The Witcher breaking Netflix viewership record…but only of you measure weird

The Witcher is a hit. Demand for Netflix’s high fantasy series has been high, eclipsing other popular new shows like The Mandalorian. The publisher is printing a new run of the books by Andrzej Sapkowski to keep up with demand. Yeah, the critics were divided, but who cares? The people have spoken, and Netflix has a second season on the way.

But exactly how popular was the show? Well, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix just released its fourth quarter earnings, and with 76 million member households watching The Witcher in the first four weeks after release, it’s on its way to being the most successful first season of an original Netflix show yet made.

For comparisons’ sake, the second season of the thriller You was seen by 54 million member households over the first four weeks of its release, while the third season of The Crown nabbed 21 million households. Those are both popular shows, so the numbers for The Witcher are indeed impressive.

But there’s a big caveat here. You see, before now, Netflix only counted something as a “view” for one of its TV shows if the person at home watched 70 percent of an episode — likewise, a view for a movie meant someone had watched 70 percent of the movie. But for this new report, it was counting a view as a person watching as little as two minutes of a movie or an episode of a TV show.

So obviously, these resulting numbers are bigger than they would have been under the old system; Netflix itself says that the new metric results in viewer counts around 35 percent higher than the old one.

So why the change? Netflix says that the two-minute threshold is “long enough to indicate the choice was intentional,” and points out that measuring views with way is consistent with how platforms do it.

"Our new methodology is similar to the BBC iPlayer in their rankings based on ‘requests’ for the title, ‘most popular’ articles on The New York Times, which include those who opened the articles, and YouTube view counts. This way, short and long titles are treated equally, leveling the playing field for all types of our content including interactive content, which has no fixed length."

It’s true that this new system brings Netflix more in line with how places like YouTube measure their views, but it further removes it from traditional television. Is Netflix more like YouTube or broadcast TV? That’s a question up for debate.

It will allow them to post higher numbers, though, even if they sound more impressive than they are. Also for comparison’s sake, back when Netflix was using the old system, the third season of Stranger Things broke records when it was watched by 64 million households…but remember, that means that 64 million people actually watched at least two thirds of an episode; it doesn’t count folk who turned it on for a couple minutes before deciding to do something else. If Stranger Things was measured by that metric, who knows how high the numbers could be?

Netflix is already pretty cagey about its viewership numbers without having to keep up with its changing measurement systems. Still, we’ll keep this in mind the next time they release data. And congratulations to The Witcher either way.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Watch Game of Thrones for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels