Last week, Billie Eilish: the world is a little blurry debuted on Apple TV Plus. The documentary became the “most successful title for young adult audiences that Apple has ever had on its list of films and TV series,” according to Deadline, attracting a “record 33 percent new viewers to the service”.
It looks impressive, right? It would be, if Apple provided any kind of context for statements such as “most successful” and “record breaking” subscribers. Instead, we wonder:
- How many subscribers does Apple TV Plus currently have?
- How many people actually watched Billie Eilish: the world is a little blurry?
- How many of these new subscribers are on free Apple TV Plus trial plans?
- How do these viewership numbers and subscriber additions compare to all other titles?
Without this context, 10 million people could have watched Billie Eilish: the world is a little blurry or 10,000 people. I was one of them! But there is a big difference between these two figures. In a pre-streaming world, if the documentary were released in theaters or on a network like MTV, there would be real statistics. Weekly Nielsen box office reports and analysis exist to provide public insight into the performance of a film or TV show.
It’s not just Apple – with a stronger push for streaming, there is no reason for companies to disclose the numbers. As more original series and films are launched on streaming services and more films are taken out of theaters to be transferred to a streaming service, the idea of what is considered an official success becomes much more difficult to track. Here are just a few examples from the past few months:
- Hulu’s Happiest season it was the “most watched film among all the films acquired and Hulu Original” in the opening weekend.
- Just a few weeks before Happiest season, Hulu’s Run set the record for “most watched movie ever on Hulu during the opening weekend”.
- HBO Max’s The little things “It quickly reached number one” on its opening weekend, according to WarnerMedia executive Andy Forssell.
At the moment, there is no reason for companies to disclose numbers. It is a strategy of choice. A movie or TV show does incredibly well, and that’s a good reason for a company like Disney or Netflix to launch a blast. (Video game publishers use a similar number display strategy.) Netflix will note that 99 million assisted household accounts at least two minutes in Extraction in the first four weeks of its launch. Seems pretty good! Unfortunately, it is also the most advanced streaming service that deals with viewing. But how many people have finished watching Extraction compared to how many people may have activated it and decided, after five minutes, just watch The magician again or do something totally different?
None of this matters to streaming companies. Netflix has more than 203 million subscribers and is growing. Disney Plus, Hulu, HBO Max and Peacock are also growing, based on quarterly earnings. Apple has never announced how many subscribers Apple TV Plus has, but third-party analytics companies have repeatedly pointed out that a significant part of their subscriber base is using free trial periods.
The box office does not dictate quality, but accompanies global cultural phenomena. As Todd Boyd, professor of popular culture at the University of Southern California, said NPR, “They are like a big event that for many people is an option for them to say that ‘I participated in something that many other people also participated in’, and that allows them to be defined as part of a group. ” In case of Avengers: Endgame, people came together to try to make it the most successful film of all time, following the daily box office numbers.
Last year, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told analysts that the company is making the equivalent of billion-dollar films. The billion dollar movie – a new Star Wars, Fast and furious, Marvel or DC title – talks about the strength of a cultural phenomenon, a real moment of pop culture. It is a sign of something celebrated and experienced by millions of other people around the world – people who have been to the cinema and probably watched it all. As Bilge Ebiri wrote in Vulture, having public data about people who watched an entire movie on Netflix or Hulu or HBO Max “tells us not only whether a movie or program was made for the right people, but also whether those people stayed with it or not – maybe even, sigh , I liked. “
With the future of cinemas so uncertain, this will only become a bigger problem being brought to the streaming platforms. Even less data will be made available on what tracks of people are watching. As a result, more viewing experiences will appear increasingly isolating. People like to participate in popular culture, to watch the success that everyone is watching – but finding out what is a success and what is not is getting much more difficult to determine.