Patterns and Dynamics of Netflix TV Show Popularity

Abstract

The rise of platforms like Netflix has expanded the possibility for audiences worldwide to watch the same content simultaneously, motivating research on cross-country media consumption. We investigate the global dynamics of media consumption by analyzing daily top-ranked Netflix TV shows across 71 countries over a span of 822 days. Using an information-theoretic framework, we measure diversity, similarity, and directional relationships in consumption trends using Shannon entropy, mutual information, and Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence. According to Shannon entropy analysis, North America and Europe have highly dynamic viewing preferences, whereas East and Southeast Asia (ESA) display more persistent trends, with the same shows often dominating for long periods. Mutual information identifies clear regional clusters of synchronized consumption, with particularly strong alignment among ESA countries. To analyze temporal patterns, we introduce a KL-based asymmetry measure that captures directional patterns between countries, applicable to both inter- and intra-regional pairs. This analysis reveals distinct pathways of content spread. We find inter-regional patterns from ESA and South America toward North America and Europe, and intra-regional signals from Korea and Thailand to other ESA countries. We also observe that ESA trends reaching other regions often originate from Singapore. These findings offer insight into the temporal structure of global content spread and highlight the coexistence of global synchronization and regional independence in streaming media preferences.