Friday, January 13, 2017

Daredevil rules the USA according to Netflix



If you’re hunkering down in your blanket fort and waiting out another storm, chances are you’ve got the best kind of company: Netflix. According to Fortune, more than half of Americans currently use the streaming service for access to both movies and TV episodes. In recent years, those subscribers have increasingly flocked to Netflix originals, series developed and produced exclusively for streaming. Although Netflix doesn’t publish its ratings, this must have been a successful gamble since the provider announced it would make an astounding 50 percent of its content original in the next few years. If that means more Stranger Things, we can probably all agree the future is going to be weird and wonderful.

Which binge-worthy series was most likely to be streaming in neighborhoods near you? Inquiring minds wanted to know. Okay, it was us—the team at CableTV who wanted to know. And while there was lots of buzz about some of the newer Netflix originals, you’ll be surprised to find some familiar titles dominating the map all across the United States.

The big winner? Marvel rules the Universe, inspiring blind devotion in fourteen states with Daredevil and strong-arming seven more into watching Jessica Jones. A few other Netflix originals like Bloodline and Orange is the New Black were regional favorites, but they didn’t come close to touching Marvel’s superhero streaming status. Each state’s favorite show was identified by compiling a list of all the original Netflix content, and then analyzing state data from Google Trends in 2016. For the purposes of this map, we excluded movies, children’s shows, continuations (series aired previously on another network), and limited, one-time specials so we could isolate popular original content in each state. For instance, shows like Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life made our list because Netflix is rebooting the series and creating original content from what was previously a discontinued network program.

While there were some correlations with favoring shows with local settings, we found less evidence of those types of parallels in this map compared to others we’ve produced. This could be in part because the demographics of streamers tend to skew towards younger, more tech-savvy folks who need less comfort in their entertainment choices. What were the trends we discovered in tracking Netflix original content from sea to shining sea? Snuggle up on the couch and let’s chat.

Keeping it Local

As with most entertainment data by state, we found some evidence suggesting we prefer a taste of home. The following states had favorite shows that were set in the same locale.

Bloodline (drama set in the Florida Keys)
Alabama
Florida
North Carolina
South Carolina
House of Cards (political drama set in Washington D.C.)
District of Columbia
Last Chance U (docuseries set in East Mississippi Community College)
Mississippi
The Get Down (music drama set in South Bronx)
New York
Hemlock Grove (thriller set in small town Pennsylvania)
West Virginia
The Ranch (sitcom set in rural Colorado)
Wyoming

Here Comes the Sun

When the North settles in to watch Netflix, subscribers tend to choose warmer locales. The following states can have cold winters with heavy snowfall, but their favorite series serves up the sunny side of life.
  • Massachusetts and Rhode Island tune into Love to see a slice of LA living.
  • Connecticut keeps warm with Bloodline, set in the sunshine state of Florida.
  • Montana and Washington leave snowflakes behind in favor of Flaked, featuring plenty of California’s signature palm trees.
  • Wisconsin heats things up with the explosive Lady Dynamite, whose heroine is a comedian looking for laughs in Los Angeles.
Trending Now…

Some states may not share the same favorites, but their region tends to skew towards a particular genre. The following areas of the country fell neatly into categories of content.
Drama Queens are alive and well in the South.
Daredevil, Bloodline, and Orange is the New Black reigned across much of the southern United States.
It’s Always Sunny with comedy in the Pacific West.
Flaked and W/ Bob & David were two prominent choices along the West Coast.
Lighten it up with laughter in the North.
Flaked, W/ Bob & David, Love, and Lady Dynamite were scattered across the northern United States, suggesting there isn’t anything that a little comedy sketch can’t cure.
Superheroes save the day in the Midwest.
Daredevil and Jessica Jones are favorites in the middle of the country. Apparently some parts of the 
U.S. are still looking for a hero.

New England has love to keep it warm.
Sense8, Love, and Jessica Jones all focus on relationships, human or otherwise, and are popular in New England, where their trademark cynicism doesn’t extend to TV content.
Keeping it clean for the kids in the Mountain West.
PG-rated fare is favored in states like Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming, including Stranger Things, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, and The Ranch, which are all acceptable for younger viewers.

Fangirl Thoughts: It is interesting to see what people are watching across the US. I am a huge fan of Daredevil and can understand how Jersey would be about Daredevil. I hope we continue to get trends like this so we can see how the climate changes in the US. 

Post by Vikki
Twitter: ProfessorWhite
Facebook: Fangirl Review

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