nor do they target the same audience.
Unfortunately, this is where Netflix's interest appears to dwell.
While Netflix calls with some reports, Rachel claimed that creators don't have access to all the necessary information. Therefore, they can't compare their series with other Netflix properties nor with successful series on other streamers.
"The data is not that useful unless you have everybody else’s data too. I know our numbers at Netflix would’ve been the biggest hit in many other places. Our audience compared to HBO shows that are seen as massive hits, Succession-like juggernauts — we do way bigger numbers."
She went on to say, "When you only have your numbers in a vacuum and you don’t know the numbers of anything else, you don’t know what you’re trying to hit. You don’t know what numbers other comparable shows are hitting. Netflix will give you context in terms of what your numbers were last season or what they were hoping for, but even that is very vague. You’re flying a little blind."
Was The Baby-Sitters Club Canceled Because Of Misogyny?
During her interview with Vulture, Rachel Shukert claimed that The Baby-Sitters Club was always a hard sell because of the age of the female characters.
Unlike successful shows about little kids or ones about s*x-craved teenagers, The Baby-Sitters Club focused on young women between childhood and adolescence.
"People are extremely uncomfortable with this period in girls’ lives," Rachel claimed. "It seems to be the time of life that girls lose faith in themselves, and I think it’s because they don’t see representation of where they’re actually at. Girls are expected to go straight from Doc McStuffins to Euphoria. They’re not ready for TV about having sex, but they don’t want to be little girls. So who are they?"
Rachel continued by saying, "It’s a really easy time for girls to define themselves solely by how they’re seen by other people and then you don’t get your sense of self back until you’re 35. What if you weren’t missing those 20 years? What if you always got to be yourself and see yourself represented in a real way? And not have to be all about who thinks you’re pretty or who thinks you have the right clothes? Or how old they think you are or how old they think you look?"
In her opinion, The Baby-Sitters club speaks to so many young women because it "meets them where they are at".
"It’s not about adults telling them who they are. It’s not really about boys, although they have crushes, which is a realistic part of life at that age."
This ability to target such an important developmental period in a young woman's life is ultimately what attracted that demographic to The Baby-Sitters Club. But Rachel believes that if the show was given more time it could have reached an older demographic due to the nostalgia factor.
"A show like this has tremendous nostalgic potential. People who grew up reading the books, people who have kids that age [can connect with it]."
However, Rachel thinks that Netflix's algorithms made the series hard to find. Specifically for the demographics the streamer really wanted to win over.
"If you’re 35 and you loved the books and you don’t watch a lot of YA stuff or any of Netflix’s kids and family stuff, Netflix is not going to show The Baby-Sitters Club to you," she explained.
"[Netflix and I] would talk, and they’d be like, 'Well, we hoped it would get more traction with adult audiences'. It’s not going to if they don’t know it’s there! Just knowing what our numbers were, the audience is there. It’s not like no one watched it. For whatever reason, the right people didn’t watch it at the right time for Netflix right now."
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