Netflix invented the "binge" - watching a whole season at once - and built an empire on it. Now, according to new data, the same habit may be starting to work against it. A Bloomberg report citing Netflix's internal figures shows that viewers increasingly abandon popular series before the second season.

The reasons are not hard to guess. Netflix often cancels series after a single season, the gaps between seasons drag on too long, and much of the content is tailored for an algorithm, not for a story. When you know the series you love may never get an ending, why get attached to it at all?

But behind that lies a deeper change in how we watch in the first place. When Netflix released the whole of "House of Cards" at once in February 2013, it was a revelation - television without ads, freed from the "one episode a week" rhythm. Back then the competition was classic television. Today the competition is something else entirely.

The numbers tell the shift. YouTube already eats around 99 minutes a day per viewer - more than Netflix's 93 minutes. TikTok grabs between 58 and 95 minutes a day. And micro-drama apps are growing explosively: ReelShort spent 1.2 billion dollars in 2025, a jump of 119 percent. The "binge" model - devised to fight television - now looks like a relic from another era, when attention lasted longer than a minute.

Netflix is thinking of a way out: fewer series with several seasons each, more limited series, and even a return to the weekly rhythm it abolished itself (with "Love Is Blind" it already worked). The irony is perfect - the company that killed the weekly episode is now thinking of bringing it back. Technology promised it would forever change the way we watch. It turned out the way we watch changes faster than any technology, and it waits for no one.