(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 issue, let me humbly offer some modest Christmas shopping advice for people, especially older grandparents:
Don’t buy cheap crap on Amazon.
As a parent these days, I can’t count the number of low quality Christmas gifts my kids (and my editor/researcher’s kids) get every year, mostly from grandparents but also some aunts and uncles. You ask for a doctor kit (Melissa & Doug have a great one!) and instead of spending the extra $5 bucks on the real, high-quality item, you wind up with a cheap Chinese knockoff (that’s often only a few dollars cheaper than the real thing). For that example in particular, which my daughter got three years ago, the doctor kit included, I kid you not, pills. Actual pills! That kids could accidentally swallow. And a bar of “Toilet Soap”.
Or there’s the time my daughter got the knockoff, probably-$20 version of the $125 Frozen Lego castle. You’ll no doubt be shocked to learn that the fake Lego bricks didn’t stick together.
There are larger political/economic lessons to be gleaned from this, like how the US really should regulate low quality Chinese knockoffs. Or how this explains why so many people are dissatisfied with the economy, because prices are “low” but quality is even lower. Or how this explains why American toy companies are losing money year after year. Or how Amazon has no responsibility or liability for selling items like this since they’re just a marketplace, but good luck suing a company based in China!
My biggest takeaways are this: I’d remove Section 230 protections for goods that are sold online. And I’d try to raise tariffs on some smaller consumer goods like this, or at least make it as easy for American companies to sell into China as it is for Chinese companies to sell here.
On to this week’s issue, obviously, this issue is a week late, but…Warner Bros. sale! We had to write about that—in a pair of articles that people loved—and now we’re back to our regular look at the streaming landscape. If you want to know why different companies are making strategic moves, well, understanding the state of content (including who’s winning and who’s losing) sure helps!
Anyways, the theme of this week’s issue, covering Oct-27 to Nov-9, might as well be “disappointment” since outside of Netflix’s Frankenstein and Jurassic World: Rebirth on Peacock, almost every new show or film disappointed. I’ll explain that, plus two disappointing prestige films, a sneaky mystery thriller hit for Peacock, whether Death By Lightning is a hit, the latest KPop vs Encanto US viewership update, some conflicting HBO viewership data, all the flops, bombs and misses, like Vince Gilligan’s buzzy new Apple TV show and Ryan Murphy and Kim Kardashian’s even buzzier new show on Hulu, 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, 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 October 27th to November 9th.
You can find a link to my terminology here.)
Television – How a TV Series Dies…
The first hurdle a show faces? Starting well. The second hurdle? Keeping those ratings up.
Great shows start out strong; elite shows grow their audience from strong starts.
This week, we have two examples of shows that have failed to become elite and, heading into their fourth seasons, are slumping pretty hard.
Well, in fairness, the first show failed to be elite years ago. I speak of Netflix’s The Witcher, a show that debuted all the way back in 2019 to baller numbers, one of their biggest series of all time, only behind Stranger Things and Orange Is the New Black. It then went on to lose its audience in seasons two and three and failed to launch a spinoff or animated properties. Overall, it’s gotta be one of the most disappointing fantasy shows since…Amazon’s Rings of Power. And The Wheel of Time. (Damn, shots fired on Prime Video when I didn’t even have to.)
Apparently, Netflix has plans to make at least one more season, but probably under duress. (Again, like Amazon and Rings of Power.) The numbers are grim. Samba TV said only 575K folks watched in the first four days, which is a terrible number for a Netflix show, and that was only good for eighth place on their charts for only one week. It’s also down from the previous season’s 885K!
Nielsen only had it at 14.0 and 15.8 million hours in its first two weeks, which, again, is bad, especially for a show with a big budget. The current outing has about as much viewership as the first batch of episodes from the previous season. Here’s how it stacks up to previous seasons:
Notably, this show may be cursed. Netflix had to change the main actor (from Henry Cavill to Liam Hemsworth), which caused a rift with some fans, and then the first spinoff flopped in the coveted Christmas debut slot. That’s partially why I think Netflix released this season in one binge.
Interestingly, on the same day, Netflix put out The Rats: A Witcher Tale, a live-action spinoff film that looks like a backdoor pilot that Netflix looked at and, basically, decided wasn’t good enough for a TV show. It’s about a group of teenagers planning a heist in a new fighting arena. It didn’t make any chart that I track, from Samba TV to Luminate to Nielsen to the interest charts. And I couldn’t actually find a Wikipedia page for it, a rarity for Netflix English-language shows and films. It also has a 4.8 on under 4K IMDb reviews, so it’s a miss by every measure.
