Netflix to Stop Releasing Viewership Data Every 6 Months, Will Shift to Annual Reports

Netflix is discontinuing its biannual viewership data dump in favor of one annual report beginning in 2027.

The latest version of Netflix’s “What We Watched” report, which covered subscribers’ viewership habits from January-June 2026, was released Thursday along with the streamer’s latest quarterly earnings results. The new report revealed “War Machine” as the most-watched film on Netflix over the first six months of the year and limited series “His & Hers” as the top TV title.

The decision to shift away from the twice-a-year viewership data dumps comes following Bloomberg’s recent reporting that Netflix’s original series see a major decline in viewership in their second seasons. However, Netflix brass pushed back on that story Thursday.

“In aggregate, we are not seeing any material change in our second-season viewing compared to season ones,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said during the company’s latest earnings call. “Our second seasons are performing well within our bands of expectation. We very often we see drop off from Season 1 to Season 2. It’s very common in the industry, but it’s even more so with us because we launch our shows so big. Our global reach, our discovery mechanism, releasing all at once. This enables us to find a very large audience early, so our shows tend to start really big while most other places, their shows start pretty small and occasionally grow from there.”

Sarandos continued: “When we look across the entire portfolio, across all the regions, all the content categories, our Season 2 fall-off is actually slightly improved this year relative to last year. Now, of course, you can pick any five data points to tell any story you want, but I’m going to repeat this: our Season 2 fall-off is actually slightly improved this year relative to last year, so no changes in release strategies.”

Notably missing from the latest “What We Watched” report was specific viewership data for Netflix’s growing lineup of video podcasts, which were instead lumped together under “Other Shows” at the bottom of the report. Netflix said it did not break out video podcast viewership metrics because the format is still new to the platform — first launching earlier this year — but that the company saw encouraging internal data that shows engagement is primarily through daytime viewing and mobile. In the first half of 2026, Netflix members streamed 757 million hours of “Other Shows.”

Netflix has been releasing the report twice a year, in addition to its regular weekly top 10 lists, since December 2023.

Per Netflix’s Q2 letter to shareholders, “Engagement is important to our business. But as discussed above, engagement is not just the quantity of view hours, but also refers to the quality and variety of our offering. To make this clearer, we’re making a change to our view hours disclosure.”

The note continued: “After today’s What We Watched report, which covers the first half of 2026, we will shift to publishing this report annually in the first quarter, beginning in 2027. The goal of separating the publication of the report from our earnings results is to keep the focus on our primary financial metrics – revenue and operating profit. With this change, we will still report industry-leading title-by-title and total view hours data (including our weekly Top 10 lists for movies and series in more than 90 countries).”