(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.)
Looking at the Emmy nominees this year, I have to say:
Well done, Emmy voters!
No, seriously, between Adolescence, Severance, Paradise, The Diplomat, Andor, The White Lotus, The Last of Us, The Bear, Only Murders in the Building, Nobody Wants This, and The Pitt, some of the most popular shows on TV nabbed Emmy nominations. In the drama category, Slow Horses was the only outright “miss” to get nominated, but a one-in-eight ratio is fine. Sure, some of these shows weren’t as popular as their previous seasons (Andor, The Diplomat, The Last of Us), but they were still popular. And for The Pitt to get a nod while putting out fifteen episodes…well done!
More popular titles could lead to better ratings for this ceremony. And I would argue (contra the people who push back against my desire for more popular Oscar nominations) that the Emmy voters didn’t have to sacrifice quality.
Okay, on to this week’s issue, Netflix’ latest Taylor Sheridan-esque drama, the most popular sports docu-series on streaming (which isn’t even about the athletes actually playing a sport), Peacock’s big hit, some eye-popping anime numbers and why I’m skeptical, Bluey continues crushing it, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more.
But first, three new kids films battle for the top streaming movie of the week crown…
(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 July 16th to July 22nd.)
Film – Battle of the Family Films
This week, we had a showdown between three different kids films, which ran the gamut in terms of distribution styles and genres:
- Disney+ put out a straight-to-streaming, live-action recording of the Frozen musical on Broadway titled, aptly, Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical.
- HBO/HBO Max released the live-action/animated A Minecraft Movie, the theatrical smash hit.
- Netflix released a straight-to-streaming animated film from Sony Pictures, KPop Demon Hunters.
I don’t have an easy way to organize them, so let’s just go in order of their Nielsen performance this week.
A Minecraft Movie Performs Like a Max Title
At this point, no under-performance on HBO Max can mark A Minecraft Movie as a flop, because it has the $950 million plus in global box office to keep it warm at night. (Plus lots of PVOD/TVOD/EST purchases.) So if its streaming data is mixed, and it is, it matters much less than a straight-to-streaming film’s underperformance. On Samba TV, A Minecraft Movie topped the film charts, but only in fourth place overall:
Notably, it bested KPop Demon Hunters the weeks of 16-June and 23-June in the Samba TV top ten, though that won’t hold. Its Nielsen numbers were weaker, which happens for Max titles, only 7.9 million in its opening weekend, up to 11.7 million in its second week. (A classic binge release curve, though HBO Max films don’t usually show that curve as much as Netflix and Prime Video titles.) These weaker-in-comparison-to-Netflix numbers say more about HBO Max’s reach than anything…
HBO Max just has a fraction of the usage of a platform like Netflix. Like some past Peacock films, I have a feeling when/if A Minecraft Movie comes to Netflix, it may pop in a big way. That said, for HBO Max, this is actually their third-best opening all time (if you exclude the anomaly that was Wonder Woman 1984, which came out during peak Covid-19 lockdowns).
Speaking of Netflix…
KPop Demon Hunters Starts (Reminder Just Starts) Slow…
Since Nielsen has a four-week delay before they publicly release their streaming charts, sometimes we have an inkling of which shows will pop or, much more rarely, which shows and movies will be slow burns. (This happened with Baby Reindeer.) And in kids content, we saw that with the Disney film Encanto in particular, which started out relatively slowly, and ended up as the biggest film in streaming history (according to Nielsen, but also probably just period).
All to say, we know that globally KPop Demon Hunters will take over the Netflix global streaming charts. But what will that viewership look like in America?
It’s not great so far. KPop Demon Hunters only opened to 4.2 million hours the week of 16-June. Since we have the Nielsen numbers for the week of 23-June (and I’ll review that data next issue), we know it bumps up to 13.0 million hours in its second week. That, though, is pretty strong for recent Netflix original films:
On Samba TV, it missed in its first week, but makes it the week of 23-June. (And the weeks of 7-July and 14-July.) We also know it had its highest week on the Netflix global charts in its fifth week of release, a rarity.
All to say, we almost shouldn’t discuss this film yet, since we know it will get bigger. The question is, how much bigger in the US? It looks like it may skew bigger globally than in the US, as 13 million hours still isn’t a massive hit. Its Luminate numbers don’t really pop either, only getting up to 5 million hours. This may be more of a global hit than a US hit, but we’ll see.
Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical Starts Out Frosty
And then we have Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical, which did NOT hit on streaming. It barely made the Nielsen top ten charts, and this was a very light week for movies. Here’s how it stacks up to past kids films on Disney+:
This one also seemed to arrive with little press or fanfare. All to say, this kinda surprised me since Frozen is one of Disney’s highest earning franchises, and I would have expected more than only 2.7 million hours in its second week. Of course, I’ll still bet the Frozen 3 and (probably inevitable) live-action remake would still do well for Disney.
The takeaway I have from all these films this week is…meh? When the top film on the Nielsen charts doesn’t break 10 million hours, that’s a down week. This weakness may actually allow a film like KPop Demon Hunters to break out in the coming weeks.
Quick Notes on Film
- Netflix has had some moderate success with their “Trainwreck” series of documentary specials, releasing one a week through July. Most have popped onto the Luminate charts and some have made Nielsen.
- Straw is on a “binge release curve” release pattern, meaning it peaked in its second week then declined, while The Accountant 2—as happens for Prime Video films, is declining week-over-week, which is usual for them and other streamers. (As I mentioned above, K-Pop Demon Hunters has a different release style entirely, gaining strength week-over-week.)
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