Investigative Journalism: A billion hours on Netflix, in Law & Order terms

Remember how everyone freaked out that Netflix was down over the weekend due to a power outage? There’s a good reason for that: Everyone was more hooked than usual last month. June was the video streaming service’s biggest month ever — they topped a billion viewing hours, according to CEO Reed Hastings, which in layman’s terms is a freaking lot. By those stats, every user watched Netflix streaming 80 minutes a day last month, according to one estimate. Viewing is poised to increase as Netflix’s original programming, including a new season of Arrested Development, expands. To put this in realistic terms, we tried to explain what a billion hours means in a way that everyone would understand: In Law & Order terms. Dun dun.

• 7,042,254 number of times you could watch the first eight seasons of “Law & Order” on Netflix, if given a billion hours; Lennie Briscoe would approve, even though it’s not even half the series
• 5,128,205 number of times you could watch Christopher “Detective Dreamy” Meloni do his thing on “Law & Order SVU”; unlike the original, Netflix has all twelve seasons source

» Bonus: Criminal Intent! Because a reader asked below about “Law and Order: Criminal Intent,” we did the math on that, too. You could watch Vincent D’Onofrio’s meal ticket 7,029,382 times, if given a billion hours.

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