According to a Nielsen report, NBC’s “The Office” is the number one watched show on Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX). However, via a report from The New York Journal, the streaming service may lose the rights to stream its number one show.

Netflix Could Lose “The Office”

According to Nielsen, Netflix users spend more minutes streaming “The Office” than any other show on the service. “Friends” is the second most watched show on the platform, but remains significantly behind the former in terms of minutes. In order to keep “Friends”, the company paid out $100 million to owner NBC last year.

Of the top-ten shows watched in terms of total minutes, Netflix owns two of them: “Orange is the New Black” and “Ozark”. Both Netflix originals, these shows fall in 6th and 10th place respectively.

But overall, non-originals make up 72% of the total number of minutes people spent watching Netflix as of October 2018, according to Nielsen. This could pose a massive problem for the company. 

Netflix’s take on the matter is different, however, saying that many of its original shows don’t run as many seasons like the ones accounted for in Nielsen’s top ten and this skews overall minutes:

“Looking at overall watch time skews towards titles with many seasons. Most Netflix originals have three or fewer seasons at most. It’s why we focus on the individual shows or films members watch, as opposed to how much time they spend on one series versus another. And if you look at most watched titles, Netflix originals accounted for 10 out of 10 in the last quarter, or 21 out of the top 25.”

NBCUniversal Streaming Service

The reason the streaming host might lose “The Office” and “Friends” is that their owner—NBCUniversal—is in the process of launching its own streaming service to rival Netflix. Considering the viewership both those shows pull in, it may make them exclusive shows on its new streaming service.

If this happens, it would be a disaster for NFLX shares as many of its subscribers could jump over to NBC’s service.

According to Netflix, it has “Friends” for the remainder of 2019, and via a Tweet yesterday, it has “The Office” until 2021 at least.

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And it’s not just NBCUniversal’s streaming service that will cause the entertainment giant issues. Disney+ is expected to launch this November too. Disney owns ABC, and ABC is behind Netflix’s third most-watched show, “Grey’s Anatomy”.

Tough times could be ahead for NFLX stock. At the time of writing, shares are trading for $369 USD, down 1.4% on the day.

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