Devil's advocate: What if "sifting through the crap" is not actually possible in the way you describe? After all, Netflix can't see the future ( nor anyone else ), when they greenlight a show or movie, they do so before it is produced. At that stage of the game, what if you can't reasonably tell the next Stranger Things or Orange is the New Black, from the next. . . well, something I can't name because it made no impression? *ahem* Sure, there may be some shows or movies where the concept is obviously terrible and creatives obviously out of their league. . . but I'm willing to bet that for the majority of them? A good show and a bad show look quite similar until after at least most of the production is done, and you can see whether things are coming together or not. And by the time most of the show is filmed, and half of it is edited and finished in post production? Its kind of too late to just can it.
Basically, the "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" model may very well be the only way to generate the quality successes, because film-making isn't a science, and nobody can really predict what will actually work on screen. . . or what will actually succeed with audiences. Which is the other looming issue: what if a pursuit of "quality" leads to *less* returns, because ten cheap productions that only have niche appeal still draw in more cumulative new and sustained viewers than one single expensive production? I doubt this is the case for a Stranger Things level megahit, but for stuff less broadly popular?
