How would you choose between shows?

Suppose you are a data scientist at a streaming service comparable to Netflix or Hulu. Leadership has asked for your recommendation on whether to renew an existing series or invest in a new one.

Part A: Renewal framework

Given an existing series called The Analyst, how would you determine whether it should be renewed or canceled? Create a structured framework that moves beyond a basic profit calculation. Your answer should cover:

• Financial performance
• User impact, including acquisition, retention, engagement, and churn reduction
• Strategic value, for example franchise/IP potential, genre coverage, and brand differentiation
• Risks and uncertainty

In addition, describe how you would estimate the show's incremental business impact instead of relying only on raw view counts, and which biases or confounding factors might distort the analysis.

Part B: Two-year profit calculation

Next, compare two shows, each of which requires a 2-year commitment. Assume:

• One season is released each year
• $\text{2-year profit} = (\text{viewers per season} \times \text{revenue per viewer} \times 2) - (\text{annual cost} \times 2) - \text{one-time startup cost}$
• All money is in USD millions unless otherwise noted
• Set aside discounting, taxes, and cannibalization unless you decide to mention them as caveats

Show 1: The Analyst (existing show)

• Viewers per season: 5 million
• Revenue per viewer per season: $15
• Annual cost: $50 million
• Startup cost: $0

Show 2: Sharkbank (new show)

If the show is successful:

• Viewers per season: 7 million
• Revenue per viewer per season: $15
• Annual cost: $60 million
• One-time startup cost: $20 million

If the show is unsuccessful:

• Viewers per season: 4 million
• Revenue per viewer per season: $15
• Annual cost: $60 million
• One-time startup cost: $20 million

1. Calculate Sharkbank's two-year profit under the success scenario and under the failure scenario.
2. If success and failure are equally likely at 50% each, what is Sharkbank's expected two-year profit?
3. Which show would you choose: The Analyst or Sharkbank? Do not base your choice solely on expected value; discuss risk appetite, downside protection, portfolio strategy, and any strategic upside not reflected in the simple model.
4. If leadership asks you to improve The Analyst's profit, which levers would you recommend? Address both revenue-side and cost-side ideas, and explain how you would measure whether those levers actually caused the improvement.

Overview: This question evaluates a data scientist's ability to quantify incremental business impact, reason causally about bias and confounders, model risk-adjusted profit, and design experimentation-informed metrics within the Analytics & Experimentation domain for a data science role.