What television networks am I actually watching?
When I first read this article about NBC claiming to have viewership numbers for a handful of Netflix shows, something didn’t smell right.
Their method of determining these ratings was Symphony — a third party that uses an app installed on a user’s smartphone to listen in the background and use Shazam style audio recognition to figure out what’s on tv. The privacy invasion implications of this are problematic to say the least, and I can’t believe NBC would admit to being associated with this type of “service”. Whether the apparent sample size of 15000 users is large enough to provide accurate results on it’s own I can’t say, but it seems to me that people who would install apps that are allowed to run in the background listening to what’s going on in the room are probably less technically savvy (read: older) and are probably more likely to be watching old-fashioned network tv anyway.
Not surprisingly, Netflix (who actually do know how many people are watching their original programming) responded to NBC’s claims, by calling the estimated viewership “remarkably inaccurate”. Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos made some interesting points around the fact that tv ratings of the past really don’t apply to them, and that subscriber numbers are what matter. They make some shows for an audience of 30 million people and some for an audience of 2 million people. The niche subjects can be covered without having to worry about their limited interest to potential advertisers.
This got me to thinking about my own tv watching habits and which networks I’m watching. My age puts me pretty squarely in between the Gen X’ers and the Millennials, and I don’t really identify with either group — perhaps this bridging of the gap can reveal something about how we all watch tv shows these days?
I use an app in my iPhone called TeeVee to keep track of the shows that I currently watch and when the next new episode is on. I also add the shows that I intend to watch, but haven’t gotten around to yet. There are 20 shows in my watch list — this is how they break down by network:
Netflix is the winner with four shows (Marvel’s Daredevil & Jessica Jones along with Orange is the new Black and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). Fox is apparently covering my sitcom needs (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, New Girl and The Last Man on Earth). The CW and ABC only have my attention because of their lock on the DC and Marvel television universes (I wasn’t able to get on board with CBS’s bubbly Supergirl). I’m hooked on BBC’s Doctor Who and Sherlock as well as HBO’s Game of Thrones. When I was younger I used to watch almost nothing but multi-camera sitcoms, but these days CBS’s The Big Bang Theory (shut up, I know) is the only one I follow. Interestingly, while there is one show from NBC Universal owned USA Network (Suits), there are no shows at all from NBC proper that I watch regularly (I should note that while I don’t watch it very often, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on NBC is my preferred late night talk show). Finally there is one show from Netflix streaming competitor Hulu that I enjoy — former FOX sitcom The Mindy Project.
The shows I plan to watch tell an interesting story, as not one of them come from one of the big four tv networks. Ash vs. the Evil Dead, Humans, Orphan Black, Mr. Robot, and Vikings have all caught my attention but I haven’t added them into my regular rotation yet for some reason (more on that later).
I thought it would be interesting to see how many of these shows I watch (and plan to watch) have their back catalog available on Netflix. Obviously Netflix catalog availability is a whole issue of it’s own as it varies greatly by region, but I’ll be running the numbers based on my own country, Canada.
For the shows I watch regularly, it’s an even split. For half of my favourite shows, I could recommend them to a friend and that friend could catch up at their leisure in order to start watching new episodes as they air.
Ultimately I think the shows I plan to watch, but for some reason haven’t started yet tell the most interesting story:
