This story first ran in Buffering, Vulture’s newsletter about the streaming industry. Head to vulture.com/buffering and subscribe today! If you want to stare at a spreadsheet of viewing data that is at once interesting but also misleading, Netflix has put out another of its semiannual engagement reports .
While the streamer absolutely deserves credit for this sliver of transparency, the way Netflix releases its data remains problematic. By only putting out a report every six months, the company makes drawing comparisons between shows incredibly difficult. For example the title it crowns most-viewed — Fool Me Once — has 107 million views, while season three of Bridgerton sits at No.
2 with just under 92 million views. Problem is, Fool was released on January 1, the very first day of the reporting period, while Bridgerton didn’t release the second half of its season until June 13. Not everyone rushes out to watch shows the minute they come out, and I am pretty certain that once Bridgerton’ s third season is six months past its release date, it will exceed the 107 million views of Fool Me Once .
While there will always be comparison issues when releasing nonlinear ratings, Netflix could go a long way toward solving this problem — and toward real transparency — by releasing this sort of cumulative ratings data monthly or releasing a weekly top 100 instead of the very limited top-ten numbers it puts out now. For now, we’ll have to settle for the lists we have. 1.
F.