Netflix Didn’t Offer Data Transparency Because of ‘Promise with Creators,’ Ted Sarandos Says

Tony Maglio
·2 min read
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Netflix recently promised more data transparency for creators — which, according to Netflix, is also the community it previously shielded from the numbers.

“Part of our reason for not publishing (viewership data) early was part of our promise with creators,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said during its October 18 earnings call. “At the time we started creating original programs, our creators felt like they were pretty trapped in this kind of overnight ratings world and weekend box-office world defining their success and failures. And as we all know, a show might have enormous success down the road and it wasn’t captured in that opening box office.”

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For years, Netflix famously did not share viewership metrics. Executives like Sarandos would also diss TV-ratings currency company Nielsen’s ability to measure programming, including Netflix’s. The two companies are now measurement partners on certain initiatives.

In early Summer 2021, Netflix began posting its own weekly Top 10 lists that included “Hours Viewed” for its top series and films. The list changed to focus on “Views” (“Hours Viewed” divided by runtime) about two years later.

Why ramp up the transparency now? (You know, beyond the fact that the new WGA contract — and presumably the upcoming SAG-AFTRA deal — mandates it.)

“Streaming itself is not that exotic anymore; we’ve been doing it for 15 years,” Sarandos said. “At the beginning, we thought there was a hard kind of apples-to-oranges comparison between ratings and streaming.”

Now, we’re “heading towards a world where streaming data will be much more readily available,” he said.

Sarandos’ remarks were part of Netflix’s third-quarter earnings interview. Netflix (financially) killed it in Q3, the summer quarter during which many of the same creatives whom the streamer protected from statistics spent picketing outside its offices, seeking those same statistics. Also on Wednesday, Netflix unveiled the details of that price hike we all knew was coming; read those here.

Hollyhood Hailey J in Netflix's "Wrestlers"
Hollyhood Hailey J in Netflix’s “Wrestlers”Courtesy of Netflix

The writers strike, which began on May 2, came to an end weeks ago. The actors strike is still ongoing and has no end in sight.

“We want nothing more than to resolve [the actors strike] and get back to work,” Sarandos said on Wednesday. “That’s true for Netflix, that’s true for every member of the AMPTP. It’s why our member CEOs have prioritized these negotiations above everything else we’re doing.”

“We’ve spent hours and hours with SAG-AFTRA over the last few weeks, and we were actually very optimistic we were making progress,” he continued. “But then at the very end of our last session together the guild presented this new demand… for a per-subscriber levy, unrelated to viewing or success, and this really broke our momentum unfortunately.”

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