Now, I wouldn’t call Mayor of Kingstown’s fall as precipitous as The Witcher, but it’s clearly down compared to its previous seasons (and Taylor Sheridan’s overall oeuvre). Its previous seasons have done well, but its fourth season didn’t make the Nielsen, Luminate or Samba TV charts in its first four weeks. Here are the Samba TV charts if you don’t believe me!
(Mayor of Kingstown will show up the week of 17-Nov.)
Worse, Mayor of Kingstown’s fourth season has missed Nielsen, while the third season did make those charts.
So for the first time…did Taylor Sheridan miss? Is this why Paramount+ let him walk? Eh, let’s not go crazy. Sheridan’s track record remains sterling, and this is one show that ran its course.
Though I will say, I do wonder if the political wrangling of the family Ellison is impacting Paramount+. Again, most political news washes past most viewers. But for the 30% of diehard political people, it does matter, and it’s more likely to make folks tune out than tune in. If just 15% of the country decided “I’m off Paramount+”, it could have some impact.
Quick Notes on TV
- In the rare “library title on the originals chart”, Stranger Things showed up, getting up to 15.4 million hours before the release of its newest season. This hardly ever happens; in fact, the only three shows to do it were Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black and Bridgerton! This show really is a juggernaut.
- The latest HBO primetime show—It: Welcome to Derry—seemed to have a LOT of buzz around it, and it wisely came out the week before Halloween. (Notably, Netflix saved their monster film, Frankenstein, for the week after Halloween, which is a choice.) As for its performance, the data is mixed. The first episode made the Nielsen Acquired charts with just one episode, so that’s a great performance, but the second episode will miss the Nielsen charts the weeks of 3-Nov and 10-Nov, so it may have had a Halloween surge. (It’s not eligible for the Luminate charts.) HBO did put out a strong datecdote, though, saying it had 5.7M viewers in 3 days, the biggest opening since House of the Dragon and The Last of Us this decade. Though its third episode dropped down to 5 million viewers. It also has a strong IMDb score, a 7.8 on 33K reviews. (Other than It: Welcome to Derry, we didn’t have a lot of movement on the Acquired charts.)
- Notably, It: Welcome to Derry missed the Samba TV charts, and I think it may be a mistake on Samba TV’s part. They said it had 430K households watch in just its first day, and that’s a good number, though not as big as some other giant HBO shows. Given that HBO said it’s their third-highest premiere, again, I think this might be a mistake. We’ll keep checking in on it. Two other HBO shows have made the Samba TV top ten, which makes It: Welcome To Derry’s absence a little stranger. Specifically, The Chair Company made the charts the week of 13-Oct, and I Love LA, a new HBO comedy that came out on 2-Nov, made the Samba TV charts. HBO also put out datecdotes for these two shows as well, saying I Love LA had 2 million viewers (time period undetermined), and The Chair got up to 1.3 million in three days for its fifth episode. HBO has standardized its datecdote time period to three days, though, sometimes, it just provides average reach, as in the case with I Love LA. Speaking of, I never called out Task, whose season finale seventh episode at 4 million viewers in 3 days.
- Peacock may have a hit on their hands with All Her Fault, a mystery thriller they binge-released with eight episodes. Despite the binge release, it makes the Luminate charts for multiple weeks and makes Nielsen for at least two weeks. For a show without a lot of huge stars or buzz, it’s doing well. Netflix’s Danish thriller, The Asset, made Luminate and Samba TV, though it missed Nielsen. Overall, it did fine, but typical for foreign titles.
- Other new releases include the ninth season of Netflix’s reality show, Selling Sunset. Presuming it’s cheap—and reality should be—I like this strategy for Netflix to build up episodes. It made the Nielsen charts for one week, which is what last season did. Netflix also released the second season of Squid Game: The Challenge, and if you don’t remember the first season, it came out all the way back in 2023. (Why have a two-year gap between reality shows? Those should come out annually like clockwork.) Anyways, the sophomore is off to a weak start, only 6.3 million hours according to Nielsen. Both of these shows had light openings.
- My feelings are mixed on Netflix’s other big debut, Death by Lightning, created by Mike Makowsky, but executive produced by Benioff and Weiss, the brain trust behind Game of Thrones. It’s a historical epic, but it only had four episodes. It only grabbed 6.5 million hours on Nielsen and made it to fifth and sixth place on Samba TV. Samba TV also said it had 690K households watch in the first four days. This isn’t a flop, but it’s not a hit either.
- Thursday Night Football bounced up from its last two games, but continues its typical season-long decline, with slight upticks for games with big teams.
