(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.)
Scanning the headlines, looking for news on TV show renewals and cancellations, I came across this article from Nellie Andreeva at Deadline:
Aw! “Make the case for renewal”? I miss that! I miss the old “on the bubble” TV show renewal and cancellation season, when the trades covered every twist and turn for what shows were coming back and which ones weren’t. Things were a lot simpler then.
Indeed, in a more and more complicated, plus secretive, streaming landscape, there’s more to cover than ever. Today, I’ve got another double issue and over these two weeks, two big shows came back, 1923 on Paramount+ and Reacher on Prime Video. Plus two pay cable shows popped on the acquired charts (a rare feat!). And Netflix’s firehose of content doesn’t stop, with a Robert DeNiro TV show and a new basketball comedy, begging the question…
Will basketball finally have a hit show?
All that, plus Nosferatu on Peacock, Venom: The Last Dance on Netflix, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on Paramount+, two new hit true crime shows, my thoughts on Nate Silver, surprising broadcast TV show viewership, all the flops, bombs and misses of the week, and more…
(Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, Showlabs, TV Time trend data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, and Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of February 17th to March 2nd.)
Television – Two Big Returning Series Show the Streaming Wars at Its Most Competitive
Two of streaming TV’s biggest shows returned this week, and that promised a fun showdown.
In one corner, we have one of Prime Video’s biggest shows, Reacher, which came back for its third season and put up huge numbers on the Nielsen charts, eclipsing the 30 million hours mark.
According to Nielsen, in America, Reacher had the second-biggest third season on Prime Video of all time, just behind Jack Ryan, and the eighth-biggest third season of all time out of all the streamers. And that’s for a show that only released three new episodes, with more episodes coming out weekly. (That’s a smart release style that blends the best of the binge with the recurring usage of a weekly release.)
Other data sources concur. Reacher spent two weeks as America’s third most-watched show by number of households, according to Samba TV. On Luminate, it has had three weeks over 10 million hours of viewership. Plus it boasts a truly elite 8.0 on 255K reviews on IMDb. And, fine, Prime Video released a datecdote that it reached 54.6 million viewers in 19 days. That compares to 65 million viewers for Fallout in its first two weeks, and 40 million viewers for The Rings of Power season two in its first 11 days.
In the other corner, we had a mystery contender from Taylor Sheridan, the second season of 1923.
I always speculated that 1923 did well for Paramount+, but didn’t quite have the data to prove it. It features big stars, comes from Taylor Sheridan, and boasts an 8.3 on 72K reviews on IMDb. But Paramount didn’t get included on the Nielsen charts until the last week of 1923’s first run.
Now, with the second season in the books, I can confirm: it’s big!
Paramount+ released a datecdote that the show notched 5.4 million viewers globally (up from 2.2 million in the first season), which is higher than both Yellowjackets (2.0 million) and Dexter: Original Sin’s finale (2.6 million). According to Nielsen, week two of 1923 grabbed 11.3 million hours, which isn’t close to Landman’s peaks yet, but it is Paramount+’s largest week two of all time.
Perhaps the most impressive numbers were on Samba TV: 1923 racked up 1.1 million households on its first day, which is a big number for one day, and it climbs to second place on the Samba TV charts:
Here’s the thing with that chart…it’s pretty colorful, isn’t it? HBO’s The White Lotus debuted at number one, then Reacher and 1923 are right behind it. There’s less “Netflix red” than usual. I saw similar trends on Luminate and Nielsen.
Does this portend a new, more competitive streaming wars?
Probably not.
We’ve been here before, with weeks where other streamers can put out hit show after hit show, but it never seems to sustain itself. This seems more like a quirk of timing (occasionally Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, Max, and so on can have a hit show or two or three all on the charts at the same time), but Netflix’s “fire hose” of content never seems to slow down, and the default streamer always seems to stay relevant. Look at all the red on the top ten charts:
Going forward, the question is whether the other streamers can…
- Improve their hit rate, and then…
- Increase their output, to…
- Increase Netflix’s churn/challenge their status as the default streamer.
But point one never seems to happen. Disney+’s Star Wars and MCU shows are slumping. As I just said on Belloni’s podcast, Prime Video’s hit rate has never been elite. Hulu and Peacock put out a lot of shows, but not a lot of hits. And Paramount+ is way too dependent on Taylor Sheridan. HBO/Max might rebound this year, but they had a down year last year. Apple TV+ just had their first two simultaneous hits ever.
But never say never. Hits beget hits. Hulu’s true crime show Devil in the Family: The Rise and Fall of Ruby Franke popped on the charts this week, probably buoyed by their latest scripted drama, Paradise.
Television – Does Basketball Finally Have a Hit Show?
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