(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.)
A few weeks ago, I was out and about, and I wanted to find out what F1 did at the box office, but since I don’t have the Substack app on my phone—disconnect people!—I just did a quick Google search to read the trades.
Man, you forget how bad the industry trades can be these days.
It wasn’t so much the information that was bad. It was all mostly accurate, but got buried in between a ton of other fluff. One article spent way too many column inches touting Apple Studios and Formula 1, reading more like a press release than actual analysis. (Honestly, I feel bad for the reporters who have to write these articles, pulling quotes from press releases.) Really, I just should have gone directly to The-Numbers website.
Luckily, back on Monday, I could return to the safety (and competence) of Substack, which has multiple very excellent box office analysts reviewing the data weekly.
The entertainment industry now has two media ecosystems. The vast majority of people, in America and the business community at large, still go to the trade websites, while the people on the forefront are subscribing to newsletters that provide depth (and independence) that the trades can’t match.
And that’s what I want to provide to you, for streaming viewership.
Today, the theme of the week was surprises. I’ll look at two buzzy theatrical films (though not buzzy for the right reasons), Netflix’s latest big straight-to-streaming film and their latest sitcom, a famous director’s latest film miss, a Disney+ surprise, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. But we start with two shows that wowed me with how well they did, and one that surprised me in the other direction…
(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 June 2nd to June 15th.)
Television – Two Big Hits and 3 Misses/Disappointments
Two shows genuinely surprised me with how well they did this week…while one other show surprised me with how poorly it did. So let’s start with the good news.
Two Big Hits
Don’t get me wrong: I love melodramas like Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia. I think you can build a streamer around melodramas, though you won’t get as much positive press as you do with prestige TV shows. In particular, I think Disney should embrace this genre for Hulu, using it to appeal to the presumed moms of the kids using Disney+, even if it means sacrificing awards buzz.
For now, Netflix seemingly owns (owned?) this genre. (I wrote “has” because a key executive who shepherded some of these projects left a few years back.)
Still, with all that love for this genre, Ginny & Georgia surprised me at how well it did…
Yeah, Ginny & Georgia’s third season managed to get over 40 million hours two weeks in a row, good for the 40th and 41st best single weeks since 2021. Those are monster numbers.
It got up to 55 million hours on Luminate, and Samba TV had it doing 1.4 million unique households in its first four days, and it climbed to the second and third spots on Samba TV.
Here’s the next surprise: Love Island USA on Peacock keeps getting stronger each season, with the latest season debuting at 12.9M hours and then climbing to 18.2 million hours on Nielsen. (Interesting data note: the first three seasons of Love Island USA stream on Hulu and Paramount+. Nielsen told me that the bulk of the viewing for this series, though, is on Peacock, so I have it classified as “Peacock” on the charts.)
On Luminate, this one got all the way up to 28.3 million hours. It also gets up to second place on Samba TV, so all the data sources agree this one is a legit hit, and it’s growing its audience over time.
The only caveat is that it has new episodes coming out daily, so looking at it by “views” would probably move it down the charts, but for Peacock, a third-tier streamer, anything that’s increasing time on platform is a win.
Again, I love the pitch for this show and have recommended that some enterprising streamer (especially Netflix) should embrace a daily Big Brother-type show or a reality show with live streams, but it’s genuinely surprised me how much Love Island USA has grown.
Three Notable Misses
Sometimes a show is soooo notable I have to check twice to ensure it really missed all the charts.
The Chosen didn’t make a single viewership chart I track. And yeah, I checked twice.
That’s strange enough to force me to double check the release calendar. But here’s the Wikipedia page:
It says 15-June, right? That’s towards the end of this reporting period (which starts on 9-June), but still it has never made Samba TV charts, and I have two more weeks of data for that source. I even double checked with Nielsen and Luminate and both confirmed that it was eligible, but missed the charts. Yes, Prime Video has it coming out in three batches, but for a show on its fifth season, you’d expect to see it somewhere else.
Of course, the caveat is that this show already came to theaters for a run in April, and it definitely made money (over $44 million in the US) in that window. So The Chosen can get its super fans to go to theaters. The question is whether it can draw other audiences to streaming, and I don’t see any data that it does. So that miss surprised me. (It also flies against the narrative that Christian TV is taking over. More on that in the future.)
The next show didn’t surprise me that it missed the charts, but it also flies against a media narrative, that of the unstoppable influencer.
I speak of Call Her Alex, Hulu’s two-part “binge” released docu-series on Alex Cooper of Call Her Daddy podcast fame. Don’t get me wrong, Call Her Daddy is a legit big podcast. But this show missed all the ratings and interest charts and only has 383 reviews on IMDb. Even with only two episodes, I’d expect a little better.
Like a few other “creator” shows, this one underperformed. I have two explanations.
First, Alex Cooper’s press campaign over the last year or so has been PHENOMENAL. I’ve seen her interviewed and profiled everywhere, often with extremely positive datecdotes about her and her show. It doesn’t surprise me, then, that some development execs believe the hype and would want to work with her.
Second, we probably underestimate how hard it is to translate podcast or YouTube success into TV/streaming success. Those are different skills, and we don’t have great evidence that it works.
Our last miss pains me. As a die-hard Arnold fan from back in the day, it doesn’t cheer me to say that Schwarzenegger’s Netflix series, FUBAR, is a disappointment. But the second season of this action comedy only made Luminate for three weeks, peaking at 7.5 million hours.
Nielsen has it at 6.9 million hours in its first week, and it never makes Samba TV. Add all that up? This is a disappointment.
Quick Notes on TV
- I hesitated on lumping Tires—season two of the Netflix sitcom starring Shane Gillis—in the “misses” above, or even calling it a disappointment. It did make Samba TV, but only for one week. It made Nielsen, but only at 5.9 and 9.6 million hours. On Luminate, it only made the charts for two weeks, peaking at 8.5 million hours. The caveat to all its data is that it’s only a half-hour series, though it is on its second season, and it looks inexpensive to make. Its IMDb scores are okay, a 7.6, but only on 16K reviews. I’m curious if this one is building an audience. Netflix also released another six episode Australian drama, The Survivors, and it only had 7.8 million in its first week on Nielsen and only one week on Samba TV. It doesn’t look super pricey, but that’s still a poor performance.
- Apple TV+ had a joke commercial where Jon Hamm was jealous of every other actor who got an Apple TV+ show. I can’t help but think of that joke when another actor gets another (probably more expensive than it needed to be) show, this time Owen Wilson in a golf comedy, Stick. It hasn’t made Nielsen yet (and Apple TV+ shows in general struggle to make those charts), but it did make Luminate and had a four-week run on Samba TV. Speaking of Jon Hamm, Your Friends and Neighbors fell off all the charts, after wrapping the week of 26-May, as we discussed last issue.
We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out…
- The streaming data on Snow White versus The Accountant 2…
- Andor and You’s surprising returns to the charts…
- The newest potential “Suits” for 2025…
- How Broadway success has translated to TV…
- All the flops, bombs and misses for the week…
- And a lot more…
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