Am I disappointed that Netflix canned Daredevil? Totally. Am I surprised? Not even a bit. Netflix and Disney are in the midst of a nasty breakup, and we're the kids left wondering why mommy and daddy don't love each other anymore. Just in case we had any inkling that it was a ratings thing, though, a new report from Deadline puts that to bed.
Parrot Analytics says that Daredevil was ranked fourth in viewer demand for original platforming last week. That's among all digital originals in the United States across all streaming platforms. The only shows ahead of it were Narcos, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and Stranger Things. Yeah, Stranger Things is really that huge. Daredevil's demand level has stayed pretty steady, around 3 or 4 on Parrot's list, throughout November, and actually dropped a little, meaning that this number isn't a sudden spike resulting from the cancellation of the show.
The analytics firm said that Daredevil finished out the last week in November with nearly 30 million "demand expressions." Demand Expressions is a weighted measurement the company says includes things like social media comments and P2P downloads among other things. A P2P download might generate more weight than a Facebook like on a show's page, because it requires more effort and shows higher engagement. These streaming services don't publish their numbers even on over-performing shows like Stranger Things generally, so aggregated ratings like this are the closest we can get to an accurate reading for shows like Daredevil.
This isn't a hard number on Daredevil's ratings, but it shows pretty clearly that people have been continuing to talk about it and watch it. While it's easy to point at Luke Cage and Iron Fist's cancellations and blame ratings, we can't make that same statement for Daredevil. This was a decision resulting from corporate relations, not ratings. Netflix wants to own its stuff, and Disney doesn't want to give Netflix ratings.
And that's why we don't get more Daredevil.