- I want to mention that MGM+ debuted a new Robin Hood series, an updated take on the classic character. MGM+ falls into a dead zone in the ratings, cause Nielsen doesn’t really publicize data for it in the streaming or linear charts, and also, why doesn’t Amazon just put this on Prime Video?
- In other previously streaming show news, HBO Max’s Minx arrived on Netflix, after Max cancelled due to low ratings and some (unwarranted) internet controversy. It missed all the charts.
- Checking in on some weekly shows, Only Murders in the Building fell off the Nielsen charts again, as did Love Is Blind after a four-week run. The Great British Baking Show, as usually happens this time of year, is on a ten-week run on the Nielsen top ten charts and showed up for another week on Samba TV. Tulsa King also continues to chug along on the charts, and I’ll follow up on that one when it ends.
- Nobody Wants This has a weirdly shaped “binge release curve”, with two weeks at about 15 million hours. It lasted 3 weeks on the Samba TV charts. Lastly, Ms. Rachel might just be a mainstay on the Nielsen top ten charts now. Meanwhile, the Monster series finally fell off Samba TV and the Nielsen charts. The Diplomat is still on the Nielsen charts, but fell off Nielsen.
- There were a ton—and I mean a ton!—of notable flops in the last week of October. The “Miss of the Week” for the week starting 27-Oct goes to both The Witcher and Mayor of Kingstown, which I discussed up above. Both were more notable than Apple TV+, er, Apple TV’s Down Cemetery Road (from the Slow Horses producers and starring Emma Thompson), which would be the “Miss of the week” any other week. (Its IMDb is a 7.1 on only 5.8K reviews, and it missed all the charts.) Same goes for the second season of Hazbin Hotel on Prime Video, which came out eighteen months after the first, and once again, didn’t chart. I was fairly soft on Hazbin Hotel when it first came out, but the second season should have charted. Even worse, it didn’t make interest charts this go around either.
- For the week of 3-Nov, the “Miss of the Week” goes to All’s Fair, which has become infamous as one of the worst reviewed shows of all time with 50% 1 star votes on IMDb and a 17 on Metacritic. But I don’t care about reviews; I care about ratings/viewership. And this show didn’t make any ratings charts I track. Even worse, Disney’s PR team successfully spun this show as an unlikely hit, sharing the datecdote that it grabbed 3 million viewers in three days—which, compared to their other Disney PR datecdotes, isn’t that great—and then Hulu renewed the show for a second season. I’ll have more to say about this show next issue, but I will note for now that, between this flop and The Kardashians, it’s been a rough two weeks for Kim Kardashian (a huge social media star) on the streaming charts.
- Right behind All’s Fair was Apple TV+’s very, very buzzy Pluribus, Vince Gilligan’s new show, which, like most Apple TV shows, is an absolute genre mash-up: a post-apocalyptic sci-fi dark comedy thriller drama. It made Luminate for one week at 6.8 million hours, which does not justify its $15 million per episode price tag, but it does have 46K IMDb reviews.
- I’d also highlight this is the week on the charts when Cocomelon’s JJ’s Animal Time came to Disney+, and we’ll see if it charts, though it likely won’t.
- Other DNBs or “Dogs Not Barking” (my term for any show or film that doesn’t make any of the ratings charts that I track, find an explainer here) for the week starting 27-Oct include Netflix’s Aussie/YouTube import, Son of a Donkey. This series began life on YouTube on a channel that, according to its Wikipedia page, has 535 million “views”, but it still missed all the charts in the US. (Yes, creators struggle to port their audience to streaming except for some kids content exceptions.) Paramount+ had two misses: the seventeenth season of Ink Master and a true crime docu-series, Don’t Date Brandon. The second batch of episodes in Netflix’s nature/horror docu-series, Nightmares of Nature, flopped as well. Same goes for Disney+’s Star Wars: Visions, their anime anthology series.
- For the week starting 3-Nov, the DNBs include Crotch, er, Crutch on Paramount+, a sitcom starring Tracy Morgan, and Disney+’s Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films (I like making-of specials!). I normally don’t mention kids shows, but Netflix’s latest, from DreamWorks, The Bad Guys: Breaking In, didn’t chart. Finally, The Vince Staples Show came out after a 21-month break and didn’t chart. Seriously, how come this low-budget half-hour comedy couldn’t get made in a year? And why is Netflix advertising this like it’s a crime thriller?
- I can confirm last week’s misses, most notably Hulu’s The Kardashians and Prime Video’s Lazarus.
Film – Frankenstein vs Fantastic Four: First Steps vs. Jurassic World: Rebirth
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