- 5/25/2025
So the Wheel of Time got cancelled (and musings on the state of Fantasy TV)
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Hey nerds, what's up? So Amazon Prime's Wheel of Time got cancelled. That's right, season 3 will
00:06be the last season and there will be no more. Deadline reported today, or well by the time
00:11you're saying this, yesterday, that the Wheel of Time got cancelled for financial reasons.
00:15The article reports that while season 1 was a high performer for Amazon Prime, season 3 really
00:21dropped in viewership according to the Nielsen's charts, and overall that the performance of season
00:273 was just not strong enough compared to the show's cost, so Prime didn't feel like they could
00:32commit to another season. So I found this out just a few hours ago and I thought I want to talk about
00:37it, mostly because there has been a lot of things about fantasy TV and fantasy adaptations that have
00:42been floating around in my head for several months and I just didn't have a good enough reason to talk
00:46about them. So today I'm going to use the Wheel of Time as a jumping off point to talk about other
00:50things in fantasy TV, such as are the fans always right when it comes to adaptations, how making TV
00:56has changed in terms of how often we get TV and how much it produced to cost, it costs to produce,
01:02excuse me, and then finally how we just know very little about the performance of TV because we don't
01:08get a lot of TV data. So let's jump right in. Are the fans always right? I think the answer is
01:14it's complicated. Several times now in various videos I have said that adaptations aren't made for
01:20the fans and I always get a ton of pushback when I say that. People do not like hearing that and I get
01:27it. The idea that an adaptation of your favorite thing isn't made for you is a tough pill to swallow
01:33as a book lover, but we can look at some data. Now as always, anytime I put statistical data up here,
01:40I need to talk about its limitations. Both of these things I'm going to talk about were based on
01:45surveys. And as always with surveys, there is a bias because it is self-reported. So let's talk
01:51about that. Also, I'm going to use a couple different studies, which means that the method
01:56of collection wasn't the same. So you can't always compare one to one. This kind of data is really hard
02:01to come by, but I think this is still illustrative. I'm also focusing on data in the United States
02:06because it was very easy for me to find. A government survey was conducted through the National
02:10Endowment for the Arts and they did it based on the census in 2022. And according to them, 48.5%
02:17of Americans read any book for pleasure within a calendar year. So it only had to be one book and
02:23they asked surveyors to omit any reading they did for work or school. So this was reading a book for
02:29pleasure. So a little under half of the population read at least a single book. So it could just be
02:35one in 12 months. Now, I wanted to compare that to how many people watch a TV show in a given year
02:42and the data doesn't exist because apparently that's not a question that anyone thinks they
02:46need to ask because I guess it is so obvious to everybody that everybody watches TV. Apparently,
02:53apparently the number is just assumed to be 100%. Instead, all the data we find for people who watch TV
03:00in the last 12 months usually looks about hours, how much time per day you are watching. So I looked
03:08at an American Time Use survey from 2022. So at least it was the same year as my other data. It was also
03:13a questionnaire, even though it had a different population. And it said the average person watched
03:172.8 hours of TV per day. And that TV made up about half of all leisure time on average. If we're
03:25measuring books read by at least one per year, and we're measuring TV usage in America by hours per
03:33day, I do not think it is a huge jump for me to say that many, many more people will watch a TV show
03:40than will read a book. And I think we can continue to extrapolate to the conclusion that when a book
03:46adaptation of any type does extremely well and becomes really famous and beloved, that a majority
03:53of those viewers are not readers. They have watched the show or movie and haven't read the book that
04:00it's based on. That's conjecture, but I feel pretty good about saying it. Honestly, that's why adaptations
04:06are often so important for authors, because it brings their ideas to a much, much bigger audience
04:13and a generally much more lucrative audience. And in fact, I think a lot of our most famous book
04:20series are usually bolstered because they have an adaptation that was well received and in the
04:25zeitgeist. Even think of like Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, which is obviously a classic novel,
04:32and it wasn't going to be like ever in obscurity. It's one of the most famous novels of all time.
