Fewer than half of all Netflix subscribers are watching acclaimed original series “Orange is the New Black” and “House of Cards” according to new numbers reported by Variety on Thursday.
44 percent of U.S. customers had ever watched an episode of “OINTB” with 31 percent reporting the same for “House of Cards,” according to Centris Marketing Science.
The good news for Netflix: around 90 percent of their customers had heard of both series (94 percent for “OINTB” and 89 percent for “HOC”).
Netflix famously refuses to provide viewership data—they don’t have to. And Variety’s Todd Spangler points out that those numbers don’t mean that the shows aren’t the hits everyone assumes they are.
He crunches the numbers and finds that HBO’s “Game of Thrones” reaches about 41 percent of their subscriber base. Right smack in the middle of the figures Centris found for the Netflix originals.
In other HBO-Netflix news Thursday: The streaming video service beat HBO in subscription revenue front last quarter, earning $1.146 billion to HBO’s $1.141 billion.
Read More: Variety
Brief Take: If that many Netflix subscribers are watching “OINTB,” the show could be outperforming such recognized ratings hits as HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Even so, “OITNB”‘s buzz is good enough that it might not matter, especially since Netflix just outpaced HBO in revenue.
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