Netflix releases viewership data for 18,000 titles

In a big move towards transparency, streaming service Netflix has come out with viewership statistics for over 18 thousand titles for a period of six months with The Night Agent, a spy series, topping the top-20 chart with 812.1 million hours of views.

In its first “What We Watched” report, covering the period between January to June 2023, Netflix disclosed the viewership data for both original and licensed content, encompassing about 99 per cent of all viewing on the streaming platform.

No Indian show or movie made it to the top 20 list.

The Night Agent was followed by season two of Ginny & Georgia with 665.1 million hours and Korean drama The Glory with 622.8 million hours.

Series Wednesday, which was released in November 2022, ranked fourth at 507.7 million hours of viewing.

The top 10 titles included -- Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, You season four, La Seina del Sur season three, Outer Banks season three, Ginny & Georgia season one, and FUBAR season one.

The company also revealed that about 55 percent of viewing was for originals and 45 percent was for licensed shows and films.

From the licensed shows, Suits had a combined 599 million hours of viewing worldwide on Netflix across all nine seasons.

Netflix said it will begin sharing bi-annual reports, which will rank almost all of its shows and movies by the amount of hours viewed over the past six months.

"Over the last 16 years of streaming one constant has been people asking for more viewing information," Netflix co-chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos said on a call with journalists.

"It is a comprehensive deep dive into what people are watching on Netflix around the world and it is an important milestone for our industry," he added.

The company, Sarandos said, has been getting "increasingly transparent about what people are watching on Netflix".

"In November 2021, we started publishing our Top 10 lists and our Most Watched Titles across film and television as well as our Most Popular list. We also privately share title information with our creators. But we wanted to go even further," he said.

Netflix had attracted criticism for not sharing the viewership data, especially during the twin strikes by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).

The call for transparency from streamers was among the contentious issues flagged by the two guilds.

However, Sarandos said Hollywood strikes had nothing to do with the streamer's decision to share viewership numbers.

"This has been on a continuum for several years. So this is not driven by anything differently than that. I think it’s really important, that’s why I did say earlier, that lack of data, lack of transparency, the unintended consequence was this kind of mistrust, this environment of mistrust around the data.

"So this is probably more information than you need, but I think it creates a better environment for the guilds, for us, for the producers, for creators, and for the press,” the co-CEO said.