Netflix released a massive amount of streaming data on Tuesday – with total views of more than 18,000 movies and TV seasons for the first half of 2023.
Overall, it’s an almost overwhelming amount of information that suggests Netflix’s ability to attract its huge subscriber base (just under 239 million at the end of the period covered in the data dump) – and maybe not a ton more? The statistics shown refer to the total number of hours viewed. This is how Netflix measures engagement across its entire portfolio. However, it is also not the metric that the streamer uses to sort its weekly top 10 lists. These use the “view” formula of total watch time divided by running time, leveling the playing field somewhat for films and series with shorter running times. (And, of course, there are also economic factors and other metrics that influence decision-making and that the company continues to retain.)
That explains why Wednesday is fourth on the 18,000-title list released Tuesday, but first in Netflix’s all-time ranking of English-language series (which also only covers the first 13 weeks of release). Season four of Stranger Things had more viewing time during this period, but since then Wednesday’Even though its overall running time was more than six hours shorter, it ranked first in views.
After studying the huge table, here are a few things that stand out.
A completely different Top 25: DR. Ana-Christina RamónDirector of UCLA’s Entertainment & Media Research Initiative – which produces a Hollywood diversity report every year – found that six of the top 25 titles on the list (Wednesday, La Reina del Sur season three, FUBAR, manifesto season four, The mother And Fake profile/false profile) have Latin American leads or co-leads. Nine more entries in the top 25 – Ginny and Georgia exists twice, in each of the two seasons – also with people of color in leading roles or co-leading roles. That means 60 percent of the 25 biggest titles on the streamer from January to June include people from the global majority.
In addition, six of the top 25 – La Reina Del Sur, fake profile and Korean series The Glory, Physical: 100, crash course in romance And Doctor Cha – are available in languages other than English (although dubbed versions also exist).
Hard breaks: The most watched show that was ultimately canceled is Sex/life, which reached 175.5 million hours for its second season, which premiered in early March, and 126.4 million hours for its first season (available every six months). The second season received 45 percent less airtime in the first four weeks than the first season (already with two fewer episodes), but both seasons landed in the top 70 titles from January to June.
Right behind Sex/life is the fantasy drama Shadow and Bone, which Netflix cut in November. There were 292.4 million hours watched across the two seasons (including 192.9 million hours in the second season). Netflix has also cut several other shows Shadow and Bone as it assessed its priorities following the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike in November.
No thanks: About 21 percent of the 18,214 entries in the Netflix chart – 3,813 in total – were watched between 50,000 and 149,999 hours (rounded to 100,000), a barely noticeable amount of time when the total list is more than 93 billion As far as we can tell, this is the least-watched series that a) was a Netflix original, b) was released worldwide, and c) was available every six months Making the Witcher: Blood Origin. It is a 14-minute behind-the-scenes documentary released on the same day (December 25, 2022) as the limited series spin-off The Witcher with Michelle Yeoh. Blood origin itself had 65.3 million viewing hours from January to June.
The office is still a thing! At least in other parts of the world. The long-running NBC sitcom has been off Netflix in the US since 2020, but between January and June, its nine seasons were watched a total of 341.1 million hours worldwide.
Here are the top 20 titles on the list again, followed by a few select shows further down the rankings.
At No. 50 Is The recruit (146.9 million viewing hours), the spy drama starring Noah Centineo as a young CIA officer. The premiere took place on December 16, 2022. Although nearly 147 million hours of viewing time is a large number, The recruit is 30 percent below 20th place (Luther: The fallen sun) and a whopping 82 percent less than The night agentwhich is clearly in first place with 812.1 million viewing hours.
Come in 100 Is That 90s show (95.1 million hours), the streamer’s sequel That 70’s show (which, by the way, is streaming on Peacock), which featured most of the original cast for at least a few episodes.
At No. 200 is season four of Suits (64.2 million hours), which was the best-selling streaming show in the United States for most of the summer and fall, according to Nielsen rankings. The film premiered on Netflix in the US on June 17, but has been available in other territories for years – which explains the discrepancy between the streamer’s weekly top 10 rankings and its semi-annual list. The fourth season never made the global top 10 – only the first season did after its US debut – but the boost from the US premiere coupled with half a year of being seen elsewhere in the world brought the show to relatively high places in the rankings.
Falling down on Line 1,000 On the table it is the third season of the French animated series Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir at 21.4 million hours. Wonder is related to the film Hard target 2, which (who knew?) is a sequel/remake of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s 1993 film (although Van Damme wasn’t involved). So the titles are listed alphabetically Wonder gets the round number.
Our last stop is at the entrance No. 7,830where the British film from 2014 ’71 is the first of 302 titles with 1 million viewing hours. Netflix rounded each show’s watch time to the nearest 100,000, so all 302 of these shows and movies were watched for somewhere between 950,000 and 1,049,999 hours. This in turn means that you start with Entries 8,132 (Mister., a documentary about filmmaker Robert Downey Sr.), every other title on the list was viewed for fewer than 950,000 hours. These 10,082 titles make up the majority of the entries on the list, but collectively they only accounted for 3 percent of the 93.46 billion hours watched.
