(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.)
Whoa! Warner Bros. Discovery changed its mind!! Again. Netflix is out! Paramount is in! Mergers! (Which I hate.)
That’s pretty big, pretty crazy news, but unlike last time when Netflix won the bid—and I paused everything to write up a response—I’ll be analyzing all of this in a couple of days next week in my “Most Important Story of the Week” column. Believe me, I have thoughts, but sometimes it’s better to take time and analyze everything before rushing to get a take out.
(Also, I won’t make the mistake of titling the article with something lacking nuance again, lest I have people read the headline and not read the second article.)
In the meantime, I will pat myself on the back for my note, which I sent out on Wednesday, about how the potential merger with Warner Bros. had started tanking Netflix’s stock price ever since Netflix started bidding for WBD. Now, their stock is back up 25% from their recent nadir. (Reminder: stock prices are NOT everything, or even a particularly accurate signal.) I also noted that back in December, I predicted that whoever bid the most would win the bid, which came true. I know, super complicated analysis right there.
All that said, if you want some Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix and Paramount-Skydance news, I’ve got you covered. As it happens, I’d already planned three mini-dives looking at each company…
- Paramount Global: My first mini-dive today is on Landman, which just secured a streaming ratings record. And Paramount+ debuted their first big live-sports test, UFC 324.
- Warner Bros.: I take a look at their biggest franchise’s most recent installment: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
- Netflix: Behind the paywall, I take a look at Netflix’s most recent forays into live TV.
This is why I love the Streaming Ratings Report; it forces me to take a granular look at the battlefields across the entertainment landscape, not just focus on the larger streaming war.
All that, plus another report on fake internet traffic, James Bond on Netflix (which is weird from a corporate ownership standpoint), a fairly muted debut from Bert Kreischer, a Canadian sports romance (but not that one!) makes the Luminate charts, James Bond takes over Netflix, all the flops, bombs and misses for the week, and a whole lot more.
Let’s dive right in!
(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 January 19th to January 25th, 2026
You can find a link to my terminology here.)
Television 1 – Holy Oil Gusher, Landman!
I did not plan to lead with Landman this week—Landman does well every week—then I checked the numbers: 26.9 million for the week of 19-Jan, the week after its 18-Jan finale. And I realized I hadn’t checked to see how well it did among all season two shows in my dataset.
Well…
Landman is officially the biggest season two/sophomore show to come out since 2020 in America, according to Nielsen’s weekly charts.
That’s right, it bested Bridgerton, Reacher, Squid Game and even Wednesday. (Stranger Things’ second season came out in 2017, and given streaming’s small size at that time, I’m not sure if it would have bested this number.)
Here are the week-by-week numbers, which show how the weekly shows pile up their numbers in a different fashion than Netflix’s binge-released juggernauts:
Other data is similarly elite. On IMDb, Landman now has an 8.2 on 100K reviews, both great numbers. It had a very long run on Samba TV, and its Luminate numbers were similarly great. It’s actually the biggest season two on that service, too.
As a quick side note: I often reference IMDb reviews when analyzing a TV show’s performance, and overall positive customer reviews are an excellent source of data for whether a project is resonating with customers. That said, the numbers do come with caveats. I always try to put IMDb reviews into context, considering the genre (reality shows get almost no IMDb reviews, while superhero, sci-fi and fantasy shows get a ton) and whether the property was the victim of an online upvote/downvote campaign. Also, when it comes to IMDb, the number of votes matters as much as the average rating. Shows that do well on both considering their genre (and absent any campaigns) tend to do well on other charts. Discount IMDb at your own peril!
So this is clearly the biggest hit of the Taylor Sheridan era, after Yellowstone, which started it all.
I’ll cover this more in my 2025 year-end recap, which starts very soon. In particular, the amount of “buzz” Landman earns in the media is well below its performance on the viewership and interest charts. This thing is a big hit…but it feels like no one (really, no one?) is talking about it.
Television 2 – Can A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Regain Game of Thrones Glory?
I’ve been optimistic for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms since HBO first announced it.
I should be clear: I’ve been personally optimistic and excited for it. The show is based on excellent source material—a series of novellas from George R.R. Martin—so I was pumped.
Again, as I need to remind myself and the audience, my personal opinion means diddly squat in this analysis. In fact, I started my website/newsletter in the first place because I often heard critics confusing their personal tastes for strategic guidance. (Something like “if every streamer/channel made TV shows and films I’d like, they’d do better.”) It doesn’t matter if I like AKotSK; for HBO, it matters if audiences like it.
For those who don’t know, this is HBO’s new Game of Thrones-inspired drama/dramedy, set 90 years before the GoT series that came out. HBO has emphasized it has a lower production budget than either Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon (and it shows), and it aired at 10 pm in the US instead of the typical 9 pm prestige slot. It had six very short episodes that came out weekly starting 18-Jan.
So how did it do? Here’s my quick summary:
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