Here’s Just How Top-Heavy Netflix Is Right Now
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Here’s Just How Top-Heavy Netflix Is Right Now

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The fact that the top echelon of Netflix series and movies account for an outsized share of total viewing on the streamer is not a new phenomenon. The company’s data release, however, puts the trend in pretty stark terms.

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The top 500 series and films on Netflix’s semiannual list of view counts for the entire service accounted for 47 percent of series views and more than 51 percent of movie views, based on a Hollywood Reporter analysis of the data. And while 500 shows or movies may seem like a lot, that’s only about 6 percent of the total titles Netflix streamed somewhere in the world between January and June. The streamer listed 17,370 titles — 8,193 shows and 9,177 movies — which is somewhat less than what actually was available. The series and movie categories also have an “other” line item for titles that didn’t clear 50,000 views (total viewing hours divided by running time) in the first half of the year.

Among series, just the top 20 shows — about 0.24 percent of the total — accounted for 889.5 million views, 8.5 percent of Netflix’s total in the first half of the year. By the 500th line in the spreadsheet — a German show called Murder Mindfully (Achtsam Morden) with 4.4 million views over six months — those shows totaled 4.94 billion views, 47.4 percent of the 10.44 billion for all 8,193. That means the other 7,693 shows, almost 94 percent of everything users could choose, had just 52.6 percent of the total.

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The breakdown among movies is similar, though the top 500 have a majority of views while being a little under 5.5 percent of the total of 9,177 listed films.

This pattern likely holds true for other streaming platforms as well, but Netflix is the only one that releases this much data (though it will switch to just an annual report starting next year). The wildest stat from Netflix may be this one: The top two shows (His & Hers and Bridgerton season four) and top two movies (War Machine and The Rip) accounted for 2.1 percent of all views on Netflix for the first half of the year. Those four titles represent just 0.02 percent of what was available.

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