The SunBreak
posted 01/10/10 05:12 PM | updated 01/10/10 05:12 PM
Featured Post! | Views: 0 | Comments : 6 | Film & TV

NYT Runs the Numbers on Netflix Picks

By josh
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snapshot from a NYT infographic by By Matthew Bloch, Amanda Cox, Jo Craven McGinty, and Kevin Quealy showing nationwide and local Netflix habits.

In a brilliant display of number-crunching and infographics, the New York Times looked at data from Netflix to see how the most popular rentals nationwide fared in a dozen metropolitan areas. Clicking through the city-specific heatmaps of rental popularity provides a fascinating (and time-sucking) glimpse at neighborhood by neighborhood preferences in what people insert into their DVD players.

Shown here is the map for Milk, which ranked 13th nationally, first in Capitol Hill and along the Ship Canal, with queue popularity falling off noticeably along with distance from the city center. In general, looking through the list, the Puget Sound region seems to have pretty decent taste in rentals, for instance, Obsessed didn't crack the top 50 in any ZIP code, Tyler Perry doesn't have many fans in the Northwest, and only Eastlake was renting the latest Underworld.

Browse through the 100 frequently-rented titles, and let us know if you see any other revelatory demographic patterns in movie preferences.

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PB MC
I don't think it's revelatory, but check out the map for Paul Blart: Mall Cop. It's the opposite of the map for Milk.
Comment by Manuel W.
2 days ago
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RE: PB MC
Same for Taken too.
Comment by Audrey Hendrickson
2 days ago
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huskies
the anomaly of 98195 (certain UW residence halls, mainly) is cute, too. Role Models and the House Bunny were big flicks on campus.
Comment by josh
2 days ago
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interesting stuff
Great way to confirm your prejudices (both good and bad). Pick any city where you think you understand the demo by neighborhood and riffle through the data.

Kind of sad it's so predictable - no wonder Hollywood works so hard on targeting films. Or maybe it wouldn't be so predictable if Hollywood didn't work so hard on targeting films.
Comment by bilco
2 days ago
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Includes?
Does this include "Watch Now?" stats?

And, I tend to use my Netflix and Watch Now queues for movies I wouldn't actually pay money to see.

Moreover, Paul Blart: Mall Cop wasn't actually as bad as the trailers made it seem.

Moreover, I am not interested in seeing Milk.

Moreover, I watched Sunshine Cleaning last night.

Moreover, this is not my original comment, but that vanished when I got a login error. So you get sloppy seconds now, Sunbreak!
Comment by TroyJMorris
2 days ago
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RE: Includes?
we will take your sloppy seconds any day.

and I don't know the answer to any of those questions. The NYT piece seemed pretty thinly sourced, but that just may have been a case of me not looking hard enough for the underlying data.

finally, the watch instantly feature is the most magical thing of all time (so far) especially when paired with a dvd playing machine (or roku, i guess) that's connected to your television. I have been gushing about it to everyone for the past week.
Comment by josh
2 days ago
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