LOS ANGELES, July 1 — After returning to Netflix for a new season June 17, prison-based series Orange is the New Black was reportedly watched by 6.7 million of the platform’s subscribers in three days. These very healthy ratings would make Orange is the New Black the second most-watched cable series in the USA, behind Game of Thrones, if it aired on a regular network.

Although Netflix doesn’t release viewing figures for its series, ratings firm Nielsen unveiled some data about shows on streaming platforms for the first time during a Las Vegas conference.

According to the TV ratings specialist, the first episode of season four of Orange is the New Black was watched by 6.7 million Netflix subscribers between June 17 and 19. Episode two reportedly drew 5.9 million viewers.

Orange is the New Black just behind Game of Thrones

When compared to audience figures for shows on American cable networks, Jenji Kohan’s comedy-drama would come behind HBO’s hit Game of Thrones as the second-most-watched series. The June 19 episode of Game of Thrones of was watched by 10.4 million viewers on HBO, based on live-plus-three ratings. Orange is the New Black would come ahead of Major Crimes, watched by 5.8 million viewers on TNT for the June 13 episode.

Nielsen’s data remains unconfirmed by Netflix, which has always refused to join ratings wars by never releasing its own audience data. With a business model based on an ad-free, paid-for subscription service, the American streaming platform has no real need to publish its ratings.

Back in January, a few audience figures from Netflix did filter out from America’s NBC network. In a bid to prove that traditional TV was far from dead and buried, Alan Wurtzel, President of Research and Media Development for NBCUniversal, unveiled a few figures obtained via Symphony, a smartphone application that uses automatic content recognition techniques to identify streamed media by a programme’s audio files. The accuracy of this method of measuring audiences was called into question by several media firms at the time. — AFP-Relaxnews