Netflix to Shift Viewership Reports to Annual Release Starting in 2027

Transition to Annual Reporting and Financial Focus

Beginning in 2027, Netflix will discontinue its practice of releasing the What We Watched report twice a year. Instead, the company plans to publish the data annually during the first quarter. The move is designed to decouple viewership disclosures from quarterly earnings calls, allowing management to steer investor attention toward our primary financial metrics — revenue and operating profit, according to the company’s latest letter to shareholders.

While the company is reducing the frequency of these reports, it continues to provide more data than its streaming competitors. As reported by TheWrap, Netflix remains the only major streamer to consistently share title-by-title and total view hours publicly. Despite the change in cadence, the platform confirmed it will continue to publish its weekly Top 10 lists for movies and series across more than 90 countries.

Investor Scrutiny and Engagement Trends

The decision to restrict data access comes amid a period of turbulence for Netflix stock, which has faced significant volatility. MarketWatch notes that shares fell 7.6% in after-hours trading on Thursday following the announcement. Investors have increasingly expressed concern over competition from short-form video platforms and potential viewer resistance to subscription price increases.

The company is also addressing concerns about viewership drop-offs in second seasons of its original series. Variety reports that co-CEO Ted Sarandos pushed back against the narrative of declining engagement during the company’s recent earnings call. In aggregate, we are not seeing any material change in our second-season viewing compared to season ones, Sarandos said. He argued that the platform’s strategy of releasing all episodes at once often leads to high initial discovery, which can make subsequent season performance appear different from traditional, staggered-release models.

For more on this story, see John Cena and Eric André Star in Netflix’s New Comedy ‘Little Brother.

Methodology and Performance Metrics

Netflix’s approach to measuring success has evolved significantly since it began sharing data in 2020. As Yahoo reports, the platform moved in June 2023 from tracking raw hours viewed to a views metric, which divides the total hours viewed by the title’s runtime. This adjustment was intended to correct biases that previously favored longer content.

Category	Total Hours (H1 2026)
TV Content	over 74 billion
Film Content	23 billion

The most-watched series in the first half of 2026 was the limited series His & Hers, which garnered 454 million hours, while the film War Machine led the movies category with 266 million hours. Notably, the latest report lumped video podcasts into an Other Shows category rather than providing specific metrics, citing the newness of the format.

Strategic Context and Market Reaction

This shift in transparency mirrors a move from April 2024, when Netflix stopped reporting subscriber numbers on a quarterly basis. Business Insider highlights that the company’s rationale remains consistent: it prefers that Wall Street focus on profitability rather than specific engagement data points that analysts often use to critique the service. Despite the skepticism from some investors, Netflix continues to emphasize that quality of engagement is a more meaningful measure of subscriber value than sheer volume of hours watched.

For the second quarter of 2026, Netflix reported $12.56 billion in revenue, slightly below Wall Street estimates of $12.58 billion. The company has narrowed its full-year revenue forecast to a range of $51 billion to $51.4 billion, down from its previous guidance of $50.7 billion to $51.7 billion.

Find more reporting in our Entertainment section.