Victorious – Picture: Nickelodeon
This week has seen a lot of comings and goings from the Netflix library across the world but the Nickelodeon series Victorious had a single season removed from Netflix in the US on Monday, but why? Let’s take a look.
Nominated for four Emmys, the Dan Schneider sitcom starred Victoria Justice, Ariana Grande, Leon Thomas III, and Matt Bennett. The Nickelodeon show ran for four seasons (although the last two were combined into the third season) between March 2010 and February 2013.
All three seasons arrived on Netflix in the US as part of a slew of Nickelodeon licenses in November 2019. Now, exactly two years later, the show has seen the third season removed on November 1st but the first two are still available.
So what’s going on here? Officially, we don’t know but we can speculate based on ViacomCBS’s general strategy with Netflix in recent years.
In many instances, we’ve seen ViacomCBS use Netflix as a promotional tool for its own platform. It does this by only licensing shows partially whether that be licensing only a couple of seasons of iCarly or adding freshman shows like Evil and The Unicorn in the hopes of improving their viewership before pulling a year later.
The theory here is that by removing season 3 of Victorious, you’re more likely to go and subscribe to Paramount+ which, you guessed it, is streaming all three seasons.
Netflix Internationally Availability Varies Dramatically
Although not every Netflix region carries Victorious, over 20 regions do according to Unogs including the likes of Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Latin America, and Asian regions.
With that said, availability of what seasons are available are all over the place. While regions like Canada and the United Kingdom continue to carry all three regions, many only carries the first season consisting of 20 episodes.
This highlights ViacomCBS’s scattered approach to licensing across the globe and brings up the question as to whether it’d be better for Netflix to simply not carry the show at all rather than the fragmented availability like they have now.
Victorious – Picture: Nickelodeon
On the bright side, you can watch more of Victoria Justice on Netflix this year with the release of the 2021 movie Afterlife of the Party in September.
Will you be signing up to Paramount+ to watch all three seasons of Victorious again or will you be sticking to just watching seasons 1 and 2 on Netflix? Let us know down in the comments.