Rings of Power -- all opinions and spoilers welcome thread.

[Deset Gled]

We didn't need the affirmation of the 37% number to know the general public were not interested but now that we do, are you're still trying to defend this show and stick to the narrative that it was well received?

What?

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Wouldn't the completion rate tend to drop more for a highly-advertised flagship series? You'd bring in huge numbers initially, people who wouldn't normally consider watching the series except that it's popping up everywhere they look,

This seems highly conjectural - do you have any evidence to suggest that highly-advertised series suffer from poorer completion rates?

Parsimony would suggest to me that people stopped watching it because they didn't like it. Reasons for not liking it might include the writing, acting, directing, pacing etc.

so when it arrives they give it a look, realise that it is indeed not for them genre-wise, and then drop out.

I don't imagine that many people would be surprised that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is an epic fantasy set in a place called Middle-Earth and features Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Orcs and Wizards. What other sort of genre do you think they were expecting?

 

[MarkB]

This seems highly conjectural - do you have any evidence to suggest that highly-advertised series suffer from poorer completion rates?

None at all, it just seems logical. High-profile advertising campaigns will bring in a broader audience - otherwise why bother advertising? - and since it's a broader audience, a smaller percentage of them are likely to maintain enough interest to stick around to the end.

 

[Deset Gled]

This seems highly conjectural - do you have any evidence to suggest that highly-advertised series suffer from poorer completion rates?

This is exactly the question that I was asking about the statistics that are being touted in this thread. Isn't the fact that Rings of Power saw a 37% drop (but it's still being renewed for a second season) potentially evidence that highly advertised series suffer for poorer completion rates? Assuming we know what that number means, in a vacuum, is a very literal case of "begging the question".

To go into even more conjecture, I would be really interested to know how these statistics deal with auto-playing. Every streaming service that I use (including Prime) likes to autoplay a new movie ofrshow when the one I am watching ends. I know that my Prime history has multiple things in my "Continue watching" or "Recently played" sections that are only there because someone didn't stop an auto-play because they fell asleep or only had the TV on in the background. If Amazon pushed RoP to auto-play more than other shows (because of how much money they put into it), wouldn't that artificially inflate the number of people who watch the first episode? How is this accounted for in the ratings?

And to go even further into conjecture, why do we trust any numbers that come from Amazon (or Netfix, etc) at all? That data is some of the most important information they own. It's worth billions. When TV was broadcast we had Nielsen giving independent ratings for viewership, which gave us some semblance of trust. When we get these number from the company that's selling the product, why do we trust anything without independent review or oversight?

 

[Clint_L]

Late to this thread. I liked Rings of Power okay. Some things I could care less about, so Black elves or whatever do not concern me in the least and I have no interest in discussing what should be noncontroversial. My biggest take away was that this series had high production values and good acting in service of a fairly tedious plot.

In this it was...being kind of faithful to Tolkien, who aside from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings also did a lot of tedious plotting. So it's not a shock that a series based loosely on his backstory material kind of limped along. As with so many prequels, Rings of Power made great hay out of trying to answer questions that probably most of us didn't care that much about ("what were hobbits like before they settled in the Shire? What would a Maiar have been like when first arriving in Middle Earth? What was Celebrimbor's deal - was he just stupid? (answer: apparently)").

Also, apparently elves are Vulcans.

The story most popped when it focused on interesting relationships. Elrond and Durin made the show come alive, and I liked the stuff around Ellendil, though Isildur I could have done without. The big Sauron reveal was telegraphed so hard that I literally rolled my eyes.

Yet, in spite of the weaknesses, I kept watching. The visuals were cool, there was some (not enough) good action (and even some semi-horror), and I'll watch season 2.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm going to leave these links, without commentary, to one of my favorite blogs:

Collections: Why Rings of Power’s Middle Earth Feels Flat

This week we’re going to take a look at the worldbuilding of Amazon Studio’s Rings of Power from a historical realism perspective. I think it is no great secret that Rings of Power broa…

acoup.blog

Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part I: Exploding Forges

This week we’re going to return to Amazon’s Rings of Power, as promised in the first post there were a plethora of smaller believably and realism issues with in the show that I wanted t…

acoup.blog

Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part II: Falling Towers

This is the second part of a three part (I, II, III) look at the issue of of historical realism in Amazon’s Rings of Power, following on our more substantive discussion of the major worldbuil…

acoup.blog

Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part III: That Númenórean Charge

This is the third part of our three part (I, II, III) look at many of the smaller issues of historical realism in Amazon’s Rings of Power, following up our mode the major worldbuilding proble…

acoup.blog

 

[billd91]

Wouldn't the completion rate tend to drop more for a highly-advertised flagship series? You'd bring in huge numbers initially, people who wouldn't normally consider watching the series except that it's popping up everywhere they look, in their ad breaks, on the side of buses, and at the top of the screen every time they open Amazon - so when it arrives they give it a look, realise that it is indeed not for them genre-wise, and then drop out.

I can see the point - a heavily advertised show is going to get a lot of drive-by viewers just to see what the fuss is about. So looking at the absolute numbers of accounts checking out the show and converting to faithful followers is also a metric to consider as well as the completion rate. But it still indicates that the sensationalism of the heavy marketing, stories about the huge budget, etc didn't have a lot of ability to rope in the viewers who came to check it out. In other words, only a little over 1/3 of the people who watched the first episode found reasons to watch the story to the end of the season.
That 1/3 of initial viewers would have to be pretty big to justify outlying that kind of scratch on a continuing basis

I don't imagine that many people would be surprised that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is an epic fantasy set in a place called Middle-Earth and features Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Orcs and Wizards. What other sort of genre do you think they were expecting?

This too, is important in the analysis. The Lord of the Rings is a well-known entity. People are probably unlikely to realize Rings of Power was a bad fit genre-wise - they already knew much about its genre going in. I know that various situations the world is in have repeatedly shown how willing people are to live under rocks and be largely unaware of things going on around them or their broader significance, but I think that's a relatively small minority here.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

37% is a very poor completion rate for what was supposed to be Amazon's flagship series, and the most expensive TV show ever made.

The Hollywood Reporter has a widely shared article from, I think, last week saying that no one is really minding the store there and stuff sort of lives or dies on the whims of the folks nominally in charge, including Bezos. If Bezos wants Rings of Power to continue, it will. Otherwise, it's a coin flip.

At this point in time, they just don't have anyone ruthlessly looking at these stats the way other streamers do.

 

[Clint_L]

Giving Bezos credit where due, he saved The Expanse when it was going to be cancelled, and that show is fantastic.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Giving Bezos credit where due, he saved The Expanse when it was going to be cancelled, and that show is fantastic.

It's the perks and perils of having one of the richest men in world history in charge. If he likes it, it happens, no matter if it loses a few million dollars. If he doesn't like it, though, you have to make a good case with the numbers for him to care.