We’ve been covering most of the awards recognition that Netflix’s original content has been getting over the past few months, and as it turns out, all of those awards and nominations are having a substantial boost on viewership.
Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos talked about viewing trends in the company’s Q4 earnings interview on Wednesday, specifically referring to House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.
“The audience for those shows is continuing to grow as we’d hoped, particularly in the last few months around all of the awards recognition and awards publicity the shows have received,” he said. “We’ve seen nice spikes in viewership of the first episode of these shows, and there’s a lot of re-watching going on as well.”
“With all the buzz around the new season of House of Cards starting up February 14th people have gone back and are re-watching the first season,” he added. “In fact, we’ve done thing like added director’s commentary to that to make it a differentiated experience to go back and watch the show again so we’re seeing both the overall audience expand and the viewing hours grow with these shows month over month over month.”
More on the director’s commentary here.
“We’re pleased with the growth,” CFO David Wells added. “We’ve got some big second seasons coming out this year, and we’ll continue to monitor it, but right now it’s as expected.”
The two indicated that the company’s original content spend will continue to account for a bigger piece of its content spending pie as time goes on.
Netflix’s shows have so far won Emmys and Golden Globes, and a Netflix original documentary is currently up for an Academy Award.
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