The January to end of June 2026 Netflix viewing data was published on July 16th (see here) and my previous analysis of the data (that went up to December 2025) can be seen here.
The website says “Starting in Q1 2027, we will move from a six-month to a yearly snapshot” more on that in section C.
This time around there were 198 stand up specials and, although it’s always possible that I have missed a couple of obscure ones, the starting list was over 8,000 rows of shows / films etc. that I have to filter and pull the comedy specials out from!
To make my analysis more manageable I’ve cleared out some of the “no” or “low” scoring specials from my running report.
Removing the specials with Zero views (between Jan and Jun 2026) means the people below have vanished from my personal report (which smushes together all of the previous Netflix data, on comedy specials).
These were the people that didn’t feature in the new Netflix report and it’s impossible to know whether (1) they’ve been removed because the streaming deal has ended or (2) they’re still available to watch but have just registered under 100k views. In the list below if we look at the example of Mo Amer the numbers refer to (2) specials with a joint total of 1.4m views. Those views are from 2023 to Dec 2025
- Mo Amer 1.4m (2)
- Aziz Ansari 700k (1)
- Dave Attell 2.5m (1)
- Rosebud Baker 100k (1)
- Carlos Ballarta 1.8m (3)
- Celeste Barber 300k (1)
- Todd Barry 300k (1)
- Mike Birbiglia 500k (2)
- Fern Brady 1.1m (1)
- Russell Brand 100k (1)
- Neal Brennan 6.1m (3)
- Hannibal Buress 100k (1)
- Bill Burr (Friends Who Kill – compilation) 500k (1)
- Dana Carvey 400k (1)
- Michael Che 900k (2)
- Pete Davidson 5.6m (3)
- Greg Davies 200k (2)
- Chris D’Elia 1.2m (3)
- Adam Devine 400k (1)
- Tim Dillon 3m (3)
- Chris Distefano 400k (1)
- Jeff Dunham 800k (2)
- Fortune Feimster 5.2m (3)
- Hannah Gadsby 2.3m (4)
- Tiffany Haddish 300k (2)
- Arsenio Hall 100k (1)
- Chelsea Handler 200k (1)
- Kevin Hart 1.3m (2)
- Pete Holmes 3.1m (1)
- Russell Howard 200k (1)
- Kevin James 100k (1)
- Sean Lock 300k (3)
- Norm McDonald 1m (2)
- Marc Maron 800k (2)
- Demetri Martin 1.3m (3)
- Mae Martin 500k (1)
- Chris McCausland 100k (1)
- Michael McIntyre 500k (3)
- Seth Meyers 1.1m (1)
- Hasan Minhaj 4m (3)
- Leanne Morgan 12.6m (2)
- Tracy Morgan 100k (1)
- Eddie Murphy 500k (1)
- Jim Norton 200k (1)
- Tig Notaro 200k (1)
- Patton Oswalt 500k (4)
- Christina P. 900k (2)
- Richard Pryor 1.4m (1)
- Ray Romano 400k (1)
- Katherine Ryan 900k (2)
- Adam Sandler 800k (1)
- Andrew Santino 1.7m (1)
- Rob Schneider 100k (1)
- Amy Schumer 1.8m (4)
- Jerry Seinfeld 1.1m (2)
- Iliza Shlesinger 900k (2)
- Sarah Silverman 300k (1)
- Beth Stelling 1.7m (1)
- Steph Tolev 500k (1)
- Phil Wang 500k (2)
- Sheng Wang 1.2m (1)
- Marlon Wayans 600k (1)
- Michelle Wolf 3.5m (2)
B – Specials with Sub-200k Views
To reduce the list still further I removed a few more names where all of their specials (that were on the Jan-Jun 2026 report) had only received either 100k or 200k each.
If someone had both low and high scoring specials, then I kept all of the data rows together.
A couple of people in the listing below were also listed in the above, which then eradicated them from the list completely.
Same format as above and, again, the view totals are still 2023 to June 2026. The difference being that these shows are still getting views – but interest is waning.
- Cristela Alonzo 2.3m (3)
- Mo Amer 900k (1)
- Mike Birbiglia 8.7m (4)
- Cedric the Entertainer 700k (1)
- Ronny Chieng 5.6m (3)
- Deon Cole 6m (3)
- Greg Davies 900k (1)
- Micky Flanagan 2.4m (2)
- Nikki Glaser 1.3m (1)
- Chelsea Handler 3.2m (2)
- Russell Howard 800k (1)
- D. L. Hughley 700k (1)
- Kevin James 900k (1)
- Anjelah Johnson 800k (1)
- Nick Kroll 1.1m (1)
- George Lopez 1.4m (2)
- Russell Peters 800k (1)
- Romesh Ranganathan 1m (2)
- Brian Regan 1.4m (2)
- Joe Rogan 11.5m (3)
- Adam Sandler 3.8m (1)
- Jerry Seinfeld 1.1m (1)
- Ari Shaffir 500k (2)
- Iliza Shlesinger 2.7m (3)
- Sarah Silverman 2m (1)
- Daniel Sloss 200k (1)
- David Spade 900k (1)
- Theo Von 5.4m (2)
- Jack Whitehall 6.1m (3)
- Michelle Wolf 900k (1)
This left behind 133 specials and all of the above (A & B section lists) has removed 176. Bit more manageable.
