While many thought the big wins by “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Big Little Lies” at the Emmy awards marked an victory for appointment viewing, don’t cry for Netflix or Amazon just yet. While some argued that having episodes drop week-by-week helped those award winning shows take home trophies, at the end of the day, when it comes what people are actually watching — or at least want to watch — Netflix remains king.
According to Los Angeles-based data science company Parrot Analytics, from January 1 to August 31 of this year, Netflix dominated the streaming space, with 7 or the 10 shows. Since Netflix doesn’t release their own data, and generally speaking, counting streams is hard to do, Parrot uses a whole host of factors (head over to Screen Daily to rum them down) to determine which is the most in demand streaming shows. And for the first eight months of 2017, it was pretty much all Netflix:
1. “13 Reasons Why”
2. “Orange Is The New Black”
3. “Castlevania”
4. “The Handmaid’s Tale”
5. “Stranger Things”
6. “Marvel’s Iron Fist”
7. “House Of Cards”
8. “The Grand Tour”
9. “The Man In The High Castle”
10. “Sense8”
Of course, none this translate into actual viewing, and there’s no way to tell how many of those people who show interest in “13 Reasons Why” watched it and stuck with it to the end (well, there was enough that a second season is on the way). But it does confirm that Netflix does promotion better than their competitors. Hulu certainly has a lot of work to do to remind people they have shows beyond “The Handmaid’s Tale” (“The Path,” “Chance“) while Amazon is probably best suited to nip at the heels of Netflix, but haven’t quite got there yet.
It’s also interesting to note that drama and comedy combine to make up about 70% of the genre demand, which makes you wonder the wisdom of Netflix continuing to churn out Marvel shows.
It’s all interesting stuff. Thoughts? Let us know in the comments section.