25 Jul Netflix’s Red-Hot Subtitle Summer: Viewing of Local-Language Shows Is Up 30% Over the Last 7 Weeks [Next TV]
BY JACK REID
July 25, 2023 | Netflix viewership may be down significantly from last year overall, but its local language productions have been humming along nicely, particularly since the Writers Guild of America strike started in May, and the streaming service started more aggressively surfacing international programming options for viewers in its largest market, the U.S.
Once again, Next TV compared viewing time for Netflix’s top local-language programming since June 1 to the same period of 2022. We found viewership of the platform’s top non-English TV series titles soared by 30% year over year in the past seven weeks. For foreign-language films, the increase in total hours viewed was around 20%.
Even more compelling is the fact that Netflix’s international series now account for over 43% of the total viewing hours for all of the streamer’s series.
Last year, during the same period, that share was only 20%.
Following the watershed success of Korean dystopian sci-fi series Squid Game in the fall of 2021, Netflix started spending slightly less in the U.S. on original production and more making shows in places like South Korea.