A close read of the streamer’s data shows fewer episodes to start means less time spent with a given season – but the strategy can also help with the preferred view metric.
Netflix‘s decision to break up some of its scripted shows can translate to more series views even with less total time spent on some shows.
Season four of Netflix’s YA drama Outer Banks debuted at the top of the streamer’s TV charts for the week of Oct. 7, racking up 62.3 million hours of viewing worldwide. It was a strong showing — particularly considering it was only for half a season, in keeping with Netflix’s strategy of splitting some of its more popular scripted shows into two parts and releasing them about a month apart.
Here’s the rub, though: That 62.3 million hours of viewing for Outer Banks was about 60 percent less than the opening week for season three, which had just under 155 million hours for a full-season binge release. A similar pattern holds across several popular Netflix series whose most recent seasons were split into multiple parts: Fewer episodes to start means less time spent with a given season — even after the remaining episodes are released.
Conversely, of five prominent series that had split releases that The Hollywood Reporter studied, four of them (You season four, The Witcher season three, The Crown season six and Emily in Paris season four) spent longer in Netflix’s top 10 rankings than their most recent binge-released seasons. The fifth, season three of Bridgerton, equaled season two’s longevity of 11 weeks. Bridgerton was also an outlier in terms of viewing time, surpassing season two in both that measure (846.5 million hours over 13 weeks vs. 797.2 million hours for season two) and Netflix’s preferred view metric (total viewing time divided by running time), where season three ranks sixth all-time for Netflix English-language series and season two is 10th.
The longer term of viewer engagement, though, can translate into more views. The first half of Emily in Paris season four, with a run time of a little under three hours, accumulated 45.1 million views worldwide in four weeks, with an additional 27.5 million after the remainder of the season dropped (bringing the running time to about six hours). That beats the roughly 54.6 million views season three had over six weeks in the top 10, despite a slightly shorter run time and about 9 million more viewing hours.
It didn’t work as well for season three of The Witcher, which ended up with 57.8 million views over eight weeks in the top 10, down from 67.2 million over six weeks for the binge-released second season. The view count was down 17 percent, a smaller disparity than the drop in viewing hours (37 percent, based on top 10 weeks) from season two to three. Splitting the season helped some in terms of views, but with a gap that big, it couldn’t fully close the distance.
(One other wrinkle: In compiling the rankings of its all-time top 10, Netflix counts views over a title’s first 91 days (13 weeks) of release. In the case of split seasons, however, Netflix adds together the total viewing time for each part over its respective 91 days, then divides that by the full running time of the season to calculate the number of views.)
As of publication time, there’s only one week of data available for the second half of Outer Banks season four. Part one had 122.7 viewing hours over four weeks; the full season drew 77.1 million hours in the week part two was released — some of which which be portioned out to each half’s totals and view counts. All told, season four stands at just under 200 million hours of viewing, behind the 341.4 million over the same span for season three. But with both parts now accumulating watch time and views, the 13-week view count for season four stands a solid chance of being higher than that of season three. Since views are Netflix’s preferred metric, that’s what counts.