The Netflix report always shows both Hours Viewed and Views.
I’m going to ignore the Hours Viewed column this time around as it doesn’t give us any sensible information.
Basically, if you watch a special that is 58 minutes long it showed up in both columns, because Netflix rounds everything up to an hour of viewing time.
At one end of the spectrum Jimmy’s Funny Business is 1 hour and 2 minutes so we then get this anomaly where 1.3m people have watched it (2023-2026) but the Hours Viewed shows 1.8m.
The rounding up of those extra 2 minutes, per view, is throwing out a number that distorts reality because a %age of the report is 1 hour+ specials and it’s a faff trying to consider which ones are impacted by this and to what end? It adds nothing.
As an example, at the other extreme – James Acaster’s Repertoire Collection (from 2018) is 3 hours 26 minutes long. Across the 3.5 years it’s been watched by a total of 800k people – but the Hours Viewed is 3.7m. Lies, damned lies and statistics, anyone?
Heck of a difference and it also doesn’t give us a full picture as I’m not clear how much rounding Netflix does and under what circumstances. If someone watched 90 minutes of the 3 and a half does that count as 2 hours, 3 or 4?
On the Netflix site, where this report lives (here) it says “For this report, our audiences watched more than 97B hours on Netflix — our highest view hours to date for a half”.
Note that they say “view hours” and not “views”?
The stock is down 46% since its peak last year (Fool.com) and is apparently worrying investors with moves that look like they are trying to bury bad news, such as moving to an annual report and scrapping subscriber counts (Reuters).
Slightly blowing my own trumpet but I added these news paragraphs above at the point when I was finishing off this report. I’d already come to the conclusion that viewer numbers were falling and wanted to check before I published.
See the Summary section, at the end of this page.
Jimmy’s last special (Natural Born Killer) was way back in April 2024 (has it been that long?) and his next one is due to be filmed next month, September 2026 (see here). These are the total views:
I’ve had to squish the below up a bit but you can see that the oldest two have dropped down to 100k, from 200k in the previous 3 reports.
When the next report comes out (January 2027) will they still be getting views? Depending on when the 5th special drops (my money would be on it having a similar schedule to His Dark Material) will the Netflix data show an uptick across ALL of the specials?
We also have to wonder, across the board, how much the cost-of-living issues are affecting Netflix subscriber numbers (see Summary, at the end of this page).
How many of the audience demographic, that likes to watch comedy, has moved over to YouTube / TikTok?
Last time around (here) I had screenshots of the specials that had over 5m views (29 in the list) – but we now have 37 in that group, so we’re going to have to go with over 6m.
Natural Born Killer just squeaks in at #29.
You may notice that a couple in the image below (from Nate Bargatze) had zero views in Jan-June 2026. As mentioned above, they got to stay in my report because he has a 3rd special sitting at #4 with 2m recent views. This is for the data in the sections below, looking cumulatively at each of the bigger comedians.
The reporting (British comics) follows a similar pattern to all the other stats that I look at – Ricky and Jimmy are Top 2, with Jimmy pulling ahead when you look at YouTube views, covered in the next section (YouTube report is here, from end of June 2026).
Returning to the Netflix report the specials (from Brits) then carry on:
- #44 Ricky Gervais – Humanity 4.1m
- #71 Jimmy Carr – His Dark Material 2.6m
- #84 Michael McIntyre – Showman 1.8m
- #94 Kevin Bridges – The Overdue Catch Up 1.3m
- #95 Jimmy Carr – Funny Business 1.3m
- #96 Jimmy Carr – The Best of Ultimate Gold Greatest Hits 1.3m
- #114 James Acaster – Repertoire 800k
- #124 Kevin Bridges – The Brand New Tour 500k
- #125 Mo Gilligan – There’s Mo To Life 500k
- #131 Mo Gilligan – Momentum 300k
- #132 Michael McIntyre – Showtime! 300k
For anyone new to this data…specials like Jimmy’s Funny Business will have had a lot more than 1.3m views as it was released March 18th 2016, but Netflix didn’t start publishing VIEWS stats until July 2023.
The first report (Jan to June 2023) only showed Hours Viewed, which I’m ignoring.
Each of the reports are for 6 months of views and so what happened before is lost (or only visible to them. This means Funny Business views from March 2016 to December 2022 are omitted.
