Forget Donald Trump and the 2016 presidential race; bring on Frank Underwood and the 2016 presidential race. That's right, the newest season of Netflix's "Hose of Cards" became available for streaming today and it is infinitely more interesting than its real life counterpart.
But how many hours will be binge watched and by how many people? It's tough to come up with an exact number as Netflix is infamously secretive about their ratings formula. Since Netflix's model is based on subscriptions rather than advertisers, it's very difficult to figure out just how popular their shows are outside of what the company tells us.
One TV insider said that the ratings are kept under wraps via confidentially agreements. Another industry expert said Netflix is determined to keep their formula for measuring viewership to themselves.
Here's what we do know: Netflix had roughly 75 million streaming subscribers by the end of 2015. Thanks to a FactSet estimate, we can project that number to rise to 82 million by the end of the first quarter in 2016. Thanks again to Luth Research, we know that 5.3 million (or 6.5 percent) of Netflix's subscribers watched at least one episode of the third season of "House of Cards" within a month of its release.
Based on that, we can guess that just north of 5 million subscribers will turn in to the first episode of season four within the next month. That number is comparable to most basic cable programs, meaning it isn't too shabby. But TV's most popular series - AMC's "The Walking Dead," HBO's "Game of Thrones" - more than triple that amount.
Then again, Netflix isn't trying to achieve the same goals as traditional television. Their hope is to retain existing subscribers while attracting new ones. With that line of thinking in mind, Netflix's original programs such as "House of Cards," "Daredevil," and "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" have been huge successes.
According to an RBC Capital Markets survey conducted in August 2015, 15 percent of U.S. based Netflix users said that the majority of the content they consumed on the streaming service was original. That is a significant chunk of Netflix's audience.
Unsurprisingly, Netflix recently announced that it plans to up the amount of original content it offers from 450 hours in 2015 to north of 600 hours in 2016.
All of this bodes well for the continued life of "House of Cards" and Netflix.
