Recode, summarizing a detailed letter Netflix sent out to shareholders:
At the end of December, Netflix said that 45 million people had watched Bird Box, a Netflix-owned thriller starring Sandra Bullock that came out just before Christmas.
That is a ridiculous number. Compare that to the viewing numbers for one of the most watched shows on cable, Game of Thrones. From The Telegraph:
Game of Thrones has long smashed records for HBO, the cable network it is broadcast on in its native US: it beat The Sopranos as the network’s most-watched series ever in 2015, after crossing the 18.2 million viewers-per-episode mark.
But that’s small fry in comparison to the average 31 million viewers per episode that season seven has witnessed, an 24 per cent increase on 2016’s ratings.
Think about this. Bird Box is new. It has no lead-in, no history, not much in the way of marketing. And it crushed Game of Thrones. Right out of the box. Because Netflix.
The Academy Awards, which was one of the few high-water mark audiences on network television, had 26.5 million viewers last year. At its absolute height, it hit 46 million viewers. Bird Box out of the gate numbers.
And:
Netflix says that Bird Box, which was released late last year, added another 35 million households in the first four weeks after its release, bringing its total audience to 80 million households.
And:
Netflix says that both You, a young-adultish thriller, and Sex Education, another show with a young-adult bent, should each reach 40 million households in their first four weeks on the service.
Apple has the right idea, I think. They have the distribution, already in place. Only question is, can they build compelling content? And, to me, that comes down to picking the right partners.
You can’t compare it to HBO stats. Netflix released Bird Box in far more countries than HBO did for GOT.
That really a lot of teens and young people watching, and sharing logins probably. Does Netflix release numbers of active paying accounts? That’s the number Apple would be competing for.
Not that the numbers aren’t staggering, but haven’t we learned yet not to take these engagement and viewership numbers from tech companies at face value?
More people have Netflix than HBO, especially before HBO Go was available ala cart. GoT is also a long running series, which is a different time investment barrier than a single movie.
However, since Birdcage sucked, if it were a series I’d bet its numbers would go down.
And that’s why the kerfuffle over the $2 is silly.
Apple may have waited too long, also. Yes, they have the money, but Netflix has money AND eyeballs. Creators don’t just want to make good stuff, they want to make good stuff and have it seen. Right now, Netflix is the place to do that. Even if Apple strikes deals to have a lot of the common content (the movies, TV etc that Netflix, Prime etc have), they still need to create compelling original stuff and attract subs.
Easy way to get subs? “Every Apple Music subscriber now gets Apple Video included” – Boom, 50m+ potential viewers (minus the folks who don’t have an Apple TV which is something Apple needs to remedy…. no one is going to run out and blow close to $200 on a new device in order to see a new channel).
Right. It is implied in the text that the viewing figures for GoT are US figures, but I’m betting that the Netflix figures are worldwide. Netflix is now readily available in many countries, but HBO … not so much.
I’m not sure you can directly compare the performance of a movie like Bird Box to a TV show like Game of Thrones or the Oscars.