Netflix reported its latest quarterly earnings Tuesday. It’s likely the last report to include a critical piece of data: subscriber numbers. Traditionally, streaming companies have touted how many paid viewers they have and how many they add each quarter. What kind of data will Netflix brag about instead?

In one of Charlotte Howell’s classes at Boston University, she asks students to reimagine streaming.

“And a bunch of them are like, ‘How do we incentivize weekly releases?'” she said. “They’re nostalgic for a way of viewing television that they barely remember.”

Turns out a lot of people want the anticipation of a date with their TV. That’s what Netflix has been leaning into as the medium becomes less about binge watching and more about live events.

There was “The Roast of Tom Brady” and two NFL games on Christmas Day. It’s branching out into new kinds of content. Howell said the shift reflects how Netflix is thinking about growth.

“We are nearing or maybe have approached a kind of a saturation of subscribers or at least a turning point potentially,” she said.

Netflix doesn’t have a lot of room to grow subscribers. It already has more than 300 million, while Hulu, for comparison, has around 50 million. 

“Netflix is trying to change the conversation toward the metrics that advantage them,” said Michael Smith, a professor of information technology at Carnegie Mellon University.

A few million new subscribers per quarter no longer looks impressive. Instead, Smith thinks Netflix will focus on different data points. 

“How much revenue are we bringing in? So that’s what they want to talk about. And then the second thing they want to talk about is user engagement,” he said.

Because over the long term, streaming profits are about how eyeballs translate into ad dollars, said Tim Hanlon, CEO of the Vertere Group. “So in terms of a growth story, that narrative is probably going to be more appealing to Wall Street,” he said.

Hanlon said as the industry consolidates, this kind of information will become more crucial.

“The reality is it’s still very much a black box. And I think Netflix has a long way to go to convince the media industry that the numbers are what they are and that they’re accurate,” he said.

Which is increasingly important as investors search for clues about which companies are winning the streaming wars.