Netflix used to never make their viewing stats public. Then a couple years ago they cried uncle and started revealing the number of viewing hours each of their films or shows amassed. Now they’ve cried uncle once again and added a different metric that more accurately reveals how many people are watching what — while still keeping some mystery about what’s being viewed.
As per Variety, on Tuesday the streaming giant started providing what one could call an estimated viewership for their shows and movies. This involves taking the hours people watched something then dividing it by running time. They’re also extending said measurements for lists of most popular all-time titles from their first 28 days to 91.
This tweak means that some of those lists have now been reshuffled slightly. For instance, everybody already knew that the first season of Wednesday was absurdly popular. But while the show in its first three months had 1,718,800,000 hours viewed, it was shy of Stranger Things Season 4, which bagged 1,838,000,000, and was therefore the most watched Netflix TV season in its history.
With this new practice, though, Wednesday comes out on top. Stranger Things’ fourth season ran 13 hours and 4 minutes, meaning it had 140,700,000 views. Wednesday was much shorter: only six hours and 49 minutes. That means Wednesday had 252,100,000 views. Ergo, Wednesday Season 1 is now the most watched season since the streamer began.
(Others on the list include DAHMER, Bridgerton’s first two seasons, The Queen’s Gambit, The Night Agent Season 1, the first two seasons of The Witcher, and, of course, Stranger Things Season 3.)
As Variety notes, none of this means that people actually finished watching a film or series. It also doesn’t take into account rewatches. It’s still a relatively unscientific process and there’s no way of knowing how many actual people watched a show. But the new tweak does get the public a little closer to the truth. For now, though, all hail Wednesday, new queen of Netflix.
(Via Variety)