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Celeste Barber\u2019s Wellmania<\/i> was the most-watched Australian series on Netflix for the first six months of the year. But the most-watched Australian title of any sort was True Spirit<\/i>, the biopic about solo round-the-world teen sailor Jessica Watson.<\/p>\n
Those results are among the insights revealed by Netflix\u2019s first publicly released engagement report, What We Watched<\/i>, an enormous dataset that covers all titles on the platform that were watched for at least 50,000 hours between January 1 and June 30 this year.<\/p>\n
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Celeste Barber as Liv Healy in Wellmania.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s over 18,000 titles, and nearly 100 billion hours, capturing more than 99 per cent of all viewing on Netflix,\u201d the company\u2019s co-chief executive officer, Ted Sarandos, claimed on an early morning call to media on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Of the Australian top performers, True Spirit<\/i> clocked up 56.7 million hours of viewing time globally between January 1 and June 30, which equates to roughly 31.2 million views of the 1 hour 49 minute movie. It was the 242nd most-watched title on the streamer over the period. Wellmania<\/i>, which Netflix declined to renew for a second season, clocked up 41.3 million hours and finished in 400th spot. That equates to around 10.32 million people having watched every minute of its eight 30-minute episodes.<\/p>\n By way of comparison, the ABC claims Fisk<\/em> has been watched by an average of 2 million viewers per episode across its first two seasons in Australia alone. Wellmania<\/em>\u2019s figures are global.<\/p>\n The release of the report represents the biggest move yet towards audience reporting from the world\u2019s largest streamer, and comes after calls from Hollywood\u2019s writers\u2019 and actors\u2019 guilds during the recent strike for greater transparency from the sector.<\/p>\n At stake is the question of remuneration for success. Agreements were struck recently between workers and the studios\/streamers introducing bonuses for titles that hit particular viewing benchmarks on platforms such as Netflix.<\/p>\n Though the agreement requires information to be provided \u201csubject to a confidentiality agreement\u201d to potential profit participants, Sarandos insisted the decision to release such detailed viewing data had not come about specifically in response to the dispute, but rather as a result of Netflix maturing as a company.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the earliest days, it … wasn\u2019t really in our interest to be that transparent, because we were building a new business,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd by not doing public data, there was something creators liked a lot about it too, which is it took a lot of pressure off the overnight ratings model or the weekend box office model.\u201d<\/p>\n However, he conceded, \u201cthe unintended consequence of not having more transparent data about our engagement was it created an atmosphere of mistrust over time, with producers and creators and the press, about what was happening on Netflix. So we\u2019ve been on this continuum of opening things up.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is probably more information than you need,\u201d Sarandos said of the dataset, which lists almost 5000 titles.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I think it creates a better environment for the guilds, for us, for the producers, for creators, and for the press.\u201d<\/p>\n The most-watched title on Netflix in the first half of the year was season one of The Night Agent, which racked up 812 million hours of viewing.<\/p>\n The Jennifer Lopez action thriller The Mother<\/em>, directed by New Zealander Niki Caro (Whale Rider), was the most-watched film, with just under 250 million hours.<\/p>\n Jennifer Lopez in the action thriller The Mother, which was Netflix\u2019s most viewed movie in the first half of 2023.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n While Wednesday<\/em> is the most popular English-language series ever released on Netflix, it finished in fourth spot on the list, simply because it had already been out for two months when the survey period began.<\/p>\n
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