The entertainment industry in a post-pandemic and streamer-heavy world bears a sigil of secrecy. Viewership data for films and television shows on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, and other streaming services is highly monitored behind closed doors at these companies. Streaming consumption skyrocketed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as people around the world were forced to stay at home. During the same time, online TV/video consumption increased from 1.7 hours to 6.5 hours (Figure 1). The pandemic fast-tracked the world’s shift to streaming, as it became one of the only accessible entertainment platforms, forcing the general public to decide which streaming services to invest in, largely because of cost. Most people only subscribe to 2-3 streaming services, citing affordability and an overwhelming amount of choices as primary reasons. 

The Trends

In July 2021, Apple TV Plus announced that the Ted Lasso Season 2 premiere episode hauled in the biggest audience of any original film or TV show ever on its platform. That sounds impressive — but the amount of people who actually tuned in is unclear. Regardless, this press release was used in marketing campaigns to promote the show, which immediately gained popularity as new episodes aired. This same marketing tactic was used by Hulu in September 2021 to promote its new original show Only Murders In The Building. After its premiere, Hulu announced that the show had the “most watched premiere date in Hulu history,” building onto the campaign that promoted the show as a must-watch series.

This trend occurred most recently in December 2021. HBO Max announced that The Sex Lives of College Girls, a new television comedy, was the “biggest original comedy launch on the platform this year” and ranks among its top titles. This news was used as proof of the show’s success, and it was renewed for another season a few days later. Some may ask: How do we know it really was the biggest? How many people watched the show? However, this is the secret of HBO Max and all other streaming platforms – they do not plan on telling the public any time soon. 

The Data

With dozens of streaming services available and growing, each media company has been forced into a unique competition: The Streaming Wars. Each service must compete for the attention of the mainstream public by providing the best product, as well as the strongest slate of content possible. The goal of this is to gain the most subscribers, which ultimately translates to domination over other streaming services and power within the ever-shifting entertainment landscape. Thus, if these companies released statistics providing viewership information, it will be a lot easier for other companies, the press, and the general public to find weaknesses within their content and overall product. It has been precedent since the 1980s for box-office grosses to be publicly announced for all released films, regardless of performance. This has allowed for a culture that promotes transparency, even if it is difficult to see a film perform poorly in theaters. 

Figures 2 and 3 show the difference between reports for streaming viewership data and reports for movie theater box office grosses on the first weekend of August 2021. The clarity that companies provide in their reports for theatrical films can translate into many more actionable tasks that the entertainment industry can observe and ultimately utilize to improve the industry. Indicators such as gross, percent gross dropped from the previous weekend, theater counts, per-theater averages, and total grosses are all statistically significant pieces of evidence that can point distributors in the right direction to correctly evaluate if these films were successful or not. 

However, streaming services are not required to report viewership data, and have seized that opportunity to develop marketing strategies that position themselves in the best possible light. This trend in the streaming industry remains constant: unverifiable numbers or vague platitudes meant to sound monumental. Using this strategy, streamers can control more of the narrative around their particular product, which can in turn result in more subscribers. Thus, streaming companies can now sell the assumption that everything is doing well if the actual viewership data is kept internally. 

The Future

Although it seems important that companies keep viewership data private for healthy competition, this data will need to be released more frequently and more explicitly in the near future. As the entertainment industry grows, and settles into this new streaming normalcy, the viewership data collected from all streaming services will be vital to informing the industry and making more data-driven decisions. Whether it is in terms of content strategy or marketing segmentations, access to this data could ultimately create a stronger entertainment experience for consumers worldwide.