Netflix has been responsible for a number of hits already, and with their new content of 2016, that trend looks to be continuing. One of their latest hits, Stranger Things, premiered its first season on Netflix in July, and has quickly become one of their most watched of the year, due to the significant buzz surrounding it.
Symphony Advanced Media provided some figures for Variety that attest to the fact, as Netflix does not provide statistics on their own viewership numbers. Stranger Things has placed in third out of all Netflix shows from the past year, with only Fuller House’s first season and Orange is the New Black’s fourth season ahead of it for their first 35 day period.
This ranks Stranger Things ahead of other well-received and popular shows like Making a Murderer and season two of Daredevil. The show, a thriller set in the 1980s, drew in a whopping 14.07 million viewers in its 35 day opening period. When compared to House of Cards Season 4’s 5.67 million, that’s pretty impressive (though it could also speak for declining popularity of the Kevin Spacey starring political drama).
Viewership numbers have been a complicated subject for Netflix. They have argued repeatedly that exact ratings info is irrelevant for its programming, as Netflix is an ad-free subscription service. Nevertheless, the interest has been there for seeing how these shows stack up, and so measurement companies have begun tracking and reporting the numbers themselves.
As Variety mentions, Netflix is still skeptical of the numbers from companies like Symphony and Nielsen, citing differing numbers when reporting the viewership for the same seasons of shows. So it isn’t clear if the methods used by these companies are entirely accurate just yet.
What isn’t up for debate is the overall popularity of Stranger Things. The show has a 95% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator site, and an average user rating of 9.1 out of 10 on IMDb.
With the success of the first eight episodes, creators Matt and Ross Duffer are almost certain to have the chance to expand their vision in future seasons.
