For this overview of Netflix audiences, I use millions of CVE, or Complete Viewings Equivalents. I divide the viewing hours from the Netflix Top 10 and Engagement Reports by the duration of the titles to compare programs of different lengths released on different dates. This is not an audience count in terms of viewers, but an arbitrary indicator also used by Netflix since June 2023 under the name “views”.

For this specific study, I focused only on a selection of films and series released during the first week of 2023, 2024, and 2025, which provide meaningful viewing milestones every six months. I selected titles that were successful enough to appear in the weekly Netflix Top 10 upon their release, thus giving me a starting point.

Let’s start with films. For this analysis, I found only two that met the specific criteria: the Spanish film Society of the Snow and the American film The Pale Blue Eye by Scott Cooper, starring Christian Bale. Both enjoyed considerable success on the platform, though Society of the Snow clearly outperformed the other by a significant margin. Below is the evolution of their viewership over the first 104 to 156 weeks of their availability on Netflix, equivalent to up to 1,092 days in the best-case scenario.

The trajectories of the two films diverge during their first year of release: between the first month and the end of the twelfth month, total viewership for Society of the Snow increased by 44%, whereas The Pale Blue Eye saw a rise of only 25%.

I have a rather simple (perhaps simplistic) explanation for this: the first three months following the launch of Society of the Snow, which saw the steepest audience growth, approximately +26% between month 1 and month 3, coincided with the global awards season (Oscars, BAFTAs, etc.). Society of the Snow performed very well during this period, securing several nominations, albeit few wins.

Outside of this period, both films show roughly similar growth trajectories between their third and twenty-fourth months on the platform. It is worth noting that The Pale Blue Eye actually progressed slightly more during its third year (+8%) than during its second (+7%), driven by two consecutive semesters of growth in that third year. Such fluctuations are quite common when analyzing long-term viewership curves and can be attributed to various factors, all linked to the recommendation algorithm. If a film or series in the same genre, or featuring shared cast members, performs well on Netflix, the algorithm will surface similar titles to subscribers, leading to more or less significant viewership spikes.

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For series, I selected four that met the criteria for this analysis: two Harlan Coben adaptations (Fool Me Once and Missing You), a new season of an existing show (Season 2 of Ginny & Georgia), and a canceled series (The Brothers Sun). Here is how their viewership evolved over their first, second, or third years on the platform.

I believe you can explain the sharp rise in viewership for Season 2 of Ginny & Georgia in its third year, and you would be right! This surge occurred because Season 3 was released at that time, triggering a wave of re-watches of the entire series. Consequently, total viewership for the show grew by 29% during its third year.

It is also worth noting that this increase began the semester prior to the new season's release, with a solid +6.4% growth, outperforming the other series studied. While we lack sufficient hindsight for Missing You, the two Harlan Coben adaptations show growth of 42% and 52% respectively over their first year.

The most intriguing title in this group is The Brothers Sun. Although canceled after a truly mediocre launch, its viewership evolution ranks among the best of the four series analyzed here. Specifically, it saw an 80% increase in viewership between its first and twelfth months, followed by another 14% rise between its twelfth and twenty-fourth months. This likely offers little cause for regret to Netflix, as the renewal threshold is generally between 25 and 30 million CVEs within the first two weeks, a milestone The Brothers Sun only reached around its ninth month.

While first-year growth rates fluctuate significantly depending on the title, they tend to stabilize around +9% to +15% during the second year.

It is difficult to draw broad generalizations about the long tail of Netflix viewership based on such a small sample. However, it is clear that among the titles studied in this analysis, all show relatively healthy growth, making it hard to classify this phenomenon as a "long tail." It is more akin to a "long wave" of varying intensity, which can be reactivated by external factors.

While the Engagement Reports do shed light on many unknowns, they can also prove useless for series that do not achieve significant initial audiences. Consider two other series released during the first week of 2023: Copenhagen Cowboy by Nicolas Winding Refn and the Italian series The Lying Life of Adults, adapted from Elena Ferrante. Neither ever appeared in the weekly Top 10, and for good reason: they accumulated only 1.5 million and 2.3 million CVEs respectively over their first six months. Subsequently, they managed to stay afloat in the Engagement Reports for a few additional semesters before falling below the 0.1 million CVEs per semester threshold required for inclusion. Here is what the limited data available for these series looks like.

Their growth trajectories between the sixth and twelfth months are roughly comparable to the other series, but a slight shift occurs beyond that point. Between the twelfth and eighteenth months, both series show weaker performance than the others in this study. The minimum semester-over-semester growth rate observed in this small sample is 2.3%, which still exceeds the interest rate on my French Livret A savings account.