04:36But there is zero denying that many, many people's only experience with Pride and Prejudice is either
04:44the 1995 BBC or the 2005 Keira Knightley. There has been a lot of adaptations, but those ones are
04:51super in the zeitgeist and keeping Pride and Prejudice alive for new generations, even if the
04:58book is great. And it's a common tale among many adaptations. All this to say, if an adaptation is
05:04successful to the general public, it probably doesn't really matter what fans think. Now, on the other hand,
05:09if we are making an adaptation from a book, it is likely that that book did very well and was popular
05:17and well-liked. And so if you take that property and you are making it because it is well-liked,
05:22isn't the next logical conclusion that you should probably try to mostly faithfully adapt it because
05:29there's a reason people fell in love with the source material to begin with? All this to say,
05:35when I look at successful adaptation, it seems to be this careful balance of very widely and
05:41popularly accepted among the general public and that most fans generally view it favorably. I would
05:47never say all fans, but most fans view it favorably. Wheel of Time is one of those things that was really
05:53tough to get a beat on because it's so dependent on what circles you were in. In some corners of the
05:58fandom and some corners of the internet, I found the response to the show to be overwhelmingly positive,
06:03where I'd visit another corner of the fandom and all of a sudden it was wildly negative. In one hand,
06:09the show could do no wrong and everything was explained away. In the other hand, the show could
06:13do no right and even things that a lot of people thought were good were railed upon as not being
06:18nice. It was very contentious. That's, I will just say, it made the Wheel of Time fandom incredibly
06:24contentious and that's probably a sign within itself. I don't always think fans actually know what would
06:30make a good adaptation. I think the written word and visual media is incredibly different and things
06:36that can work in either one of them simply don't work in the other. And I've had a whole video
06:40talking about that, so I don't need to belabor the point here. Sometimes it's one of those things is
06:44you just don't know it till you see it. I think a lot of the times the way we report on fantasy TV
06:50already starts us off bad because fans will latch on to an article saying this is going to be different
06:54and immediately like, that's going to be bad without giving it a chance to breathe. It's why
06:59even though some of the early stage changes in Wheel of Time season one gave me pause, if you watch
07:06my videos on it, I wait until the end of season one to really make a statement about it because I
07:12wanted to try to meet the show on its ground because the mediums are so different. And so I just
07:21think it's very reductive to say, well, if they just followed the book exactly, then it would be
07:25right. If fans liked it, it's for us. It's for the fans. So I just don't think either of those are
07:30necessarily true. And I'm bringing that up in terms of Wheel of Time because I just know that's where
07:34the conversation is going to settle around. It was canceled because the fans didn't like it. It was
07:41canceled because they didn't remain faithful to the source material. And while I think there is truth,
07:46shades of truth in those statements, I just don't think they tell the whole story. Really one of the
07:50biggest problems of the fantasy TV landscape is just the changes in TV, which is that it's taking
07:56way longer between seasons. We are getting way less episodes, usually eight for fantasy TV.
08:03And they're often dumping all of the episodes at once, which makes the waits between season feel
08:09even longer because you're not getting like eight weeks of it stretched out. I think this is
08:14particularly damaging for fantasy, which tends to have a higher level of complexity,
08:21more made up names and terms and locations that fans have to keep track of generally more characters.
08:29I'm not saying non-fantasy shows don't have large casts, but generally the books tend to have large
08:35casts, a lot of magic and a lot of complicated storylines. So waiting years between seasons is much
08:41more difficult to keep people interested and game and keep momentum going. Now there's various reasons
08:49I found as I've researched this for why TV has gone to this model of tons of time between episodes and
08:55lesser episodes. And a lot of it is about it starting in COVID because obviously COVID restrictions
09:02created a bunch of problems. And then when we were coming out of COVID, we had a writer's strike,
09:06which also obviously created problems. However, now that those things are kind of like mostly in
09:13the past, we're still here. It's more like it might be an excuse to keep things this way.
