Netflix Just Changed Its Top 10 Metrics, and ‘Wednesday’ Is Now Bigger Than ‘Stranger Things’
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Every month it seems like a new film or TV show crashes its way into Netflix’s lists of their most popular titles. First unveiled in June 2021, the streamer’s four Top 10 lists — for English TV, English Film, non-English TV, and non-English Film — are getting a shake-up, and the changes mean that there’s a new English language series that will take the crown as the streamer’s most popular show.
“Wednesday” has now usurped “Stranger Things” Season 4 as the most viewed English-language series on Netflix. That’s because under a new model for tracking the Top 10, the ranking will now be determined by the number of times a series or movie is viewed rather than its raw number of hours.
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Also under the new system, titles will now be tracked over the course of their first 91 days on the streamer, rather than the first 28 days. If that number sounds a little arbitrary, it translates to 13 weeks, or roughly one full financial quarter.
Though Netflix is now disclosing “views,” the viewership metric doesn’t literally translate to the number of times people turned the show on or watched to completion. Instead, Netflix determines a show’s views by dividing the raw hours viewed by its runtime, in order to estimate the number of people who may have watched the title. Netflix has tracked show’s views using this model in past months, and in the company’s press release Tuesday announcing the switch, attributed the decision to a desire for better tracking of audience engagement.
“Our hope is that by being consistent and transparent about what people are watching, Netflix can give everyone — consumers, creators, analysts and press — better insights into what success in streaming looks like more generally,” a blog post says. “We will continue to share more granular, title-specific data with creators, and as always, we’ll continue to listen to feedback.”
The new model favors highly viewed works with short runtimes, and most measurably impacts the English TV list. Here’s what it looks like now:
Previously, the fourth season of “Stranger Things” was Netflix’s most popular English series, with 1.35 million hours viewed over its first 28 days. Under the new metrics, it has slid down to No. 2, with “The Addams Family” spinoff “Wednesday” now leading the list, with 252 million “views” (1.718 million hours divided by a six hour and 49 minute runtime) compared to “Stranger Things” 140.7 million views. The “Stranger Things” season was heavily disadvantaged by its runtime; the episodes for Matt and Ross Duffer’s sci-fi series were heavily extended up to two hours during its fourth outing, resulting in a 13-hour season that was favored by the old system and penalized somewhat in the new one.
Aside from the new chart topper, the English TV list faced numerous shakeups; “The Queen’s Gambit,” previously not on the list at all, managed to reach No. 5 under the new system, while “The Watcher” sneaks in at No. 10; the two shows knock out previous entries “Lucifer” Season 5 and “Inventing Anna.” “Dahmer” remains tight at No. 3, while former No. 4 “Bridgerton” Season 2 sunk down to No. 8; it got replaced by its own first season, which rose from No. 6. “The Night Agent,” “Stranger Things” Season 3, and “The Witcher” round out the new top 10.
“Wednesday” is the only new No. 1 created by the shake-up; “Red Notice” is still the No. 1 English film, and Norwegian film “Troll” remains the top non-English original movie. Korean juggernaut “Squid Game” remains not just No. 1 non-English TV show, but the No. 1 show overall, with 265 million “views.”
New entries to the English Film list include the Mark Wahlberg action movie “Spenser Confidential” (2020) and Robert Rodriguez’s family adventure “We Can Be Heroes” (2020) with Pedro Pascal. Those replace short-lived entrant “The Mother” (which hasn’t hit the full 91 days yet but previously climbed to No. 6) and “The Unforgivable.” Take a look at all three lists below:
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