Did you binge watch the second season of Stranger Things as soon as it arrived? If so, then you were one of around 361,000 US Netflix subscribers to consume all nine episodes within 24 hours of its release, according to Nielsen. That's a total of 495 consecutive minutes, or 8.25 hours.
Last month, Nielsen announced that its Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) Content Ratings service would allow private media customers to discover ratings for Netflix shows; numbers that the streaming site has long kept to itself. This is the first time that Nielsen has shared the figures publicly.
Nielsen's system, which uses audio recognition software, only measures views on set-top boxes---it doesn't count devices such as mobiles, laptops, or tablets. This caveat means that the weekend viewing figures will be even higher than reported.
Nielsen adds that 15.8 million US viewers watched the first episode of Stranger Things' second season within the first three days, making it one of cable TV's biggest hits. Overall, each episode averaged around 4 million viewers in the US.
Comparing these numbers to the finale of Game of Thrones, about 13 million people watched the HBO show's climax live or on DVR within three days of it airing.
While there's no doubting the success of Stranger Things, Netflix continues to dispute the accuracy of Nielsen's system. "The data that Nielsen is reporting is not accurate, not even close, and does not reflect the viewing of these shows on Netflix," the company said in a press statement.