As someone who also stopped watching 1899 by the 2nd episode, I don't think it's too narrow. Its based on a month of viewing hours, which is a cutthroat approach sure, but cable television often cancels shows before it's 1st season even finishes airing based off of bad viewership. Sometimes the set costsbare too high to maintain, locations to difficult to access, or just otherwise bad productions.

If a show doesn't test well the company won't spend extra money marketing it, which can lead to a less than ideal launch, giving it leas viewers than other content, which leads to an early cancellation. Shows often get the short end of the stick in this respect, but it's more a product of the market than the executives in charge of the decisions. Netflix's new pairing with the Nielsen ratings will help the transparency, but I'd argue they've done a fairly good job of using internal numbers in a transparent way.