The Witcher is the Biggest Series on Netflix – Here’s How

 The series was accessed by a massive number of accounts

The Witcher has been officially announced the biggest ever series for Netflix in a letter to the shareholders. The streaming company shared its fourth-quarter earnings along with a letter on Tuesday. In it, it also explained a larger change in its methodology regarding metrics that demonstrate the popularity of the show.

 

The letter said “As we’ve expanded our original content, we’ve been working on how to best share content highlights that demonstrate popularity. Given that we now have titles with widely varying lengths – from short episodes (e.g. Special at around 15 minutes) to long films (e.g. The Highwaymen at 132 minutes), we believe that reporting households viewing a title based on 70% of a single episode of a series or of an entire film, which we have been doing, makes less sense. We are now reporting on households (accounts) that chose to watch a given title.”

 

The letter also stated that under the new system “Short and long titles are treated equally, leveling the playing field for all types of our content including interactive content, which has no fixed length. The new metric is about 35% higher on average than the prior metric. For example, 45 million member households chose to watch Our Planet under the new metric vs. 33 million under the prior metric.”

Thanks to the updated approach, The Witcher emerged as the biggest series ever for Netflix. Through the first four weeks of the release, The Witcher was seen by 76 million member households.

 

In addition to The Witcher, the top performers for Netflix, despite tough competition from Amazon and Disney+ were You, with 54 million member households watching it and The Crown that was watched by 21 million member households.

Films were a big contributor in the said quarter too. The top performer was 6 Underground that stars Ryan Reynolds and was watched by 83 million member households within the first four weeks.

The data shared by Netflix is iconic not just because The Witcher has proved to be a money-maker but also because the streaming giant has been tight-lipped regarding the viewership in the past. Two main reasons why Netflix changed its approach could be that first, it wants to recruit more talent, and second, it wants to stoke up buzz.

 

Interestingly, Netflix data regarding The Witcher and other content cannot be trusted blindly because first, the numbers aren’t verified independently and second, they are not backed up with detailed data by the streaming giant. Netflix has the power to cherry-pick the highlights as there is not enough independent data to verify the same.

Netflix’s number sharing is good news for The Witcher fans as the series will have many seasons. The CEO of the company, Reed Hasting, said “Netflix’s fantasy series The Witcher is “a massive new franchise that will develop season after season.”