It’s going to be great news for all lovers of Netflix. The streaming giant usually doesn’t reveal their numbers, but in a change of heart and to show the world that they’re still one of the most popular OTT platforms, Netflix has released the numbers this year. Well, it has released viewership data on 99% of its catalogue for the very first time and one show seems to have been the winner all the way – ‘The Night Agent’.
Netflix released the data which showed that ‘The Night Agent’ was viewed by people for 812 Million hours. The show was released in the first half of the year, and therefore it even got a good number of months to build its viewership. Whatever the case, it’s definitely the most popular political thriller of the year, which people have not only watched but rewatched and rewatched.
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Netflix has time and again been accused of hiding its streaming data. But ever since the writers and actors went on a strike this year over transparency and salary raises, the steaming giant decided to hold up to their end of the bargain. Actors, writers and others have been constantly asking for higher royalties for shows that have done well, but if there is no data to go by then how would one know which worked and which didn’t? Therefore, it was imperative that such a consolidated data be released by Netflix.
They released the data in a blog post. As per a report on BBC, Netflix wrote, “This is a big step forward for Netflix and our industry. We believe the viewing information in this report... will give creators and our industry deeper insights into our audiences, and what resonates with them.”
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Besides ‘The Night Agent’, other shows that garnered great viewership were ‘Ginny And Georgia’, ‘Gilmore Girls’, ‘Seinfeld’, ‘Friends’ and ‘The Office’. The overall viewing time went over 100 billion hours.
Among the films, Jennifer Lopez starrer ‘The Mother’, which was released on Mother’s Day was the topmost viewed project. It has a viewership of over 249 Million hours.
In the same blog post, Netflix also revealed that almost one-third of their viewership time came from non-English content. They even wrote that there was huge demand for older titles which got humongous repeat value.
“Success on Netflix comes in all shapes and sizes and is not determined by hours viewed alone. We have enormously successful movies and TV shows with both lower and higher hours viewed. It's all about whether a movie or TV show thrilled its audience — and the size of that audience relative to the economics of the title,” wrote the company in the blog post.
Netflix co-CEO, Ted Sarandos also spoke to the media on a conference call. As per the BBC, he accepted that previously there was a lack of transparency about how popular a particular show was, and that led to a huge distrust among the people who were working on the shows and bringing them to life. He admitted that the data was being kept private as they didn’t want to give away crucial information to other competitors.
Well, with such high numbers, the competition seems to have been left long behind, isn’t it?
