Explaining the Business of Entertainment
Deep dives into Nielsen and other data that provide insights into streaming.
Ah, for the olden days of evaluating content. In 2019, if you wanted to know, “What was the most popular film?”, you just looked at the box office and saw that the answer was (very clearly) Avengers: Endgame. Even TV was relatively simple: Game of Thrones set global records for
December was a big battle in the streaming wars. Christmas Day/end of year is becoming increasingly important to the streamers since it’s the last time to grab subscribers before annual reporting. This is why the latest installment of my “Who Won the Month” series at Decider may be the most
In 2020, Netflix lost the rights to Friends. In 2021, they lose the rights to The Office. How much do those big shows impact viewing on Netflix? Quantifying that via Netflix’s data is fairly hard, though, since they focus overwhelmingly on their original series, as that’s the key to “building
In what is now a recurring column, over at Decider I took a look at all the ratings data I could find to declare the streaming winner in the US for November. This one is packed with with charts, tables and data. (If you’re curious for the older editions, here’s
Last December, I unveiled my theory for how big organizations use PR. Big entities—be they corporations, governments, non-profits, even news outlets—share their good information and actively hide bad information. It’s like the iceberg principle on steroids. Especially with digital companies like Netflix: (By the way, in government, the CIA is
(This is the third part of a multi-part series exploring one specific Netflix number. To read the other pieces: – Introducting “Datecdotes”, when Streaming Companies use Data to Win the PR Wars – Did More People Watch Crazy Rich Asians or a Netflix Rom Com Last Summer? – Netflix versus
(For Part I of this series on Netflix versus Crazy Rich Asians, click here.) If you can’t tell by my article last week, I had a lot of fun with my comparison between Netflix romantic comedies and Crazy Rich Asians. Unfortunately, I had a lot of ideas for that article
(This is the third part of a multi-part series exploring one specific Netflix number. To read the other pieces: – Introducting “Datecdotes”, when Streaming Companies use Data to Win the PR Wars – Did More People Watch Crazy Rich Asians or a Netflix Rom Com Last Summer? – Netflix versus
Here are some fun stats. What do they tell us? – Netflix over the summer had 80 million customer accounts watch one of their Netflix Original Romantic Comedies. – Netflix had 20 million streams for The Christmas Chronicles over the last weekend. – Amazon Prime/Video/Studios had 14.7 million total customers
A few weeks back, I explained why “small sample size” dooms any effort to use big data to predict box office performance of feature films. But what about TV shows? What about streaming services? Can’t they use advanced algorithms to predict success there? Nope. As “No, Seriously, Why Don’t You