Netflix's galaxy of measurable content, partially captured here (Photo Illustration by Chesnot/Getty ... [+]
When Netflix
Netflix refused to release any numbers, confounding and frustrating an entire industry built on “size comparisons.”
Whether it’s the weekend box-office, the “Power Issue” of Vanity Fair or a company’s basic market cap, Hollywood has a culture that’s both ego and bottom-line oriented. It assumes new companies will simply adopt its culture and share figures, just like every other company has since the entertainment industry’s birth, just over a century ago.
Netflix, however, has never played by Hollywood’s rules or been swayed by its norms, unless those norms serve Netflix itself, and its partners.
A few examples of Netflix bucking the “Hollywood Way”:
1. Offering an entire season when a show premieres on its platform, versus the traditional TV model of rolling out episodes in a linear, original-episode-per-week, fashion
2. Being a “big-tent” subscription-based content brand, aiming to serve all four quadrants (single, family, young and old) of the viewing public, versus its premium cable competition, that aims exclusively for elite, R-rated-skewing subscribers
3. Netflix goes “straight to series” off of scripts, versus asking producers to make a sample “pilot” before proceeding to multiple episodes of production
4. The streamer rarely participates in the Television Critics Association Press Tours (a semi-annual event where executives and shows from the rest of the Hollywood landscape make themselves available over the course of three weeks for interviews and previews of their content), further keeping an information-hungry public at bay
(And all of those examples pertain to episodic television. Some other time we’ll discuss how Netflix has been similarly disruptive in the feature film space.)
Despite - - or perhaps due to - - these unique practices, experts value Netflix as the most successful streaming platform, whether judging from its global subscription base (190+ subscribers worldwide) or its Emmy and Oscar nominations and wins.
When Nielsen finally convinced both Netflix and Amazon to participate in weekly episodic performance estimates, debuting this week, some surprises surfaced:
1. All of the top performing shows were acquisitions, not original content, with the exception of Season Two of The Umbrella Academy, which premiered in the pole position. In other words, nine out of the 10 “most watched” shows on Netflix were shows made elsewhere but acquired as “re-run” material for the streaming platform.
2. None of the top ten shows were on Amazon
3. Shows that never made it to the top 10 when they ran originally on network and cable, easily made it on to Netflix’s top 10 (i.e. Moesha, Parks and Recreation, Supernatural)
4. According to Nielsen, Netflix and Amazon have “views” that can potentially rate in the billions, versus the millions
It should be noted that Nielsen is attempting to include Disney
All of the streamers will inevitably have their own data and thus their own stories to spin, when it comes to performance.
For example, if a Netflix subscriber even does a casual, anecdotal survey of what Netflix considers its top 10 shows via its own homepage, compared to what Nielsen’s reporting, there are vast differences - - chief among them, more original content pops up on Netflix’s Top 10 list, versus acquired/repurposed programs.
We can speculate all day about why Netflix and Amazon chose to wait so long to collaborate with Nielsen and its consumers, but for now, one fact must be keeping Netflix up at night, versus all of the back and forth measuring of who’s show is biggest.
Disney+ has reported over 60 million subscribers, since launching 10 months ago.
Netflix has 190 million subscribers, but they’ve been streaming since 2007.
It should be interesting to see if/when Disney can overtake Netflix in the subscription game, which is the ultimate battlefield in the streaming wars.
Because when it comes to subscriptions, anyone will admit, size matters.
