By Joe Flint and Ben Fritz 

When asked recently if she knew how many people were watching the comedy "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" on Netflix, co-creator Tina Fey said she had no idea.

"We don't have any actual numbers," Ms. Fey said at a recent gathering of television critics. "I feel a lot of people are watching the show. Let's go with that," she cracked.

Netflix Inc. is notoriously secretive when it comes to sharing such information--be it with content providers, the media or Wall Street-- arguing that since it doesn't have advertisers to please, ratings for its subscription streaming service are irrelevant.

But now Hollywood is getting its first real peek inside the black box of online video streaming. In recent months, measurement specialist Nielsen has been scaling up a program to track viewing on Netflix and other online services like Amazon.com Inc.'s Prime Instant Video and Hulu. Nielsen said it is now tracking nearly 1,000 shows.

Most major TV studios are receiving detailed readouts on how their own programming is performing, including the total viewers for any episode and basic demographics like age and gender, Nielsen said.

For media giants including Comcast Corp.'s NBCUniversal, Time Warner Inc. and 21st Century Fox, the new data could give them more leverage in their content-licensing negotiations with streaming services, especially industry giant Netflix. When shows perform well, they will know to push for higher fees when deals are renewed.

At the same time, if the data reveal that Netflix's original content isn't as popular as its acquired programs that could be a concern to Wall Street, given how much the company has been investing in its own programming.

Netflix has been dismissive of Nielsen's efforts, noting that the company still doesn't provide ratings for content viewed on tablets and phones and that its numbers wouldn't include viewing of shows outside the U.S.

There are limits to the media companies' bargaining power. Despite their misgivings about Netflix--and its role in drawing audiences away from traditional TV--they have clocked robust revenue growth from their licensing pacts with streaming companies. Streaming services including Netflix, Hulu and Amazon will spend $6.8 billion this year buying reruns of TV shows from networks and studios, estimates David Bank, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

Netflix does shares some viewing information with select studios. Studios that do large content-licensing deals with Netflix have been able to negotiate for data such as the number of times a show has been streamed on a monthly basis and some tracking info to see how a show is retaining an audience over multiple episodes, people familiar with the matter say. But Netflix doesn't provide demographic breakdowns or how many people watch any individual episode.

Some major suppliers said they don't get any information from Netflix, and expressed surprise and disappointment that competitors do, since Netflix's mantra has been that it doesn't share viewership data. Amazon and Hulu have a similar approach to sharing data with program suppliers.

A Netflix spokesman said the data that has been shared is "very limited" and said the company isn't sharing any data on Netflix originals, including shows produced by the major studios. The one exception was Twentieth Century Fox Television's "Arrested Development," the spokesman said. (Twentieth-parent 21st Century Fox and Wall Street Journal-owner News Corp were part of the same company until mid-2013.)

For now, Nielsen is sharing only data on shows with the studios that own them and that pay for the information. Over time, the company hopes to "syndicate" the data widely in the industry, so studios can compare their viewership against others', further aiding them in negotiations.

Nielsen is measuring streaming viewership through the same sample of more than 25,000 U.S. households it uses to measure traditional TV ratings. Studios provide Nielsen with digital files that allow the measurement company to scan for audio fingerprints of shows and log viewing data. Nielsen can measure any show a studio has produced, including originals created exclusively for streaming services.

The data provided to studios doesn't specify which streaming service a show was on, but studios can deduce that since they generally have exclusive tie-ups with streaming services for certain periods.

Not everyone is thrilled with the early results from Nielsen. One studio executive said the Nielsen samples aren't wide enough and don't capture viewing from tablets and mobile devices. Nielsen is planning on including such measurement in the near future. Competitors to Nielsen in this area are emerging, including Luth Research and Symphony Advanced Media, both of whom offer viewership information on subscription video services.

In addition to whatever data can be obtained from outside suppliers and Netflix, some production companies have tried on their own to gauge what's working on the service and what's not.

A common approach is to closely monitor Netflix to see which shows it is promoting to get a sense of what is popular. One studio executive said he has multiple researchers who often devote several days a week watching the home page of the streaming service.

If a show is being suggested for a month, "it really tells you something, " the executive said.

Another dead giveaway is when Netflix calls a studio, unsolicited, seeking shows similar to one that recently started streaming.

Then there are the old-school Hollywood ways to get information, such as hiring people who used to work at a streaming company or swapping data over cocktails.

"People do talk," said a studio executive. "We go to lunch. We go to dinner. We drink."

The data the studios are getting doesn't yet appear to be trickling down to show producers, actors or their agents, limiting their ability to cash in on the popularity of a Netflix series to grow their career.

"This is most important psychologically," said one prominent television agent. "Creators want to know who, if anyone, is watching and enjoying their work."

Write to Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com and Ben Fritz at ben.fritz@wsj.com

 

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 26, 2015 19:20 ET (23:20 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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