PASADENA, Calif. (AP) – Even as Netflix continues to pump out more original programming, its bosses say they will continue to keep secret details on how many people are actually watching.
The ratings “arms race” on traditional television has a negative effect on creativity, said Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content executive. Besides, given the new ways people follow TV – on demand or on different devices – there are questions about how accurate traditional measurements are, he said.
“We want subscribers to watch our programs and fall in love with them on their own timetable,” he said on Wednesday.
The streaming service, with 53 million subscribers, doesn’t pay for the third-party ratings service provided by the Nielsen company. The business model doesn’t depend on it; Netflix doesn’t run commercials so it doesn’t need Nielsen’s numbers to set advertising rates, Sarandos said.
That doesn’t mean Netflix doesn’t know how many people watch its shows. It knows exactly how many, but won’t tell. Since the company generally releases a full season’s worth of program episodes at the same time, people don’t watch Netflix’s shows the same way many people watch broadcast TV, Sarandos said. Much of the time, people will latch on to a Netflix show and not watch anything else on the service until they are done with the available episodes.