(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.)
Before we get to today’s article, two fun digressions.
First off, based on the response to last week’s question about Twitter traffic, it does appear that other Substack newsletters saw some boost in traffic from Twitter; I’m still curious if this is due to a change at Twitter (letting the algorithm share tweets with links to outside websites in them) or a change in measurement at Substack.
Next, I wanted to highlight a discussion I started last week, over the word “content”. In short, I write “content” all the time, because it’s a great shorthand for “TV shows, movies, specials, etc”. I got some great responses. Nina Metz pointed out that it demeans the work of writers/journalists/reporters, i.e. you shouldn’t say that news websites are churning out “content” since that term devalues their work; I totally agree, and I would never refer to writing as “content”. Alex Rollins Berg wrote that it’s a poor substitute for the word “cinema”, and I agree with that nuanced point as well.
But, damn, I’m still struggling to find an alternate word that encompasses TV shows, films, specials, live programming, sports, and so on and so on! Someone recommended “programming”, which I like, but that’s also a relic from the broadcast TV days, and I fear someone else would argue that that usage is wrong in the context of streaming. An LLM recommended these options, “Titles, Programs, Offerings, Releases, Selections, Library (when referring to the full collection), Lineup, and Catalogue,” but aside form “titles” (which some people hate just as much as content) and “library”, which I use all the time, I don’t see a ton of great options in there either.
Just know that when I write “content”, I do it consciously to make my writing more concise, and that I will avoid using it in places that would demean the work of writers, creators and artists.
On to this week’s article, where the theme of the week is tamping down the hype on overrated genres like sports docu-series, award shows, celeb travel shows, and more. That plus Netflix’s data on kids viewing, a YA miss at Netflix, a few weekly shows that dominate the charts, a disappointing start to May for streaming movies, the (non-existent) link between the economy and theatrical attendance, all the flops, bombs and misses, and more.
Let’s start, though, with another show with a long gap between seasons and one show that had a short one…
(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 May 5th to May 11th.)
Television – Seriously, the Mega-Gaps Between TV Show Seasons Has To End
I think the streamers are still grappling with how to get their big, expensive, star-laden scripted (and often binge-released) TV shows out on a “traditional” cadence before audiences forget about them. As I’m sure I don’t need to remind folks, in the olden times, the traditional broadcast season essentially forced shows to come out every year. It worked so well that (until the very end), the most expensive/largest production on TV to that point—Game of Thrones—came out like clockwork every year, even without that pressure, but with a huge cast, budget, and so on.
Now, not so much.
As I’ve covered recently, this spring, we’ve seen a few two-year-plus gaps between shows’ returning seasons, including The Last of Us on HBO, The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu, and Andor on Disney+. Now Peacock has gotten into the act with the buzzy and successful-for-Peacock Poker Face, the Rian Johnson-produced, Natasha Lyonne-starring quasi-procedural. (A pitch I love!)
The first season came out wayyyyyy back in January of 2023, and the second season just dropped. How did it do? Fine, but a little down from season one:
We don’t have Luminate’s numbers for season one, but it only made that chart for two weeks and peaked at 7.3 million hours, far from elite. It also missed the Samba TV top ten, and Samba TV’s datecdote is similarly muted, only 375K in its first four days.
This is for a show that has very solid IMDb scores, a 7.8 on 58K reviews, and Emmy aspirations. It absolutely could rebound, especially on the Nielsen charts, so we’ll see. The opening is a bit of a letdown, but let’s call it TBD for now.
At the very least, we can say these gaps between seasons don’t help TV shows gain momentum. They may not be the only reason some of these shows seem smaller in their second season than the first (which I’d say about The Last of Us and Andor, too), but it doesn’t help.
Contrast that with Criminal Minds on Paramount+. The eighteenth season just came out on Paramount+, and promptly made the “acquired” charts. Unlike Poker Face, season 17 came out last June and season 16 the spring before that. Now that’s a smart production schedule! Of course, it also has hundreds of episodes to its credit, and it only debuted with 10.3 million hours. But it will likely make the charts for weeks to come, and having new episodes regularly helps that out.
Strategically, if I ran a streamer, I’d really look into how to get my shows back on track, with potentially paying for writing ahead of time and locking production schedules in stone. If top-tier talent is the complicating factor, in some cases, I’d work around that, too.
Quick Notes on TV
- Netflix’s “big” show of the week was the YA adaptation of Judy Blume’s Forever; it opened to just 7.6 million hours according to Nielsen. Even for a very-YA show—which I assume this is; I’ll admit I didn’t watch it—that’s low. Luminate only had it at 12.9 million hours, and it has some pretty low IMDb scores (a good 7.8 on a very not good 3K reviews). The upside here is likely price: it doesn’t look too expensive, and a YA show really should be affordable.
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