Wednesday goes ahead of Stranger Things: Netflix changes the calculation of its audiences
The famous “Top 10” of the platform will now be determined from the “views” and a new calculation that will take into account the duration of the programs.
It’s a small revolution for netflix and in industry: with the aim of offering a “more relevant metric“to viewers and the media world, the streaming giant is changing the way it builds its audience measurements and therefore its Top 10.
netflix explain : “We’ve heard feedback that it’s hard to contextualize only providing watch hours in our Top 10 lists. So over the last few months we’ve started sharing views for our programs, that’s i.e. the number of hours watched divided by the total running time. This turned out to be a more relevant metric for many people. So while we will continue to display hours viewed by title, our Top 10 lists will now be sorted by views. We’ll also be extending the qualifying deadline for our most popular lists from one month (28 days) to three months (91 days), as many of our shows and movies grow significantly over time.”
Netflix Tweaks Its Top 10 Rankings, Adds View Count https://t.co/VRFZAb6pAN
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) June 20, 2023
With this new methodology, the top Netflix series of all time changes somewhat. The South Korean action thriller Squid Game remains Netflix’s most popular title, with 265 million “views”. On the other hand, Wednesday, starring Jenna Ortega, moved up to 2nd place and became Netflix’s most popular English-language series, with 252.1 million “views” for its season 1 spread over approximately 7 hours. It thus doubles season 4 of Stranger Things (140.7 million “views”), although the latter has 7% more hours viewed (since it is longer). Dahmer (115.6 million views) and season 1 of Bridgerton (113.3 million) complete the Top 5, followed by The Queen’s Game (112.8 million). Then, we find the recent series The Night Agent, Stranger Things Season 3, Bridgerton Season 2, The Witcher Season 1 and The Watcher Season 1.