Netflix quietly made a change in its "Top 10" rankings last week that should ultimately result in Season 4 of original series hit Stranger Things becoming the streaming service's most popular show ever.
Netflix ranks popularity of its programs based on total hours viewed per account globally in the first 28 days after premiere. Currently, Season 1 of Korean-language sci-fi horror series Squid Game ranks No. 1 all time overall on Netflix, capturing more nearly 1.7 billion viewing hours in the four weeks following its September debut. Bridgerton Season 2 is the most popular English-language series, with more than 656 million viewing hours in its first 28 days on platform.
Also read: Who's No. 1 in Subscription Streaming? Muddled Metrics Methodologies Make Matters Murky
However, for shows like Stranger Things, which stagger the release of their campaigns, Netflix has adopted a new rule that provides an additional 28 days of accounting after the release of the season's second leg.
That means that Netflix will tally viewing hours for the first seven episodes of Stranger Things for the 28-day period following their premiere in each country. (In the U.S., the season started last Friday, May 27.)
The change: Stranger Things Season 4 will get another 28-day shot clock starting July 1, when the final two episodes of Season 4 debut.
Hat tip to CNET for first spotting this.
For its part, Stranger Things Season 4, Vol. 1 captured nearly 287 million viewing hours just in its first three days on Netflix last week. As CNET noted, the show's current trajectory over a 56-day window should move it past Squid Game at some point.
Certainly, ranking Stranger Things by the cumulative total of its four seasons would render it the platform's most popular show of all time. But that's not how Netflix, which debuted its publicly effacing "Top 10" rankings in September, does things.
Sure, call this all arcane vanity data -- a "fantastic promotional tool for Netflix," as one research company executive told Next TV last week.
But as Netflix -- and the broader video business -- pivot to ad-supported business models, the evolution of metrics matters. This is particularly true at a time when outside measurement sources like Nielsen -- which doesn't even account for cross-platform usage in its rankings -- offer deeply flawed alternatives.
