Photo: Christian Black/Netflix
A wave of high-profile releases caught the attention of subscribers, suggests the list
In 2020, the streaming paradigm as audiences know it will splinter like never before. On top of Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, the newly launched Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus, WarnerMedia will launch HBO Max, NBC Universal will debut Peacock, and newcomers like Quibi will burst on to mobile devices with dreams of luring people away from traditional media. There will be original shows, original movies, and original interactives on nearly every platform. Network, cable, and theatrical distribution will still exist, flooding each platform with even more content.
If self-reported, end-of-2019 numbers are any indication, the people behind Netflix aren’t worried about the swell of competition. Those who subscribe to Netflix seem to spend plenty of time watching Netflix content — original and licensed. As reported by Recode via Netflix’s released data, here are the 10 most popular shows and movies that premiered on the platform in 2019,
- Murder Mystery (full review)
- Stranger Things 3 (full review)
- 6 Underground (full review)
- The Incredibles 2
- The Irishman (full review)
- The Witcher (full review)
- Triple Frontier (full review)
- Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (full review)
- The Umbrella Academy (full review)
- The Highwayman
There aren’t too many surprises on the list, even if the company resists actual data transparency and the view count isn’t comparable to a list of a year’s top-grossing films. In 2017, Netflix reported that users had spent nearly 500 million hours watching Adam Sandler movies on the platform, and Murder Mystery reportedly saw 30 million people watch in the first weekend when the movie dropped over the summer. Despite his best movie ever premiering in theaters this month, Netflix subscribers remain Sandman loyalists.
The blockbustery Stranger Things earns the second-to-top spot, while Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour crime drama The Irishman, Michael Bay’s 6 Underground, and the fantasy epic The Witcher, after being heavily promoted on the platform over the last few weeks, also cracked the list.
So how does Netflix judge what its subscribers have watched? According to the company, Netflix looked at “the number of accounts choosing to watch at least two minutes of a series, movie or special during its first 28 days on Netflix in 2019.” Netflix says it used that two-minutes-watched metric to determine what’s popular, describing that small slice of viewership as “a far more pure way to measure popularity rather than 70% metric we’ve used in the past (which discriminates against longer form content).”
As for some recently released content cracking the top 10 — The Witcher and 6 Underground were both released mid-December — Netflix says that anything with less than 28 days on the streaming service “incorporates viewing predictions.”
As Recode notes, Netflix currently touts 160 million subscribers worldwide, and importantly, that base will evidently watch what it’s served. As Netflix staples like The Office and Friends escape to new platforms in 2020, the company will count on originals — and whatever Adam Sandler wants to whip together with his pals — to make a bigger splash.
Source: Polygon
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