Netflix took a bold step toward data transparency by releasing a comprehensive list of viewing times on it’s platform.
The streaming giant exposed their data for the first half of 2023, showing where the highs and lows were in their viewership and capturing trends and patterns in a way that’s never before been shared with the public.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos admitted his awareness that the previous lack of transparency ended up “creating an atmosphere of mistrust over time,” and said the company has been on a “continuum” of becoming more forthcoming, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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AND BOTH MAMMA MIASHere’s a peek at what’s coming to Netflix in January! pic.twitter.com/m1C0smwa7X
— Netflix (@netflix) December 13, 2023
Netflix released worldwide viewing data for more than 18,000 movies and series of television between January and June. The streaming agency’s calculations were based on total hours viewed, as a way of measuring engagement, rather than the “view” formula, which involved totaling the viewing time, and dividing that by running time, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Lauren Smith, VP of strategy and analyst for Netflix, presented the data Tuesday and noted the weekly top 10 charts embraced 18,214 titles that all had at least 50,000 hours of viewing over the six-month period. The data is reported to have captured 99% of all viewing on Netflix, and is the biggest data deep-dive that has ever been publicly shared.
The data showed “The Night Agent” was the biggest title on Netflix, with 812.1 million hours of viewing.
Season two of “Ginny & Georgia” slid into second place with 665.1 million viewing hours.
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— Netflix (@netflix) December 13, 2023
Korean drama “The Glory” came in at 622.8 million hours. while “Wednesday” saw 507.7 million hours of viewing.
By comparison, “Suits” clocked in a combined 599 million hours of viewing worldwide across all nine seasons, according to The Hollywood Reporter.(RELATED: Netflix Invested $55 Million Into Show That Was Never Produced Due To Filmmaker’s Bizarre Behavior: REPORT)
“This is probably more information than you need, but it creates a better environment for us, for the guilds, for producers and creators, and for the press,” Sarandos said.
Netflix plans to continue issuing semiannual reports of its viewing time.