Making a Murderer Coming in October 2018
A report suggests that over 55% of the Netflix new additions on the way in October are Netflix Originals. Unfortunately, this statement is slightly misleading as we’ll take a look at below.
The report comes from Cord Cutters News, a website dedicated to reporting on how to cut the cord from cable companies. Its article on October 1st entitled “In October Over 55% of Netflix’s New Shows & Movies Are Netflix Originals” got us thinking.
The article states that “For the third month in a row over half of Netflix’s new movies and TV shows will be Netflix originals in October 2018. This time over 55% of the new movies and TV shows are Netflix Originals up from 52% in September 2018.”
Unfortunately, this is slightly misleading. For the past few months, the source for this percentage has been the announced list of titles as opposed to the actual number of titles released onto Netflix. The monthly previews often leave out some of the smaller movie titles and foreign title selection that will be added throughout the month.
How many titles were Netflix Originals?
Let’s take September, for example, where it was stated that 52% of all titles added were Netflix Originals. That’s true of the 102 pre-announced titles that came in September. In total, we counted 206 titles were added throughout September 2018. We counted there to be roughly 49 Netflix Originals released in September 2018. That makes the actual percentage much closer to 24%. That makes it a significant amount but nowhere near the percentage as discussed in the article.
There are a few caveats to our data set here. We’re only counting full Netflix Originals that were added to Netflix in the US. Other regions vary tremendously in terms of what was added and the number of Originals added. It’s worth noting that the quantity of titles reflected doesn’t always necessarily reflect in the quality. Quite often, a big bulk of titles that make up the month’s new additions are in the form of foreign movies.
Of course, the Cord Cutters News article is correct in saying that Netflix has shifted their focus onto Originals over the past few years. As Netflix’s main source of content chooses to go their own ways by creating their own streaming services or switching loyalty to the likes of Amazon or Hulu, Netflix is forced to move in this direction.
We’ll update this article once October has finished, reflecting the actual percentage of titles added this month.
