The Baby-Sitters Club boss: Our viewership was "fine," but it stopped satisfying Netflix's metrics

Vulture

"Our audience compared to HBO shows that are seen as massive hits, Succession-like juggernauts — we do way bigger numbers," showrunner Rachel Shukert says in a wide-ranging interview with Vulture over Netflix's recent decision to cancel her teen series after two seasons. But Shukert says what constitutes a show worth renewing at Netflix changes from month to month. "For this show that has a fine viewership but is not a monster hit, but it’s beloved by fans … does that matter? I don’t know," says Shukert. "I think we had the bad luck to come out at about the same time as Squid Game, which showed them how crazy numbers could get. Numbers that were totally respectable and successful last year were suddenly seen in a different way. I don’t have access to a lot of this data, and in general creators don’t have access to this data at Netflix, so it’s what you put together on your own." Shukert also notes that Netflix prioritizes binge-watching and completing a series as soon as possible -- while The Baby-Sitters Club's younger viewers take longer to complete a series because parents have restrictions on watching TV. "Our executives were certainly aware of this and tried to make the case for us," says Shukert. "But at Netflix, it’s more about if your show works on the platform than if the platform is working for your show. They want people to watch it a certain way, and they want shows that people will watch that way — not shows that people want to watch in their own way." Shukert credits Netflix for being "extremely supportive of a lot of things I wanted to do that other places might not have been," but "they would sometimes have notes that felt like they were based on data. They’re open about that! Like, in shows where this sort of thing doesn’t happen within the first five minutes, people don’t make it past that hump. They have so much data; it can be helpful, and it can also be tricky to integrate." Shukert also points out that TV tends to shy away from shows like The Baby-Sitters Club that deal with the early teenage years. "People are extremely uncomfortable with this period in girls’ lives," she says. "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...There’s something about stories geared to this age that always felt like hindsight from adults, as opposed to what it actually feels like to be that age. What we could do with The Baby-Sitters Club was make the girls as smart and interesting and mature as girls are without making it all about how other people see them. It’s about how they see themselves."