The Verge
Netflix’s new show ranking system doesn’t change much
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Netflix is overhauling the way it calculates its top 10 shows and movies — but it doesn’t make the metric any more helpful. Instead of ranking popular titles by total viewing time, the company now says it will rank them based on “views,” something it defines as the number of hours viewed divided by the total runtime, as first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
As an example of its new system, Netflix says Extraction 2 starring Chris Hemsworth got 43 million “views,” or 88.38 million hours viewed divided by 2.07 hours of runtime, from June 12th to June 18th. In other words, Netflix still isn’t disclosing how many people are actually watching the content on its platform from start to finish, which, you know, would be way more useful to...