On a day in late August, the most popular show on Netflix in Australia was a documentary about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s high-profile defamation case. Over at Stan, the top of its “Trending TV” list featured a fantasy drama called The Winter King. And in the equivalent spot on Binge was the Sex and the City sequel, And Just Like That.
But which was the most popular program of the three? No one knows. In fact, it’s impossible to verify whether they were in fact the most watched because streaming services keep all meaningful audience data to themselves. Unlike movies or television or even The Australian Financial Review, which are part of industry associations that pay third parties to measure their audiences, reliable subscription streaming data lives behind an unscaleable brick wall – and that’s not about to change soon.