This does, of course, apply to EVERYONE’s specials that were released pre 2023 – which is why I do some slicing (below, from section H) that tries looking at more recent releases.
Just a little jink sideways, looking at audience demographics.
I was slightly surprised to see that Kevin Hart had a new special (November 2025), on Netflix, as I thought he’d been releasing all of his stuff through his own channels. His previous Netflix specials had been between 2017 and 2020.
Mark Normand had also experimented with posting off the beaten track as he’d been an early adopter of PunchUp (see here). Not sure how well that platform is doing but Mark is pulling in the views on Netflix.
Mostly I think comedians are migrating to YouTube and / or TikTok and supplementing that with posts on other social channels.
The best comparison I could think of using was Ricky V Jimmy, comparing Netflix and YouTube.
Back in May some old content was cleared from Ricky’s YouTube channel and so I can only go back to 67 days ago. Both his Jimmy’s channels contain both TV and Stand up so it’s a reasonable enough way to highlight the importance of YouTube.
They both have 4 specials on Netflix and Ricky has an advantage there as his special was released December 2025, which has boosted the numbers in this recent timeframe.
Viewing the table below, I don’t think I have to spell out to anyone how much better Jimmy’s “daily Average” views are on YouTube. Yes, he’s pumping out Crowd Work content every day – but, from the perspective of getting eyeballs on his work, YouTube is winning hands down.
Looking at the full report (my amalgamated version) some specials go back as far as a 2010 release date – but that doesn’t mean that it has been on Netflix for 16 years because Netflix sometimes does a deal with a comedian and puts up some from their back catalogue.
Which means I had to give up on trying to use the “release date” to work out an average views per day.
This view is just comedians with a combined total of 10m+ views, since 2023.
The people that just missed out on being included are below and show Total Views and (number of specials). Alpha order:
- Jim Gaffigan 9.3m (6)
- Anthony Jeselnik 9.7m (3)
- Mark Normand 7.1m (2)
- Tom Papa 8.2m (4)
- Chris Rock 5.6m (3)
- Andrew Schulz 7.9m (1)
- Wanda Sykes 6.1m (3)
- Ali Wong 9.6m (4)
6 months ago, Jimmy’s total views put him in 19th place and this latest report has moved him up to 18th.
His last special, NBK, was released April 2024 and that bumped that year up to 6.7m. The 2025/6 total, for 18 months, was 3.3m – which is a good example of the ebb and flow of customer viewing habits, in between specials.
H – Total Views per Comedian, Post 2016
What if we remove any specials that were made before 2016? In the below the Top 9 are in the same order as the above – but Jimmy has moved up to 15th.
I – Total Views per Comedian, Post 2021
For this one we just look at everything released from Jan 2021, this drops off Jimmy’s Funny Business and Ultimate Gold.
What impact does clearing out some older specials have?
- Jimmy has dropped from 15th to 17th
- Kevin Hart is down to only his latest special and so his original 25m is down to 14.8m
- Tom Segura is down from 4th to 7th
- We’ve dropped off some single special comics, from the bottom, so we’ve lost John Mulaney (6.9m), Bill Burr (4.1m) and Sebastian Maniscalco (3.5m)
- Our bottom listing is now Jim Jefferies with 7.1m (2).
J – Total Views per Comedian, Post 2023
One final slice of the data – only including the specials released Jan 2023 onwards.
Firstly – we completely lost Sebastian Maniscalco and Bill Burr.
- This view favours the new guys (recent releases) and Matt Rife has overtaken Chappelle, to #1.
- Shane Gillis is up from 5th to 3rd – astonishing numbers for 1 special.
- With only his most recent special remaining, Jimmy is still 17th
- Ricky Gervais has dropped one place to 5th
Following on from the “hours viewed” total (mentioned in section C, above) and comparing Netflix to YouTube (section F) are as many people watching stand up on Netflix nowadays?
When the first report came out, in 2023, I picked out all of the comedy specials. Since then, every 6 months, I’ve merged the data, to build a picture for each comedy special and also from the perspective of the comedian.
Having added in the Jan-Jun 2026 column I can now sum the total views for my data set.
It’s not perfect (I may have missed one or two smaller comic names) but ALL the biggies are in my list and so I think this is an adequate indicator of comedy viewing trends.
New releases (and very old ones that I’ve dropped off) do mean there are fluctuations in the number of specials, in each 6 months period – so don’t use this as gospel. It’s close enough, for expending a handful of work-hours.
To me the viewing trend looks to be downward.
We can see a bit of an uptick in Jul-Dec numbers, each year, where you get people that “buy Netflix for Christmas” and binge on comedy. Then there’s a slight Jan-Jun dip.
Regardless of the reasons for the downturn, my gut feeling is that more comedians are moving to self-publishing (YouTube, website and, shock, some are even dipping their toes back in the water of DVDs) and this is contributing to moving a %age of viewers away from Netflix.
Leave a Reply