09:19Of course, one of the other reasons is people complain about how much more expensive it has become
09:23to produce TV. Part of that I think started in COVID because of the restrictions and the way they
09:29had to adapt cost money. But I also just think our budgets have gotten out of control for TV,
09:34particularly fantasy TV. Could we spend less money? Could we go back to slightly cheesier TV
09:41that looks a little less polished and a little less good, and instead give me more episodes
09:46or give me more time? I know that's easy to say standing here, but I like a decent amount of cheesy
09:52TV shows. It's not like Merlin was that stellar in terms of the CGI department. I actually kind of
09:58studied this a little bit in a previous video where I did a regression analysis on budget versus
10:03reception for fantasy movies, mostly because data on TV shows isn't as readily available,
10:09and found that it really didn't make much a difference. I feel like recently budget has become
10:14a pride factor. I remember how often Rings of Power's budget was advertised as if that was the
10:21thing that made a good TV show. Did we need $465 million for Rings of Power season one? Actually,
10:28some people say with the rights it was like close to a billion. No, I don't think so. In fairness,
10:33Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones had similar budgets when you account for things like inflation and
10:39working at that high of a budget where a couple million dollars here and there probably doesn't
10:43matter. And Games of Thrones was wildly successful and Wheel of Time season one was fine. But overall,
10:49if cost of producing is one of the issues, how do we keep costs lower? And is it just less
10:56time making stellar effects? And would that really proportionally damage viewership? That's I guess
11:03my question that I can't answer. But I have a feeling in my heart that what we would gain from
11:10more episodes and faster release time would negate what we lost from super polished things. One quote I
11:17found interesting when looking up the reasons for a longer distance between seasons was this.
11:23Speaking this week, Pope said the gaps are getting longer because broadcasters and the streaming
11:26industry are now too data driven. And this means they have to wait longer to make the big calls.
11:31She believes that buyers are biding their time before deciding on a recommission because of the
11:35growing focus on metrics in an on demand world in which the bulk of the viewing takes place in the
11:40weeks and months after the launch, wrote Farber. This comes up where I just really wish they'd greenlight
11:45multiple seasons of a fantasy TV show in the beginning. I recognize that's really expensive and I have no
11:50experience as a higher up. So maybe that is impossible now. But imagine if they had greenlit
11:57two seasons of Wheel of Time where you know you are going to come back and maybe get a stronger
12:02through line of those seasons. It also has to save a little bit of money season to season because you
12:09could do some bulk filming, especially with your actors feels like feels like it would be better.
12:16Imagine if they had greenlit three seasons right away where you're not always scrambling or changing
12:21things in between seasons. It's a risk. It's definitely a risk. But I again wonder if that risk could pay off.
12:29And last but not least, I just wish they gave us 10 times more data about TV. For whatever reason,
12:33it's really easy to find movie data. Actually, I think I know it's because they will publish how much
12:38they spent on movie data. And then you go to a theater and buy ticket and they will publish
12:42how much money that movie made via ticket sales. So it's pretty easy to compare budget to what you made
12:49as a general sense of success. Much, much easier with TV shows. I know as we've moved to streaming,
12:57I know these streamers must have the data. Amazon could tell me how many people watched the Wheel of
13:04Time season one. What percentage of viewers watched through episode eight of season one of season two?
13:11I think it's called completion percentage. What was the drop off between the seasons? How much actually
13:17did each season cost to produce? And how much did Amazon make off of the streaming of that? And how do
13:24they calculate how much they make off of it? When the way streaming works is very different than
13:30traditional movie ticket sales. The problem is they just like literally never give you this data.
