.
Tuesday, there was a social media storm across Canada as news leaked that the CBC/Netflix series Anne with an E was being canceled after three seasons. Immediately, #saveannewithane and #renewawae started trending on Twitter. The satirical website The Beaverton posted a fake news story under the headline, “Rioters demand return of Anne with an E.”
Things got so intense that series’ creator Moira Walley-Beckett went on Instagram to post that the series had “reached the end of the red Green Gables road.” Take heart, however, kindred spirits — Walley-Beckett also indicated that she’d love to do a final, feature film version to put a bow on the series — a possibility CBC and Canada’s various funding agencies could likely cover the cost of on their own.
Fans continue to take their wrath out on Netflix. The reality is, however, that in Canada, on CBC, the show was never a hit. In this its third season, Anne with an E has the same, national, average-minute-audience this year as it did last season, a shade over 400,000 total viewers. This puts it far outside the top 30 most-watched shows in Canada each week.
In the overnight ratings, the viewership is predominantly 50+, rendering it even less of a draw for many advertisers. The number of Canadians between the ages of 18 – 49 who watch it each week on CBC would not even fill the Rogers Centre.
Read more HERE.
Truth is, CBC gets Government funding, Netflix does not.
You also have to ask, how many times can you do the Green Gables story and how many Anne’s can be portrayed by how many actors?
Put it to bed quietly.
The old show business saying of “Always leave them wanting more” is always lost on North American producers because the dollar signs always take precedence over their art. The British have gotten it right: produce a series, and end it. It quickly becomes a classic – shown over and over again on PBS and Vision.
If anything, the insistence of the show’s producers on going “woke” and inserting SJW propaganda into Anne with an E ended up tanking the show and contributed to its low viewership (and ultimately its cancellation) because viewers saw through the SJW BS and quickly tuned out.
Will CBC and Netflix learn their lesson over this, that imposing liberal/SJW propaganda on TV shows – even shows based on classic properties like Anne of Green Gables – never works? I have my doubts on that.