Netflix‘s release of viewing data for virtually its entire library provided the broadest public glimpse to date into the performance of movies and TV series on a streaming service. It could also prove to be a boon to the people who do business with the company.
The streamer on Dec. 12 put out a list of every movie, special and season of TV that drew at least 50,000 hours of viewing worldwide between January and June of 2023 and said it plans to issue similar semiannual reports in the future (with potentially less lag between the end of the reporting period and the release of data). Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told reporters the company has been on a “continuum” of becoming more transparent with data in the past couple of years — even as he insisted that it shares “much more detailed information” with creators.
The data release may not create much additional leverage for talent — “maybe in extreme cases,” one agency partner told The Hollywood Reporter — but multiple agents said it can provide key context to what Netflix does share with creators. The streamer shares seven- and 28-day performance metrics with creators and producers, but only for their own work. Although the numbers Netflix released cover a much longer period — six months — they for the first time show how titles compare to one another beyond the weekly top 10 lists the streamer puts out.
The limited series Kaleidoscope, for instance, had a big opening week in early January with 112.3 million hours of viewing but faded relatively soon after that, exiting the top 10 after four weeks and just under 194 million hours of watch time. After that, however, it added 58.5 million hours of viewing and ranks 12th on the six-month list. Season four of reality breakout Love Is Blind piled up 73.9 million hours — almost a third of its total of 229.7 million hours — in the weeks after its finale.
That’s crucial, because one of the frustrations showrunners and producers of streaming series and movies have noted is that even when they’re given data about their project, it’s difficult to suss out what it means with no points of comparison. Sarandos admitted to reporters that Netflix’s lack of transparency in the past led to “an atmosphere of mistrust” with creatives — a point striking writers and actors repeatedly emphasized during their labor actions earlier in the year. Data transparency was a key negotiating point for both unions.
Another agent notes that with comparisons now more available, it also might make breaking bad news to a client easier if their Netflix project underperforms.
The data Netflix released isn’t the final say in whether a TV series lives or dies. As is the case with traditional TV, budgets, license fees if a show comes from an outside studio and other factors play a role. Netflix also employs metrics like completion rate and subscriber retention in its decision-making — and those are likely to stay under lock and key.
Nor will the worldwide figures Netflix released be of much help to determine success-based streaming residuals in the newly won contracts for writers and actors. Members of both unions will get bonuses if a project they work on clears a “view” threshold (calculated by dividing total watch time by running time) equivalent to 20 percent of a platform’s domestic subscribers.
Nielsen’s U.S. streaming figures, combined with North American subscriber counts released publicly in streamers’ (or their parent companies’) earnings reports can get to a rough estimate of that figure, which could serve as a jumping-off point for agents and other talent reps. But only a handful of guild administrators will be privy to the true numbers.
Still, dealmakers are taking the data dump as a net positive for their business — and not just in terms of their own clients. “It may give all of us real [insight] on what works,” the agency partner says. “We can learn from that. The consumer voice matters.”
Additional reporting by Lacey Rose.