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Before we get going, let me address the trade-war-sized elephant in the room, namely, why I haven’t written about Trump’s “tariffs” on foreign films yet. Everyone in town was talking about it last week, including every trade and newsletter on the entertainment industry. I even had a friend in real life (one of the few people who knows my actual identity) ask me why I haven’t written up my take yet.
So three things:
- As I wrote for The Ankler last Thursday, the injunction against Apple was actually the bigger, more consequential news story, but it got minimal coverage from the traditional Hollywood press. I’m not sure one entertainment industry podcast even mentioned it, even though that decision will help every streamer be more profitable. So I focused my attention on that.
- Next, if everyone in town writes about something, I don’t want to write about it as well, especially that week. I got at least seven newsletters on Trump’s “tariffs” in the first two days. I don’t like joining an already crowded chorus, even if I have a different take.
- Finally, what’s my rule? Look at what Trump does, not what he says. Right now, this is a vague, poorly worded social media post. Let’s wait and see what happens instead of just speculating.
I will say, though, I totally called this. When the trade wars began in April and most of the press responded with a resigned, collective shoulder shrug, I wrote this:
“In this case, the threat comes from the American side. Most foreign countries (like Canada and England especially) would like to keep their tax credits for film and TV show production; removing them would mean jobs going away from those countries and back to Los Angeles, New York and Georgia probably. In this case, Hollywood should be worried that Trump learns about other countries’ tax incentives and just takes them away. It’s costing American jobs after all.”
Which should be a warning to journalists now. The same factor I took seriously then (Trump’s monomaniacal focus on returning jobs to America) still applies today. Last month, far too much news coverage didn’t take this possibility of the trade wars affecting Hollywood seriously. Today, on countless podcasts and in articles, people still aren’t taking Trump’s concerns seriously, creating straw man-esque counter-arguments (“How would you even tariff a foreign film?”) and stopping the conversation there, instead of talking about foreign production tax incentives, which is what I think could actually be addressed (if Trump genuinely follows through on any of this).
On to this week’s issue, where we have a bunch of big, buzzy new and returning shows, including, in no particular order: Hacks, The Handmaid’s Tale, Black Mirror, Your Friends & Neighbors, Doctor Who, and The Last of Us. This week we’ll cover all of those buzzy shows, plus Amazon’s straight-to-streaming action flick with an unconventional lead, the latest kids TV docu-series, another potential Apple TV+ success, HBO’s hot streak, big golf ratings, even bigger Broadway grosses, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot 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 April 7th to April 13th.)
Television – The Streamers Bring Out the Emmy-Contending Big Guns
As I mentioned last week, when Emmy season starts, almost every streamer releases a lot of big, buzzy new shows. This week was no different, but unlike last week, we also saw some big, buzzy returning shows. Seriously, four of this week’s returning shows boast an “8” or higher on IMDb, a truly elite IMDb score; that’s a crazy amount of quality TV in just one week!
The other commonality between these shows is long, long breaks between seasons.
Let’s start with the show I expect will do best, The Last of Us, returning after a two-year break. The second season of HBO’s zombie show came out on Sunday, 13-Apr, which is awkward timing for the viewership charts. It missed Nielsen in its first week (because it only had one day’s worth of viewership), and it isn’t eligible for Luminate. But it replaced The White Lotus on Samba TV’s top ten:
We also got a classic HBO datecdote that it opened to 5.3 million live and same day viewers across linear TV and streaming. That’s down from the finale of last season, but still a terrific number for HBO:
Again, I expect this one to do well, and I’ll check back in on it in the coming weeks.
Netflix’s Black Mirror had a muted opening for this series. It debuted to 18.1 million hours in its seventh season, but some episodes are long-long, like feature length. Viewership is down from its previous season, which opened to 22.6 million hours. Like The Last of Us, it had a two-year gap between seasons.
The weakest number for Black Mirror is its Samba TV datecdote: only 670K households in the first few days. That’s very low for a Netflix show. Overall, Black Mirror has its devoted sci-fi audience, but it isn’t as huge a hit as some other top Netflix shows, though some fans love, love, love it. (Black Mirror has an 8.7 on nearly 700K reviews on IMDb!)
That brings us to our last show, The Handmaid’s Tale; its sixth season dropped on 8-April, a whopping three-year gap between seasons. It opened at 15.4 million hours, down from 17.3 million in September of 2022.
That still makes it one of Hulu’s best shows, but obviously the huge gap between seasons likely hurt it with audiences, some of whom likely don’t even subscribe to Hulu anymore.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the streaming wars do seem more competitive this spring, as HBO’s back-to-back successes (White Lotus into The Last of Us) and Hulu’s recent run of hit shows (Paradise into The Handmaid’s Tale). The streaming charts look more “colorful”, which means more competitive. But, as I asked then, does this sustain after the Emmy season—as Netflix will undoubtedly keep dropping binge-released shows—or will it ebb again? We’ll find out, though I’m still betting on the latter. (Long gaps between seasons for hit shows don’t help either…)
Quick Notes on TV
- Let’s kick off the “Quick Notes” section with the “acquired” Nielsen charts, meaning shows that premiere on broadcast or cable before coming to streaming. Once again, The White Lotus led all shows in just streaming hours according to Nielsen, an impressive feat, and it was the only show or film to eclipse 20 million hours. Gunsmoke also made the charts again.
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