The Witcher, 6 Underground Among Netflix’s Most Popular TV Series, Movies

Netflix, in its quarterly earnings report, unveiled on Tuesday, claimed that The Witcher and 6 Underground - both released in December - have emerged among its most popular TV series and movies respectively. The Henry Cavill-starrer fantasy series was watched by 76 million Netflix subscribers in the first four weeks of release, while the Ryan Reynolds-starrer Michael Bay action film had a figure of over 83 million. Which would make The Witcher the biggest season 1 for a Netflix show. Meanwhile, AAP season 2 is on track for 54 million, the animated film Claus was at 40 million, and Crown Season 3 did 21 million, 40 percent from season 2. All figures are from the first 28 days post-release.

More importantly, these new figures are based on Netflix's new methodology, which is loose - though possibly unbiased - than before. While Netflix's viewership was previously based on its members watching at least 70 percent of the film of a series or episode, it will now base its recording on members who choose to watch only a few, which is only 2 Is equal to minutes. This means that Netflix ratings are even lower now. But it thinks that "enough time to indicate the choice was intentional". Netflix justified the change by comparing the BBC iPlayer's new method to the "most popular" articles in the UK, New York Times, and YouTube view counts.

The problem is that it is immaterial for Netflix whether you continued watching after 2 minutes or quit because you didn't enjoy it. While even 70 per cent of an episode was not a great metric, 70 per cent of the length of a film was quite sufficient. If you don't enjoy something, you won't see much of its potential. At the same time, Netflix points out that its original content now has "widely varying lengths" - ranging from short episodes of about 15 minutes for special movies to 132 minutes for highwaymen. (A better example would have been The Irishman in 209 minutes, but you discover it.) Netflix thinks it makes "less sensitive" to use the old metric, which is why it's now at the 2-minute mark. Is using