Wednesday Replaces Stranger Things as Netflix’s Most Popular Show

Since the summer of 2021, Netflix has been publishing lists of its most popular films and shows on a public website. The series and movies were ranked according to “popularity” — a nebulous metric the streaming service determined by counting the total number of hours of a show or a movie that its subscribers consumed. The film and show (in English and in any other language) with the most hours consumed in a week was deemed the most popular that week. Every Tuesday, they updated the website.

If you are even slightly smarter than me at math, then you recognize there is an obvious flaw in this rubric: It favors long shows and movies. If 1 million Netflix subscribers all watch a movie that is 90 minutes long and a movie that’s three hours long, then the three-hour movie will appear to be twice as popular on Netflix’s top ten lists purely on the basis of being twice as long and therefore accruing twice as many hours viewed.

To address this issue, Netflix just adjusted its Top 10 measurements. Now, the length of a show or movie will be taken into account in these measurements and the most “popular” titles will be determined according to “views” — the total amount of content consumed, divided by their runtime.

Netflix

Changing this measurement immediately changed the order of Netflix’s all-time most popular series list. Previously Stranger Things Season 4 was Netflix’s “Most Popular TV” show in English, with 1.838 billion hour views. Wednesday was previously ranked second, with 1.718 billion hours viewed. But Wednesday is a much shorter season of TV than Stranger Things; a little under seven hours versus a little over 13 hours, respectively. So when you divide by their runtime, Wednesday has 252 million views, while Stranger Things has only 140 million. And so Wednesday is now your new all-time most popular Netflix series.

Here is the full updated top ten list of Netflix’s most popular English-language shows...