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Netflix says The Witcher is “tracking to be our biggest season one TV series ever.”

Maple

Maple

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,732
Netflix's Q4 2019 earnings are here, and so are the first official numbers for Netflix's latest streaming hit The Witcher. The company says the series was watched by 76 million households, making it the most-watched first season of television ever for Netflix. That's according to Netflix's newly unveiled definition of "watched," which it changed from "watched 70 percent of a single episode of a series" to anyone who "chose to watch and did watch for at least 2 minutes."
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To put that number in perspective, two minutes of The Witcher is less time than it takes to reach the opening credits of the first episode; the action-packed cold opening is coincidentally two minutes and 16 seconds long. By Netflix's new metric, anyone who watched just the opening scene of the episode (or 3.2 percent of the total runtime of the episode, which is itself one of eight episodes) is now counted as a view for the entire season. That is also shorter than the amount of time it would take to listen to the hit song "Toss a Coin to Your Witcher," which is also featured in the series.

Still, no matter how you slice it, 76 million households in the first four weeks is a lot of eyes on The Witcher, which Netflix says is "tracking to be our biggest season one TV series ever."
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Toss another coin to your Witcher.
 
Morrigan

Morrigan

Spear of the Metal Church
Member
Oct 24, 2017
34,362
Toss a co...
Maple said:
Toss another coin to your Witcher.
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Cls22LB.gif
 
Saucycarpdog

Saucycarpdog

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,351
That's according to Netflix's newly unveiled definition of "watched," which it changed from "watched 70 percent of a single episode of a series" to anyone who "chose to watch and did watch for at least 2 minutes."
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I wonder why they changed the definition.
 
Van Bur3n

Van Bur3n

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
26,089
By Netflix's new metric, anyone who watched just the opening scene of the episode (or 3.2 percent of the total runtime of the episode, which is itself one of eight episodes) is now counted as a view for the entire season.
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Makes sense to me.

Maybe that reviewer who watched only the first episode and then skipped to the end of the season had the right idea.
 
RatskyWatsky

RatskyWatsky

Are we human or are we dancer?
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,931
75 million people watching at least 2 minutes of a single episode

the most-watched first season of television ever for Netflix

🥴
 
Cosmonaut X

Cosmonaut X

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,947
That definition of watched is worthless. I'm sure they have metrics to support the success of the series, but that's just a fudge to allow them to claim that vast number of households.
 

TronLight

Member
Jun 17, 2018
2,457
Maple said:
That's according to Netflix's newly unveiled definition of "watched," which it changed from "watched 70 percent of a single episode of a series" to anyone who "chose to watch and did watch for at least 2 minutes."
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Wow. I guess I watched it too since I watched the first 10 mins of the first episode.
 
PlanetSmasher

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,742
I'm so happy for them. Legitimately. The show is a mess, but MOST of that came from the messy story structure, which shouldn't be nearly as much of an issue next season.

I want to see more Geralt and Jaskier and Yen (and Ciri) ASAP.
 
affeinvasion

affeinvasion

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,951
It's pretty big. I was at a random bar getting lunch with my wife yesterday and a couple of women in their early 20s were talking about it next to us.
 
tucah

tucah

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,244
Their most watched* show

*as long as you watched two minutes of it

what a completely useless metric
 
astro

astro

Member
Oct 25, 2017
56,969
It doesn't really matter how fudged their numbers are for public show. What matters is if it's a successes relative to their other shows.
 
RDreamer

RDreamer

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,106
The metric obviously doesn't make sense to cross compare to some other television analytics, but if it's the most tuned into Netflix series ever that still says something big. It says no matter if people stayed in for the whole thing, an ass ton at least wanted this sort of content. More than any other content Netflix has had.

If Netflix is actually happy with the series then it's good for fans and we'll get more. And we'll likely get more shows like this green lit.
 
Donos

Donos

Member
Nov 15, 2017
6,531
Imagine goodreads could track the read pages somehow: "People who read the first 20 pages of Eye of the World are getting tracked as having read the whole Wheel of Time series."
 
Moebius

Moebius

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,395
It's The Witcher. Of course it was going to be successful. Witcher 3 is one of the greatest RPG's of all time.
 
RDreamer

RDreamer

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,106
tucah said:
Their most watched* show

*as long as you watched two minutes of it

what a completely useless metric
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It's definitely not useless. It may not be comparable to other metrics but it's absolutely useful for Netflix to know how many have this type of content and this IP a chance.
 
His Majesty

His Majesty

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,171
Belgium
Season 1 was promising but I seriously hope they improve upon the acting, writing and cinematography. The show is still quite far from the quality of the games.
 
henhowc

henhowc

Member
Oct 26, 2017
33,539
Los Angeles, CA
It was already renewed for S2 before S1 dropped. But generally we'll know if people are watching a show and was enough to justify the budget if it gets picked up again.

Now everyone go watch Sex Education.
 
sfedai0

sfedai0

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,957
No doubt helped in small part the travesty that is the GoT series. Gotta wash out that horrible taste.
 
Antiax

Antiax

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,652
I hope Netflix increases budget for S2 and hires screenwriters from Poland / Europe in addition to the current team.
 
rashbeep

rashbeep

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,464
His Majesty said:
Season 1 was promising but I seriously hope they improve upon the acting, writing and cinematography. The show is still quite far from the quality of the games.
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This really only applies to the third game really, and even then the show is at least on par. The game series as a whole have many instances of bad acting and dialogue
 
Falchion

Falchion

Member
Oct 25, 2017
40,963
Boise
That's awesome! I just finished the first season and really enjoyed it so hopefully they'll invest even more in the second.
 
Ryaaan14

Ryaaan14

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,055
Chicago
Hey fuckheads hb u crunch the numbers and find out how many ppl watched the whole episode until the credits haha what a novel idea huh

Great show tho
 
sabrina

sabrina

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,174
newport beach, CA
They want a public conversation about the show. "I tried watching it and didn't care much for it" still gets the conversation going better than someone who ignores the show whole cloth.

astro said:
It doesn't really matter how fudged their numbers are for public show. What matters is if it's a successes relative to their other shows.
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Relative to other shows and what they're spending on each, yeah.
 
catboy

catboy

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,322
it's good that they released it in the format they did (binge drop) rather than weekly, as some sites somehow figured that they should. i think if it had been released weekly it wouldn't have taken off in the same way, given the first two episodes are some of the weakest and the show would be quite confusingly structured with a weekly break.
 

BAD

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,565
USA
astro said:
It doesn't really matter how fudged their numbers are for public show. What matters is if it's a successes relative to their other shows.
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RDreamer said:
The metric obviously doesn't make sense to cross compare to some other television analytics, but if it's the most tuned into Netflix series ever that still says something big. It says no matter if people stayed in for the whole thing, an ass ton at least wanted this sort of content. More than any other content Netflix has had.

If Netflix is actually happy with the series then it's good for fans and we'll get more. And we'll likely get more shows like this green lit.
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We can't know if they're even being honest about it being bigger than their other shows. Their new metric makes a watcher a useless easy box to check. So they may be comparing new watchers to old watchers and saying nothing at all. If their old shows got "X million watchers" in past press releases and they're still using those old measures to compare to The Witcher watchers, it's useless. The Witcher has inflated watchers and I don't see evidence they adjusted the comparisons for that.
 
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