Netflix has given viewers a glimpse behind the curtain by revealing the viewership numbers for its 10 most-watched series and movies of all time.
The California-based streaming video platform, the world’s largest, released the information as part of its second quarter financial report (PDF) on Wednesday.
To add weight to the quality of the ranking data, the company now divides the number of hours viewed by a show’s runtime to prevent longer films from getting an advantage over shorter ones and give a better idea of how many times a show was watched in full.
The data is not only meant to help viewers decide on what to watch but also help content creators “understand what success looks like on Netflix”. Other streaming services are not as forthcoming about viewership statistics on their platforms, Netflix claimed.
The company has done well to fight off rivals in a space that has become increasingly competitive. Netflix said its own data shows streaming now consumes 38% of total daily screen time, up from 26% in May 2021.
| Top 10 most popular series | Hours (millions) | Hours/runtime (millions) |
| Squid Game season 1 | 2 200 | 265 |
| Wednesday season 1 | 1 700 | 252 |
| Stranger Things season 4 | 1 800 | 141 |
| Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story | 1 000 | 116 |
| Bridgerton season 1 | 929 | 113 |
| The Queen’s Gambit | 746 | 113 |
| Money Heist season 4 | 710 | 106 |
| Lupin season 1 | 396 | 100 |
| Money Heist season 5 | 900 | 99 |
| The Night Agent season 1 | 803 | 98 |
| Top 10 most popular movies | Hours (millions) | Hours/runtime (millions) |
| Red Notice | 454 | 231 |
| Don’t Look Up | 409 | 171 |
| The Adam Project | 281 | 158 |
| Bird Box | 325 | 157 |
| The Gray Man | 300 | 139 |
| We Can Be Heroes | 231 | 137 |
| Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery | 320 | 136 |
| Extraction | 267 | 136 |
| The Mother | 257 | 132 |
| Spenser Confidential | 239 | 129 |
The number of streaming services has more than doubled since then, but Netflix said its “strength in entertainment and technology” have seen its share of screen time grow by more than two percentage points in the past two years, a feat matched only by YouTube in the streaming category. — (c) 2023 NewsCentral Media