If you've been perusing Netflix's Top 10 lists recently, you may have seen a surprising entry. Currently sitting cosily on the list, at #9 position in the UK and at similar positions in other regions, is a fireplace show: Fireplace 4K: Crackling Birchwood from Fireplace for your Home.
Like many other "ambient" shows on Netflix and other streaming services, Fireplace for your Home is just an hour-long static shot of a crackling log fire. People opt to put these on their TV for some ambiance, particularly at Christmas, as a fake fireplace to replace a real one... but its popularity on the Netflix Top 10 is a bit of a misnomer, one that gives us a good window into the weird way that the streamer's rankings work.
Fireplace for your Home was originally a batch of three videos created for the streamer over a decade ago, inspired by the annual WPIX Christmas Eve broadcasts which began in 1966. Netflix has one video with Canadian Fir wood, a festive Yule Log one and also a Birchwood version. Since they were uploaded, Netflix has created another inspired by its show The Witcher as well as 4K versions of the original trio. Don't confuse these with Fyre as that documentary is something completely different, and is much less relaxing!
It's the 4K version of the Birchwood video of Fireplace for your Home that's proven particularly popular on Netflix. The creator of Fireplace for your Home made over 200 fires to capture the perfect versions for the show, according to Netflix's Tudum, and if you watch the video for long enough, you do start to see a bit of a narrative emerge: the fire slowly spreads over the first two-and-a-half minutes, and crackles enticingly for nearly 50 minutes before some of the big logs begin to collapse.
The relaxing warmth of the video is quite engrossing to watch, combining the relaxing elements of slow cinema with the natural mesmerizing motions of fire. But does that mean it's really the ninth most popular show on Netflix? No, not quite, and that's because of a quirk in the way the streamer calculates its most popular shows.
Fireplace 4K: Crackling Birchwood from Fireplace for your Home first showed up in Netflix's weekly Top 10 list in the week beginning Monday, December 18, which is also the most recent weekly ranking published at the time of writing. That week, it showed up at the eighth most-watched spot, just above Young Sheldon season 1 and Squid Game: The Challenge, which were both on their fifth week in the ranking. This is all going by the TV (English) list, as movies and non-English-language shows are on different lists.
Netflix handily shares hours viewed, and we can see that Fireplace 4K got 1.5 million hours viewed over the week... which would seem high, until you notice that Young Sheldon got over 10 million, while Squid Game was at 12 million. So why is the fireplace show above them?
That's a good question, especially when you notice other entries on the list. The third spot of the week was Trevor Noah's hour-long stand-up special Where Was I, which got 4.3 million hours viewed, but below it was Obliterated at 22.2 million then Car Masters: Rust to Riches: season 5 at 13.9 million.
So why did Fireplace for your Home and Where Was I show up so highly on the list, when their hours viewed counts were so much lower than the other TV shows around them? Well, that's because hours viewed isn't how Netflix ranks movies and shows, but with a different metric, "views", which it counts in a particular way.
According to Netflix, "we define views for a title as the total hours viewed divided by the total runtime.". For example if 100 people watch a half-hour-long show, it'll get 50 views, as 100/0.5=50.
The fireplace and the stand-up comedy show are notable on the week's rankings list for being the only hour-long shows, as most runtimes are the culmination of several hours of video. Obliterated's run-time is just shy of seven hours while Young Sheldon is at seven and Squid Game: The Challenge is over eight.
The way this calculation works, then, artificially boost the rankings of shorter shows, like Where Was I and Fireplace for Your Home, which have much shorter run-times to divide by. That's how Squid Game: The Challenge is at #10 in the list despite having the fourth-highest count of hours viewed: its overall runtime is the second-highest in the list, dividing those hours viewed by a larger number.
The same thing happens in the movies list, though to a much lesser degree, with most Netflix movies having a runtime between 90 minutes and 150. That's much less of a range than with the TV shows, which can vary by hours.
This isn't all to say that Fireplace for your Home or hour-long stand-up shows aren't popular, just that Netflix's Top 10 algorithm is weighted to benefit shorter shows over longer ones. So next time you're on Netflix and you see a surprise entry on the streamer's TV Top 10, it's worth asking if it's actually that popular, or if it's just short.
