Dave Chappelle's Special Cost More Than 'Squid Game'

[Brian mike]

While reporting on the growing unrest at Netflix over Dave Chappelle’s new special “The Closer,” we obtained internal Netflix data that offered the clearest picture yet of how the service measures the success of its projects.

Netflix makes this information available to hundreds of its employees, some of whom feel the company should reconsider working with Chappelle – not just because they consider him transphobic, but because it is a poor use of Netflix’s money.

Chappelle’s specials are the most-watched on the service, but they are also the most expensive. About 24 million people watched a previous special, “Sticks & Stones,” which cost the service $23.6 million, according to the documents. (“The Closer” cost $24.1 million.)

Netflix being Netflix, it relies on its own idiosyncratic data points to evaluate programs. “Sticks & Stones” scored well in adjusted view share, which the company describes as its “primary measure of a title’s impact.” It reflects a show’s share of Netflix viewing, adjusted for how valuable those viewers are considered.

We don’t know the formula(s) used to calculate AVS. Current and former employees say that new customers and people who don’t watch a lot are considered more valuable viewers. If those people watch a program, it suggests that show is a reason they remain customers.

The specials score less well when you look at efficiency score, which measures a show’s value over its cost. The special had an impact value of $19.4 million and an efficiency score of 0.8X. An efficiency score of 1x means that a show generated about as much viewership as it cost. Anything above 1x means a show was efficient. Anything below that means it was not.

Chappelle’s special scored less than 1x, while Bo Burnham’s “Inside” scored a 2.8x. Based on these measurements, Netflix got better results from Burnham than from Chappelle, some employees believe.

Yet Burnham’s efficiency score is so strong because his special only cost $3.8 million to produce. Chappelle, perhaps the biggest stand-up on the planet, commanded five times more. (Chappelle’s pay on these specials has never been a big secret.)

And that’s where this gets complicated. Netflix aims for a mix of shows that reach a lot of viewers and are efficient. If you have all low-cost shows with high efficiency, you might not have as many culture-defining hits. Only so many people want to watch Burnham perform at home.

But if you have all high-cost shows with high viewership, you are Disney+, living off of a couple of massive hits with nothing else to watch.

The dream is a show that scores well in both categories like “Squid Game,” which has an adjusted view share of 353, compared to 12 for Chappelle and 10 for Burnham. It has an efficiency of 41.7X. We don’t have enough data to know where these metrics rank in Netflix history, but “Squid Game” scored the biggest debut by more than 50 million viewers. And the full nine episodes cost less than a Chappelle special (to say nothing of “The Crown”).

While Netflix has always been transparent with its employees, it has been opaque with the public — reversing decades of precedent. The company has never been forthcoming with information about the performance of its shows, angering agents, lawyers and studios.

Netflix has argued that viewership doesn’t matter because it doesn’t sell ads. Yet the company has also made it clear that big hits attract subscribers, and subscriber additions is a key stat for the company and its investors. The lack of public data has made it very hard to know if a show is successful. While it seems like everyone talked about “House of Cards,” we never knew how many people watched it.

Over the past couple of years, Netflix has cherry picked some viewership figures that make its biggest hits look even bigger. They started by releasing the number of people who watched at least 70% of a show, but abandoned that metric in favor of reporting the number of people who watch two minutes. (The stated reason was that because programs were of a different length, the 70% metric didn’t work.)

The company has opened up a bit more once or twice. It provided Bloomberg with a list of its 10 most-watched movies for a story last year, and recently disclosed its 10 most-watched movies and TV shows — as well as the total time spent watching — at the Code Conference.

Netflix has much more it could disclose. In addition to measuring how many people watched at least two minutes – starters in Netflix speak – it measures what percent of those people stick around to watch most of the program (stickiness) and what share of people finishes the show (completion).

Reporters have pieced together information about Netflix’s different data points by talking to current and former employees. There is still so much we don’t know, from geographical breakdowns to how Netflix actually calculates many of its metrics. We’d love to know what titles Netflix thinks were responsible for attracting new subscribers, for example.

Our data is only for a handful of titles, but it is still the most detailed information we’ve gotten to date. So let’s revisit the biggest hit in Netflix history, “Squid Game.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsl...han-squid-game