‘Fool Me Once,’ ‘Bridgerton,’ ‘Baby Reindeer’ Were Netflix’s Most-Viewed TV Shows in First Half of 2024
Netflix saw a British invasion in the first six months of the year — with four of its 10 biggest shows globally in the first half of 2024 coming from the U.K.: “Fool Me Once,” the Emmy-winning “Baby Reindeer,” “The Gentlemen” and “One Day.”
In addition, Shonda Rhimes’ U.K.-set “Bridgerton” Season 3 was the No. 2 most-watched show worldwide from January-June 2024.
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The data was released Thursday by Netflix, the third of its semiannual viewing measurement reports. Overall, in the first half of 2024, customers watched more than 94 billion hours on Netflix (up slightly from 93 billion in the first half of 2023).
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has said the streamer decided to release the huge trove of data, covering 99% of viewing time on the service, to provide greater transparency to creative partners, agents and the industry at large. But the massive viewing stats (which aren’t vetted by a third party) are also an opportunity to crow about its dominance in the subscription-streaming business. Sarandos, speaking Sept. 18 at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York, said he’d like to see competitors release similar comprehensive viewing metrics — which seems unlikely to happen anytime soon, as rivals’ numbers would pale in comparison to Netflix’s scale.
Netflix released its first big data dump, covering the first half of 2023, last December. In the second report, spanning the back half of 2023, the company added runtime and views (total hours viewed divided by runtime) and separated films and TV series, syncing it up with its weekly Top 10 and Most Popular lists.
(Pictured top, l. to r.: “Fool Me Once,” “Bridgerton,” “Baby Reindeer”)
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