Wonder Man cleared the threshold typically used to determine whether a streaming show will be canceled, a new report from the viewership data firm Luminate reveals. Shows that reach a certain retention rate, which is to say, the rate at which viewers stick with a show, are often renewed. All streamers track this slightly differently, but for Disney+, the average “likely renewal floor” is 36%, with a “safe zone” of 48%. According to the study, Wonder Man had a 52% retention rate, meaning that other factors, such as a glut of Marvel shows, were likely the cause of its cancellation. To be fair, Disney renewed the Marvel series at first, and it wasn’t until months later that Wonder Man got the axe, inspiring speculation and a confused Yahya Abdul-Mateen II to demand some “real, hard information” on why the show was canceled. We can cross “people weren’t watching it” off the list.
Wonder Man was hardly the only canceled show with solid retention rates. Netflix’s 2025 hit The Waterfront, which topped the streamer’s charts for three weeks last year, had a 62% retention rate. The show’s creator, legendary TV writer Kevin Williamson, later revealed the show didn’t reach that retention threshold quickly enough to be saved. To that end, the study also underlines the hard-fought survival of streaming shows, which are more likely to be canceled than broadcast shows. Luminate found that 65% of broadcast series were renewed compared to 44% of streaming titles. That’s not without caveats. Contrary to its reputation, Netflix is more likely to renew a show but also more likely to offer shows a planned completion, a season for the show to finish its story. The Big N massages its cancellation rates by keeping a show in limbo, neither canceling nor renewing, as is the case with The Politician and No Good Deed.
Of course, streamers find all sorts of reasons to cancel shows; chief among them is inflating budgets. Luminate estimates that shows costing over $10 million per episode have increased 7% over the last five years. But shows can’t hang on forever, and despite outliers like South Park, NCIS, and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, most broadcast TV shows last about three to five seasons on average.
The study is full of information about the cratering cable TV business, the head-scratching streaming strategies, and the downturn in scripted and unscripted shows being produced. Between 2022 and 2025, scripted shows dropped from 50% of all network output to 42%, while unscripted fell from 60% to 40%. Read the whole report here.
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