Netflix Changes Up Its 'Viewership' Formula — What Now Tops Their All-Time Top 10 Lists?
In a bid to offer a "more relatable metric" to viewers and the industry alike, Netflix has altered how it builds its in-house Top 10 lists.
"We heard feedback that only providing hours viewed on our Top 10 lists was hard to contextualize," the streaming titan said in an email relaying its latest Top 10 rankings, "so over the last few months we started to share the views for a good number of our titles (i.e. the number of hours viewed divided by the total run time).
"This proved to be a more relatable metric for many people," the message continued, so "while we will continue to show hours viewed per title, our Top 10 lists will now be ranked by views."
"We will also extend the qualifying time for our most popular lists from around one month (28 days) to three months (91 days), given that many of our shows and films grow significantly over time."
Per this brand-new methodology, Wednesday now stands as Netflix's most popular English TV title, with 252.1 million "views" of its 6.8 hour first season. It thus leapfrogs Stranger Things Season 4 (140.7 million "views"), though the latter boasts 7% more total hours viewed.
DAHMER (115.6 million views), Bridgerton Season 1 (113.3 million) and The Queen's Gambit (112.8 million) round up the Top 5, followed by The Night Agent, Stranger Things Season 3, Bridgerton Season 2, The Witcher Season 1 and The Watcher Season 1.
The South Korean action thriller Squid Game, however, remains Netflix's most popular title overall, topping the non-English Top 10 with 265 million "views"; Money Heist places a distance second on that chart with 106 million views.
This change in viewership metric is but the latest reformulation Netflix has embraced over the years. For a hot minute in the beginning, the streamer touted viewership as a measure of member accounts that watched at least two minutes (!) of a TV series or movie. But since October 2021, viewership for new originals has been reported as a total of hours watched by all member accounts.