What in the (Netflix) world are we watching?

Netflix was in the news last week, and the markets were not happy about it. The streamer reported its quarterly earnings, which for the first time in 10 years showed a net loss of roughly 200,000 subscribers. What’s more, in a letter to shareholders, Netflix said it expects to lose another 200,000 subscribers next quarter.

This got us to thinking about the shows and movies that we all watch on Netflix. Back in June of last year, Netflix started publishing some high-level metrics on what shows and movies were performing well. The data isn’t particularly deep or complex, but it is still fun to take a look at.

Every week, Netflix publishes what the top 10 shows and movies were for the week, along with some information on viewing hours. Some shows pop in and out of the top 10, but as the “Netflix Viewing” data app directly below attests, we only have information on the shows during the weeks they were in the top 10:

The first interesting bit we notice is the massive purple spike in October 2021, which coincided with the release of Squid Game. Squid Game: Season 1 has been so popular that it occupies the top 4 spots in terms of hours viewed for a show in a week. What’s also interesting is that Bridgerton’s most successful week (as far as hours viewed goes), which was in Season 2, doesn’t even come close to Squid Game’s most successful week.

As for that drop-off in subscribers, we have some data on that, too, which can be examined through the final two charts in this post. See a pattern? Clearly, growth was good for quite some time, but there’s definitely been a slight decline recently in Netflix’s three largest regions. Will that trend continue? Or will Netflix find a way to bounce back?