After years of resistance, Netlix has finally released viewership statistics for almost all of its content

On Tuesday, December 12, Netflix published the first "What We Watched" report, which ranks almost all of their series and movies in the last six months by the number of hours watched. Netflix will publish updated reports every six months, the company said.

Netflix has long been criticized for its lack of transparency regarding the popularity of its shows and movies. That has created some mistrust in the creative community, co-CEO Ted Sarandos acknowledged during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. When Netflix was building its business, its viewership data was hidden from the public eye. This allowed Netflix to experiment, but at the same time, potential competition could not access the data, Sarandos said.

"This is the actual data on the basis of which we make business decisions and with the help of which we run the company", says Sarandos. "I'm one of the CEOs of a public company, which means sharing negative information has consequences".

Netflix currently has nearly 250 million subscribers worldwide, far more than any other streaming content provider. At the expense of this, Sarandos gained enough confidence to openly communicate viewing statistics for the first time. Let us remind you that in the protests at the beginning of the year, actors and directors highlighted the hiding of data as one of the main factors of dissatisfaction. On top of all that, Netflix has delved even deeper into advertising, which of course requires data. Trademarks or potential advertisers need statistics to evaluate their investments.

"This is probably more information than you need, but I think it leads to a better environment for viewers, producers, creators and media", adds Sarandos.

With 812 million hours watched, the first season of the Netflix original action thriller “The Night Agent” topped the list over the past six months. The most watched movie became "The Mother", in which we find Jennifer Lopez. Between January and June, 55% of content watched was original Netflix content, i.e. movies and series, and 45% was licensed titles.

In the report, Netflix disclosed data for just over 18,000 titles, representing 99% of total content on the platform and all content watched for more than 50,000 hours.

The full report can be found HERE.