Netflixs decision to break up some of its scripted shows could translate into more series airings even with less total time spent on some shows.

Season four of the Netflix YA drama Outer Banks debuted atop the streamer’s TV charts for the week of October 7, garnering 62.3 million hours of viewing worldwide. It was a strong showing — especially considering it was only half a season, in keeping with Netflix’s strategy of splitting some of its more popular scripted shows into two parts and releasing them about a month apart.

Here’s the rub though: 62.3 million hours of viewing for Outer Banks was about 60 percent less than the opening week of season three, which had just under 155 million hours for a full-season binge release. A similar pattern can be found in several popular Netflix shows whose recent seasons were split into multiple parts: Fewer episodes to boot means less time spent with a given season — even after the remaining episodes have been released.

Conversely, of five prominent series that had split releases as The Hollywood Reporter studied, four of them (You season four, The Witcher season three, The crown season six and Emily in Paris season four) spent longer in Netflix’s top 10 rankings than their recent binge-released seasons. The fifth, season three of Bridgertonequaled season two’s lifespan of 11 weeks. Bridgerton was also an outlier in terms of viewing time, surpassing season two in both that metric (846.5 million hours over 13 weeks vs. 797.2 million hours for season two) and Netflix’s preferred viewing metric (total viewing time divided by playing time), where season three ranks sixth all-time for Netflix English-language series, and season two is tenth.

However, the longer term of viewer engagement can lead to more views. First half of Emily in Paris season four, with a running time of just under three hours, amassed 45.1 million views worldwide in four weeks, with another 27.5 million after the rest of the season dropped (bringing the running time to around six hours). That beats the roughly 54.6 million views season three had over six weeks in the top 10, despite a slightly shorter running time and roughly 9 million more viewing hours.

It didn’t work out as well for season three of The Witcherwhich finished with 57.8 million impressions over eight weeks in the top 10, down from 67.2 million over six weeks for the unseasonably released second season. Viewership was down 17 percent, a smaller difference than the drop in viewing hours (37 percent, based on the top ten weeks) from season two to three. Splitting up the season helped a bit in terms of views, but with such a big gap it couldn’t close the gap completely.

(Another wrinkle: When Netflix compiles its All-Time Top 10 rankings, Netflix counts viewings during a title’s first 91 days (13 weeks) of release. In the case of split seasons, however, Netflix adds up the total viewing time for each installment during its respective 91 days, then divides that by the entire running time of the season to calculate the number of views.)

As of the time of publication, there is only one week of data available for the second half of the year Outer Banks season four. Part One had 122.7 viewing hours over four weeks; the full season drew 77.1 million hours the week Part Two was released – some of which is portioned out to each half’s total and views. Overall, season four sits at just under 200 million hours of viewing, behind the 341.4 million in the same span for season three. However, with both parts now accumulating airtime and views, the 13-week viewership for season four has a good chance of being higher than that of season three. Since views are Netflix’s preferred metric, that’s what counts.

This story first appeared in the Nov. 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter. To get the magazine, click here to subscribe.