How many people have actually watched Netflix’s House of Cards or Orange is the New Black? It turns out, Jason Lynch writes, that we don’t know:

• Netflix is in a better position than most other content creators to track exactly how many individuals watch each show.
• Yet it doesn’t ever release the numbers. We know, for example, that House of Cards is popular but we don’t know how its viewership compares to other TV shows.
• This is in part because Netflix doesn’t want its show producers or stars to know how popular they are. If they did then they could demand substantial pay hikes in the future.
• Netflix also points out that given that they don’t have advertizers they don’t need to release such metrics to try to lure commercial partners.
• Yet other networks such as HBO have kept a running tally of their show viewership, even though they don’t have adverts either.
• What we do know is that Netflix has about 47 million subscribers. How many of them watch Netflix’s shows is anyone’s guess.

Read more about this over here.

Source: Quartz