13:36And that sucks. I wish we knew. What does it look like for the Wheel of Time? And what does it look
13:41like for shows they consider wildly successful? And what's the gap there? I've seen guesses based on like
13:47Nielsen data and things like that, but nothing from the companies themselves. So it feels like we'll never
13:52really know and our perceptions of the success or not success of a TV show often just depends on the
13:57demographics of those around us. You know, as someone who is online and has a following who was invested
14:05in Wheel of Time, it was so interesting. Some of the conversations I had with people where I'd say,
14:11well, everyone in my inbox and all of my friends in real life that I am texting about Wheel of Time
14:17dislike this storyline the most. But then in my comment section, people are saying,
14:24among all my friends, that storyline that all your friends hate is all of their favorites. They say
14:29it's the one they're the most invested in. So our perception of that storyline is going to be vastly
14:33different. Apparently on our demographic, is it our age difference? Is it our viewing habit difference?
14:38Is it our reading difference? Is it the way people I make friends with versus the people you make friends
14:43with? Because we don't have data overall, I feel like my perception of how successful or not successful
14:49something is doing is just almost sometimes based on the fandom with which I'm in, unless it is like
14:54universally praised, Allah, the one piece live action adaptation, where only like on my video that
15:01got a ton of views, I finally get fans being like I didn't like it. But overall, the conversation anywhere
15:07I was in was overwhelmingly positive. So ultimately, Wheel of Time being canceled. And I guess I'm not
15:13surprised. I'm surprised because I did think it was by far the best season and not even close creatively.
15:23However, one thing is that when I started texting my friends or posting about the Wheel of Time on my
15:30Instagram, I did little in the dark reviews. Nobody knew season three had started, including me,
15:36someone had to be like, Oh, are you watching the season three episode one tonight? And I said,
15:41excuse me, it's starting. I didn't know. Amazon didn't tell me. When I logged into Amazon,
15:48there was nothing. I didn't get a single Amazon box. I'm comparing this to season one where it was like
15:53so heavily advertised. According to Amazon, I have watched seasons one and two several times because I
15:59had to clip pull so much for my videos. So you would think they'd be like, guess what?
16:05Season three is out. Here it is. And based on my other friends and followers on Instagram,
16:13who are easier to message me more, all said very similar things. Like I was watching the Wheel of
16:19Time regularly, and I had no idea it was coming. Why did they advertise it so much less? And would
16:24that have made a difference if they had advertised it heavily? That would also be a more cost. So did it
16:28not feel worth it? I am curious about that. I don't know, maybe it didn't matter. Overall,
16:33I am sad the Wheel of Time got canceled. As I said in the beginning, I thought it was actually going
16:37somewhere. But I can't say, I guess, as I contemplate on it, that I'm overly surprised
16:42because it feels like that is where a lot of fantasy TV is going. Unless it makes a huge splash
16:49immediately. So tell me what you think about a more casual vid. This was very casual for me.
16:55I usually plan a lot more, but decide to get on and just kind of talk. Tell me if you hated it. Tell
17:01me if you liked me to cover some more in the moment, like newsworthy things, since I am known
17:06to cover things long after they are relevant, because I just usually take some time to think.
17:11Let me know. Let me know what you think about the Wheel of Time being canceled and any of the stuff I
17:15talked about in terms of fantasy TV. I'd love to know your thoughts. And as always, if you like this kind
17:19of content, please like and subscribe. That is the best way to support me. And if you want to see what I'm
17:22currently reading, as well as other Nerdy Rants, you can check me out on Instagram at bookborne.reviews.
17:26I'll see you next time. Bye.
17:33This is the first season that I would actually be incredibly bummed if it did not get renewed.
17:37And I hate knowing that it hasn't been renewed yet because I am, I actually want and I'm eager
17:42to see season four because they keep improving so much. I imagine that season four could be extremely strong.
Recommended
2:36
|
Up next
2:20
2:26
1:19
2:26
2:00
1:31:32
32:16
1:06:35