Netflix on Tuesday unveiled its first weekly report, intended to improve transparency by ranking its most popular shows and movies based on the number of hours each is viewed on the streaming service.
The data, accessible at Top10.Netflix.com, breaks out the streaming provider’s top 10 movies and shows worldwide by English and non-English titles and number of hours viewed, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In a blog post, Pablo Perez De Rosso, the company’s vice president of content strategy, planning and analysis, called the new tracking website an “important step forward for Netflix, the creators we work with and our members.”
Netflix previously measured a program’s viewership based on the number of subscribers who watch at least two minutes of it, “an approach that critics felt was too low a bar to measure the popularity of a program,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
“People want to understand what success means in a streaming world, and these lists offer the clearest answer to that question in our industry,” he added.
According to the Times, the most-watched Netflix show worldwide in its first 28 days was “Squid Game.” The Korean-language thriller easily topped the non-English TV list with 1.6 billion viewing hours. By contrast, the Regency-era romance “Bridgerton” topped the English-language TV list with 625 million viewing hours in its first 28 days.
According to Netflix’s inaugural lists, “Squid Game” continued its non-English reign the week of Nov. 8 to 14 with 42.79 million viewing hours, followed by Season 1 of the Korean-language romance series “The King’s Affection.” Season 3 of “Narcos: Mexico” topped the premier English-language list with 50.29 million viewing hours
Meanwhile, “Red Notice,” starring Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot, topped the English-language film list for last week with 148.7 million viewing hours, followed by romantic comedy “Love Hard” with 58.56 million hours watched.
Netflix will also show top 10 lists for movies and films that are geographic specific to more than 90 countries, but will not show hours viewed for country-specific lists, the Times reported.
The viewership overhaul is in direct response to criticism that the streaming service is not transparent enough with customers, investors or even its own producers in terms of providing viewership data, the Journal reported.
“Nonsense. BS. Cherry Picked. Unaudited. We’ve had a lot of feedback about our metrics over the years. So this summer, we went back to the drawing board,” Perez De Rosso wrote in his blog post.