Comcast today celebrated 20 billion views through its On Demand service with a lot of national publicity. We thought you might be interested in what our local showings say about us.
Nationally, the most-watched movies were, in order, The Hangover, The Blind Side, and Couples Retreat.
Our area had different results. The most-watched new release movie in Western Washington and Spokane was the Sandra Bullock picture, The Blind Side. And before you even get to Couples Retreat, you have to get past Twilight – the moody romance which of course is set in the Northwest – and Gran Torino.
You can see the overall national winners here. Here’s the list of top 10 for Western WA and Spokane County:
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The Blind Side
- The Hangover
- Gran Torino
- Twilight
- Couples Retreat
- He’s Just Not That Into You
- The Hurt Locker
- Hot Tub Time Machine
- Four Christmases
- Date Night
Here are the top 10-viewed TV series in our area. The local results there are that people in Western Wash and Spokane were more likely to watch Sex and the City and NCIS than folks nationally, according to the stats:
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South Park
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Sex and the City
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NCIS
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Entourage
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CSI
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CSI: Miami
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The Sopranos
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CSI: NY
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Family Guy
- Weeds
To save a click, here’s more information from the national news announcement:
Comcast, one of the nation’s leading providers of entertainment, information and communications products and services, today announced that its customers have watched 20 billion entertainment choices On Demand since the service launched in 2003 – an industry first in television (TV). Comcast celebrates this milestone with the launch of the Xfinity On Demand Awards, honoring the top-performing movies, TV series, musical artists and other programming as determined by what customers watched the most on the service.
“On Demand was the first technology to give millions of our customers instant access to entertainment choices to watch on their schedule,” said Marcien Jenckes, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Video Services, Comcast. “By making a huge library of content available for free with a click of the remote, On Demand was an instant hit and continues to drive viewership. The service has been a major influence in the adoption of time-shifted viewing, which has now become mainstream.”
ON DEMAND: THEN AND NOW
Comcast launched On Demand to half of its customer base eight years ago with 740 movies, music videos and cartoons from a handful of content providers. Available today to 20 million customers, On Demand usage continues to explode with approximately 350 million programs viewed each month. Over the years, both the number of entertainment views and choices on the service have increased dramatically:
| Entertainment Views (Overall) | Entertainment Choices |
| 2003: 200 million entertainment views | 2003: <1,000 entertainment choices |
| 2005: 1 billion entertainment views | 2005: 3,500 entertainment choices |
| 2007: 5 billion entertainment views | 2007: 13,000 entertainment choices |
| 2009: 14 billion entertainment views | 2009: 17,000 entertainment choices |
| 2011: 20 billion entertainment views (to date) |
2011: 25,000 entertainment choices |
Comcast is creating new personalization tools including a “Watchlist” where customers can save and track their favorite shows and movies across platforms and watch thousands of them online at XfinityTV.com and through the Xfinity TV app on the iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®, anytime, anywhere. Customers can also use these devices and Android™-powered devices as a remote control to find what to watch, change the channel in real time, start On Demand titles on the TV, program DVRs to record TV shows and movies and sort content based on different filters, keywords or titles.
