Streaming giant Netflix has released its first ever engagement report revealing viewing data for thousands of TV shows and movies following criticism from industry experts over its lack of transparency.
Titled “What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report,” the report was published on Dec. 13 and includes viewership data for the movies and TV shows released on the streaming service between the six-month period from January to June.
According to the platform, the report will be released twice a year going forward.
The latest report covers more than 18,000 titles—representing 99 percent of all viewing on Netflix—and nearly 100 billion hours viewed, the streaming platform said in a press release.
That includes the hours viewed for every title—for both Netflix original content and licensed TV shows and movies—watched for over 50,000 hours, the premiere date for any Netflix original TV series or film, and whether a title was available globally.
While over 60 percent of Netflix titles released between January and June appeared on the company’s “Top 10” list, which has been published weekly since 2021, the latest report is measured differently when compared to that list; by hours viewed instead of just “views” which Netflix defines as the number of hours viewed divided by the total runtime.
Most Popular Shows, Movies
According to Tuesday’s report, action-thriller “The Mother,” starring actress and singer Jennifer Lopez, was the most-watched movie on Netflix for the first six months of this year, garnering 249.9 million viewing hours.Meanwhile, the most-watched TV shows on Netflix from January to June were “The Night Agent” Season 1, which racked up 812.1 million viewing hours, and “Ginny & Georgia” Season 2, which totaled over 665 million hours viewed.
That was followed by “The Glory” Season 1, which garnered 622.8 million viewing hours and “Wednesday” Season 1, starring actress Jenny Ortega, which racked up 507.7 million viewing hours.
The report comes after Netflix’s lack of transparency with regard to engagement became a key issue during entertainment industry strikes held by actors and writers earlier this year. Industry experts had urged the platform to bolster transparency about their viewership numbers to ensure creators are fairly compensated based on engagement.
‘Atmosphere of Mistrust’
During a call with reporters Tuesday, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that the Los Gatos, California-headquartered streaming giant has become “increasingly more and more transparent about what people are watching on Netflix.”“When we started streaming 16 years ago, it was a pretty exotic proposition. There were no other streamers to compare it to us and comparing live TV or live-plus-seven to Netflix on demand was like comparing apples to oranges. But as we’ve grown, streaming has become more mainstream in the U.S.—it makes up more TV time than cable or broadcast,” Mr. Sarandos said.
“The unintended consequence of not having more transparent data about our engagement was it created an atmosphere of mistrust over time with producers, creators, and the press about what was happening on Netflix,” the Netflix co-CEO continued.
“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,” he added.
Still, Mr. Sarandos insisted that the recent push for Netflix to increase viewership transparency from industry experts was not the main reason behind the platform releasing the new report, adding that it has “been on a continuum for several years.”
“So this is not driven by anything differently than that,” the co-CEO said.
