“In the old days, you got to see your numbers. You knew when the axe was going to fall.”

There aren’t many industries where performance is not measured on clarity of numbers, yet while Free to Air TV has overhauled its ratings delivery in 2024, the Streaming sector remains tight-lipped about its viewing numbers -including to the people who make the show.

Last year Wellmania enjoyed a bumper launch as a top 10 TV show in 38 countries on Netflix, but by the end of the year it had been axed, with the company noting the decision ws based on cost vs viewing numbers.

A twice-yearly report What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report indicated it was the second most popular Australian title over a six month period January and June 2023 at 41,300,000 hours across its 8 episodes.

None of that detail had been related to producers Fremantle, nor creator Celeste Barber, prior to the axe falling. Hours viewed for a series also doesn’t detail how the audience consumed the series, but the outcome suggests a hefty drop-off after episode one.

For Australian producers making shows for local streaming platforms, not having transparency of numbers in some ways leaves them working ‘blind.’

Executive Producer Ian Collie of Easy Tiger (Scrublands, Colin From Accounts, One Night, The Twelve) recently told TV Tonight, not having access to streaming numbers was a challenging way to do business.

“It’s frustrating. Sometimes I feel ‘What are we doing? Just delivering widgets to these people and then off it goes?'” he said.

“Most of our partnerships with these networks and streamers have all been good. But that opaqueness at the end as to how it’s performed, is frustrating. I’m not sure how we can get people to be transparent. They don’t want to give their rivals any snip, I suppose.

Executive Producer Rob Gibson, who previously Head of Originals at Stan, said, “I think the the idea is always to be as helpful to your partners as you can be, but without giving away the trade secrets. Of course, it’s all about, the competitive pressures that they have and everyone has a different way of measuring success. That’s the other thing. To be fair, success can be measured in a number of different way. Because it’s not based on overnights anymore, you do have to give shows time to find their audience sometimes. Some of them still performing the old fashioned way where they go gangbusters on the first night, first week, first month, and then and then tail off. Others become, cult classics over a longer period and that’s one of the great things about it. But yeah, it is inherently hard to measure.”

“Wellmania when it first came out in the US, we heard about it (performing) and then suddenly it must not have been able to sustain its audience, I can only think?” suggested Collie.

“It seems to be the case that Netflix has a very sophisticated way of measuring viewership against costs and making pretty clear decisions on that basis. But we don’t know,” Gibson acknowledged.

“At least in the old days, you got to see your numbers. You knew when the axe was going to fall.”

Ian Collie noted reviews and international sales were still important measures of success.

“Colin from Accounts has been quite a juggernaut, if that’s the right word. But it’s a pity not to have the local figures in terms of who’s watching, the demographics, the breakdown of that, which you used to be able to have, certainly in the olden days where we had ratings. “They meant something. So that’s something we really miss.”

Upcoming Easy Tiger projects include Colin From Accounts S2 (Binge / Foxtel), Desert King (Netflix) and Four Years Later (SBS).