Netflix's 'Emily in Paris' Doing Good But Not Great - Data Shows

When Parade.com reached out and asked if we could take a look at our streaming data library to offer any insights on the performance, and potential of renewal, for Netflix's new Darren Star series, Emily in Paris, we were excited to lend a hand.

To get a feeling for Emily in Paris’ chance of renewal, we pulled viewership data for the series based on its first 11 days after release and compared it to six other Netflix original series – three that ended up being renewed for a second season (Lost in Space, Another Life and Wu Assassin) and three that were not renewed for a second season (Spinning Out, The Society and Gypsy). To make sure we were doing an 'apples to apples' comparison, for each show, we looked at the 11-day window after the respective date it was released so that the sampling window for each would be identical. (The request came only 11 days after Emily's season one episodes were first released.) Interestingly, we knew that Netflix had recently reported two key factors in its renewal analysis which are:

• “Watchers” (the total number of viewers that watch a given show) • “Starters” (viewers that only watch the first episode but do not continue with the series) Because of this, we decided to adopt their own analysis into our modeling.

Chart 1 – Watchers This is a pretty straight forward analysis. From the data, you can see – 11 days into the release of the entire first season - that Emily in Paris fits just in between the grouping of renewed shows and non-renewed shows.

Chart 2 - Starters To establish a “Starter” metric, we created a ratio where the number of streams of the first episode was the numerator (the top number of the fraction) and the streams for the second episode was the denominator (the bottom number in the fraction). If the first episode streams are higher than the second episode, then the ratio is a higher number and if the second episode streams is higher than the ration will be a lower number. So, in this case, the lower the ‘Starter Ratio’ the better and the higher the ration the worse the chances for renewal. Here, again, the Starter Ratio for Emily in Paris fit just in between the collective ratios for the renewed shows and the non-renewed shows. The below graph shows a ratio between first episode and second episode viewership for each show. Again, smaller is better here. A value of ~1 for Lost in Space means that there were approximately equal amounts of streams between the first and second episode of the series. A value of ~3 for Emily in Paris means that for every three streams of the first episode, there was only one stream of the second episode in the season, so a notable but not extreme drop-off.

Conclusion:

Both metrics point to the same conclusion – that Emily in Paris seems to be occupying a middle ground with regard to performance to date. It scores better by both metrics than the shows that did not make it, but not as well as those that did. It is hard to say whether this leads to a renewal, but it may be surmised that the shows pedigree (Darren Star) and its relatively strong IMDB scores (individual episodes’ scores range between 7.1 and 8.1), could tip the scale in the show’s favor.