‘Stranger Things 4’ Didn’t Beat ‘Squid Game’ as Netflix’s Biggest Hit Ever – CNET [CNET]

The latest season of the retro sci-fi series is Netflix’s No. 2 most watched show ever (at least, according to Netflix).

Stranger Things 4 has been wildly popular — just not the most wildly popular: Watch-time stats Netflix released Tuesday solidified its status as the second most popular title the streaming service has ever released behind Squid Game. 

In the week ended Sunday, Stranger Things 4 has been watched for a cumulative 1.35 billion hours, short of the 1.65 billion hours that Squid Game amassed in its first 28 days of release. Netflix limits how long a shows’ viewership can count toward its popularity rankings, and Stranger Things 4’s final day to accumulate hours in its watch-time count was Thursday. [July 28] 

For years, Netflix was notoriously tight-lipped about its viewership. Beau Willimon — creator of House of Cards, which put Netflix’s original programming on the map — once said the company wouldn’t even share viewership metrics with him. 

But within the last two years, Netflix has become much more open about the popularity of its shows and movies to help it recruit talent and stoke buzz. First, Netflix added a top-trending ranking to its service, so people can see the most popular titles streaming on Netflix in their country on any given day. Then it also started publicly sharing popularity stats for certain titles, publicizing the number of accounts that watched two minutes of a particular title in its first month of release.

Netflix eventually launched a website in mid-November posting weekly charts of its most popular shows and movies, as well as a global ranking of all-time most watched titles. The charts are updated every week and ranked by the total number of hours that subscribers spent watching them. 

The rankings represent an unprecedented trove of data about what’s popular on Netflix, detailing the most popular titles in the last week not only globally but also for more than 90 individual countries. It’s the most transparency that Netflix has ever adopted for its viewership, but it’s also meant to help subscribers like you have a better grip on what’s most popular on the world’s biggest subscription streaming service.