With the end of the year approaching, Netflix has released a bunch of binge-watching statistics with an interesting nugget: an Indian subscriber watched The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie – the 2004 animated comedy featuring the Nickelodeon TV character – a total of 171 times in 2017. Netflix didn't say when it stopped counting, but at least it didn't talk about them publicly.
Meanwhile, Netflix users in India are more likely to binge-watch TV shows at a faster rate (3 days) than the global average of four. This is in addition to the news from last month that Indians rank second in the world when it comes to bingeing in public, only after Mexico.
And while mobile downloads continue to rank high in the country, owing to a combination of low data costs thanks to the rise of Reliance Jio and single-TV ownership in most parts, Netflix said its users did more than a third (34 percent) of their viewing on connected TVs.
The most popular day to stream Netflix in India was October 29, the last Sunday of the month, as opposed to January 1 for the rest of the world. It's surprising that there's nothing noteworthy about that date, except being a weekend. In total, Netflix subscribers watched more than 140 million hours per day, which amounts to nearly a billion hours per week globally.
Indian Netflix members were so addicted to shows such as Narcos, Mindhunter, Black Mirror, and The Defenders that they watched ahead of their significant others, while the family got together to binge the likes of Chef's Table, Riverdale, and Star Trek: Discovery. Stranger Things and 13 Reasons Why made both lists.
More interesting are the lists that draw the line between 'devouring' (more than 2 hours per day) and 'savouring' (less than 2 hours). The little-known South Korean time-travelling rom-com My Only Love Song took the top spot in the former department, followed by 13 Reasons Why and Marvel's Iron Fist. Japanese food-related shows – Midnight Diner: Tokyo Series, and Samurai Gourmet – belonged in the latter.
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