In Netflix’s Upside-Down Reality, ‘Stranger Things’ Is a Hit Before It Even Premieres

At the downtown Atlanta bar where I watched the 2017 Super Bowl, the only cheer that did not retroactively mutate into a painfully misguided croak of hubris was the one that erupted during a third-quarter commercial break, when a trio of very famous tweens appeared in Ghostbusters costumes. Stranger Things, the little-hyped Netflix nostalgia-shot-turned-summer-phenomenon, was back.

Netflix’s first Super Bowl spot, which cost an estimated $5 million, was ostensibly placed to announce the show would be returning on Halloween (the date was later bumped up to October 27). But there’s no doubt that the big spend was also meant to cement Stranger Things’ status as a hit show. When Netflix later managed to license “Thriller” for a second trailer that debuted at Comic-Con in July, the message was clear: Stranger Things 2 would be not only a show but a cultural event, on par with the biggest movies and TV programs of our time, and a worthy successor to the most iconic artifacts from the decade it so lovingly captures.

There’s just one small problem with this narrative. No one except the people at Netflix know exactly how many subscribers watched Stranger Things. For years the company has famously refused to disclose any consistent viewership data about its shows, arguing that such information is relevant only to companies that need to sell advertising against their programming. Though Netflix claims to be an extremely data-driven company, those on the outside, from Hollywood producers to critics to viewers, must rely on the elusive notion of “buzz” to figure out whether a show is popular. That’s bad for anyone trying to understand the complex moving parts of the TV industry, but good for a show like Stranger Things, which will be publicly hailed as a success no matter how many people tune in.

Here’s what we know, specifically, about the popularity of Stranger Things: That Super Bowl commercial generated the most social media buzz of the 65 brands that aired ads during the game, according to analytics firm iSpot.tv. The show generated tremendous search interest on Google, and topped a Google Trends list of popular 2016 television programs. And 70 percent of viewers who watched the second episode ended up finishing the first season, according to Netflix, indicating a high level of investment among viewers.

The company has good reason to bet big on the show. Unlike some of the service’s early, heavily marketed programs, such as House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black, Stranger Things is fully financed and owned by Netflix. That means the company can distribute the show globally and make additional revenue through channels such as Blu-ray sales. Netflix is increasingly favoring the ownership model as it tries to lessen its reliance on networks and studios for content. This strategy helps ensure that when a company like Disney decides to pull much of its content from Netflix, the service still has a healthy slate of must-see programming. Stranger Things may be the most important success story yet in the company’s ongoing transition away from licensing shows. No wonder company executives were wearing Stranger Things–themed ugly sweaters in their latest conference call with investors.

To be clear, all signs indicate the show definitely is a success story, even if Netflix won’t offer up detailed stats. The television analytics firm Symphony Advanced Media says that Stranger Things attracted 14.07 million adult viewers (ages 18-49) in its first 35 days available on the service last summer, though the firm abandoned efforts to track Netflix shows earlier this year because networks and studios weren’t paying enough for the figures. More recently, Nielsen dared to try to crack open Netflix’s black box, and an executive there claims that a hit Netflix show (presumably like Stranger Things) is as popular as a successful show on HBO or Showtime (presumably like Game of Thrones, which pulls in more than 20 million viewers per episode). Whether these data tidbits reflect positively on the company’s shows or not, Netflix tends to dismiss such efforts as “remarkably inaccurate.” (Netflix did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)

This muddled picture is more beneficial to Netflix than any official declaration that Stranger Things is as big as Game of Thrones. Without detailed ratings, every Netflix original can be presented as a hit until it’s summarily canceled, like The Get Down was seven months after Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos told analysts he was excited about the show’s performance in an earnings call. With its sky-high valuation and constant investor pressure to increase its user base, the company needs as many “hits” as it can muster to make its growth story seem viable not only today (an impressive 5.3 million subscribers were added in the most recent quarter), but for years to come.

Netflix argues that hoarding its ratings data is good for more than just the company’s bottom line—it helps the creative process, too. “There’s a very natural inclination to say, relative to this show, this [other] show’s a failure,” Sarandos said in 2016 in response to an attempt by NBC to estimate Netflix viewership stats. “That puts a lot of pressure on the talent that we don’t want … if we turn it into a weekly arms race by doing box scores for every [Nielsen-issued ratings report, we’re] going to have the same result as it’s had on [traditional] television, which I think has been remarkably negative in terms of the quality of shows.”

But the data secrecy creates an obvious power imbalance as Netflix rapidly builds up its content library. A show’s worth is traditionally measured largely by its audience size, and an actor’s value is intrinsically tied to how many people will follow him or her across different projects. These laws of media economics still apply to Netflix, but now only the company itself knows the true reach of the programming it green-lights. Netflix is forcing competing media giants like Disney and NBC to negotiate blindfolded, as these companies are simultaneously thrilled and scared by the amount of money the streaming service is pouring into television. And the company alone gets to decide what constitutes success, both publicly and privately. During its last earnings call, Netflix claimed three of its recently released movies—Death Note, Naked, and To the Bone—would have been hits at the box office, without disclosing viewership numbers.

Personally, I don’t weep too much for the Hollywood executives and actors who are still getting paid regardless of how many people watched their shows. But Netflix’s stance—mirrored by Hulu and Amazon, but always analyzed in the context of streaming’s biggest player—does rob us of a broader understanding of which television shows matter, and why. Watching TV is America’s favorite leisure activity, and historically, it’s offered a window into the way people view the world. The fact that The Cosby Show’s all-black cast resonated so strongly with white audiences in the 1980s, or that Seinfeld and Martin carved out polar-opposite viewing demographics in the ’90s, or that a gruesome, nihilist show like The Walking Dead could become the most popular show in America this decade, informs our understanding of those eras. Netflix, of course, studies why we watch what we watch, but only in the service of its own business interests. The company regularly commissions research from a well-credentialed anthropologist named Grant McCracken, but his findings are often limited to broad, pro-Netflix takes such as “Binge-watching is Actually Good.”

Perhaps that’s the real key to Netflix’s stinginess with data. The company doesn’t much care what you’re watching, so long as you keep watching (and paying). If Stranger Things is truly the next Game of Thrones, that begets immediate anxiety about how a show that big can ever be topped (HBO is already fielding skepticism that it will be able to fill the void when its fantasy juggernaut soon concludes). But as long as its popularity hovers in the abstract, the show is easily replaceable by another “hit” as needed. Every title can get its time in the spotlight, but no one show can be bigger than Netflix itself.