(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.)
Given that The Odyssey from Christopher Nolan opened last week, lots of pundits are opining on which Nolan film is the best of all time, and that’s simple…
It’s TENET.
That’s it. I normally don’t opine on films, but that’s clearly his greatest film. And honestly? It’s not close.
(By the way, any time I offer any opinion on any film, folks invariably [digitally] yell at me. Even when I’m clearly joking, like in this case. Though I do actually enjoy Tenet.)
We have no time to waste, so let’s get to the streaming viewership numbers. Overall, these two weeks—starting 8-June and 15-June—were kinda weird, but we have a lot to discuss. I’m going to look at Netflix’s first hit of Q2, two returning shows for Netflix that don’t grow their audiences, an animated franchise taking over the film charts, the return of Netflix’s best performing sports-adjacent reality show, Prime Video’s latest YA show, a quick drop off for a Netflix original film, Netflix’s latest rom-com struggles, some fun surveys from YouGov, 2025 and 2026 music stats, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot 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, JustWatch and Reelgood interest 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 June 8th to June 21st, 2026.
You can find a link to my terminology here.)
Television – One New (Limited Series) Hit and Two Returning Shows Do Not Hit
On the TV side of the house, Netflix, as usual, released their typical firehose of content. And given that Netflix had their earnings report last week, on the back of weeks of chatter about their engagement struggles, the only thing anyone cares about is…
Has Netflix reversed their Q2 slide?
That’s how I describe it, because that’s the case I’ve been making for months now. Contra the narratives, Netflix doesn’t just have a second season issue, but is also struggling to get folks to tune in for third and fifth seasons as well. And even first seasons! Q2 struggled mightily compared to Q1. (Stay tuned for an updated version of my Netflix’s Q1 vs. Q2 chart.)
(Quick side note on engagement, the heavily debated topic of the moment. Netflix’s engagement report came out for the first half of 2026, and it was up 2% compared to the first half of 2025. That’s good! That said, it doesn’t contradict what I’ve been writing, which is that Q2 looked dismal. I do believe we could have had a situation where Stranger Things, Bridgerton, The Night Agent, and The Lincoln Lawyer—four of Netflix’s biggest shows— boosted Q1 well above 2% growth, but then Q2 dragged it back down to 2%. But I can’t know for sure.)
Did the second and third weeks of June arrest the slide? Slightly, but there’s still cause for worry.
Let’s start with the good news. Netflix had a new show do big, big business, just before the end of Q2. (Take that, Netflix engagement stories!) I speak of I Will Find You, another Harlan Coben adaptation (seriously, how many novels did he write?). It opened to 30.7 million hours, which is a great number, the third best since the start of 2025:
Other data points are also strong: it opened to second and third on Samba TV. On Luminate, it did even better, getting to 61.7 million hours. That’s actually tied for the third highest single week of all time on that chart.
Now, the big caveat, as often happens with Netflix nowadays, is that this is ANOTHER limited series, so Netflix didn’t create a new hit television series they can return to in future years, which happened last year as well. I guess that’s one way to avoid a second season slump…
Netflix also put out the fifth season of Sweet Magnolias, and it’s having a fifth-year senior slump. It’s not a huge drop-off, but you can see steady declines each season:
The previous season only lasted for three weeks on the Nielsen charts, so this show wasn’t a monster in the ratings last season either, but dropping to 13.4 and 14.1 million hours on Nielsen is even worse. Luminate had it at 16.1 and 6.5 million hours, which matches the Nielsen data. Samba TV only had it on the charts for one week, at tenth place. In all, I like Netflix’s melodrama/romance push, but this show is clearly on the bubble.
The last slightly disappointing opening is the sports reality docu-series—and Netflix’s best in America!—America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, which returned for its third season on 16-June, a year after the last season. On Nielsen, it opened to 9.5 million hours, down from last season (10.2 million) but still up from its first season. In this case, the numbers look more “flat” than really down. But it’s not growing its audience either.
The numbers were light on both Samba TV and Luminate too.
Add it up, and yeah, this is a mixed bag for Netflix. They’re still able to launch shows at heights other streamers (Hulu, Peacock, Apple TV) only aspire to, but their shows aren’t growing their streamer.
Quick Notes on TV
- HBO’s biggest current series—House of the Dragon—came out right at the tail end of the time period of this report, but we’ll save its analysis for a week, since Sunday-released shows tend to have slightly misleading viewership figures.
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 read about…
- Prime Video’s hit YA show…and one miss…
- The rare Netflix straight-to-streaming film that wowed people on IMDb, but not on the Nielsen charts…
- Paramount+’s Dutton Ranch trying to take Landman’s crown…
- Love Island USA’s continued dominance…
- An Apple TV slow-growing “hit” show…
- All the flops, bombs and misses for the week…
- And a lot more…
…please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you’d like to read more about why you should subscribe, please read this article about the Streaming Ratings Report, why it matters, why you need it, and why we cover streaming ratings best.
Coming Soon!
Next week, it’s a double dose of Avatars; Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender returns for its second season and Avatar: Fire and Ash makes its way to Disney+. And a ton of films try to break out, like Netflix’s latest straight-to-streaming comedy, Little Brother, starring John Cena and Eric Andre, Sheep Detectives on Prime Video, and Netflix’s latest drama, starring Oscar Isaac, In the Hand of Dante, which people just hate. All that, plus the last season of The Bear on Hulu, Netflix’s historical docu-series, The American Experiment, and HBO’s latest comedy, Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness.
After that, there are some big swings coming, like Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie, Peacock’s very, very star-studded The Five-Star Weekend (Jennifer Garner, Gemma Chan, Regina Hall, Chloe Sevigny, D’Arcy Carden), Prime Video’s Legally Blonde prequel, Elle (I won’t lie, I don’t get this pitch; isn’t the whole thing that she becomes a lawyer? Like, that’s the pitch), and both Apple TV’s Silo and Netflix’s Survival of the Thicket return for their third seasons. Disney+ has another season of X-Men ‘97, and Louis CK has a standup special. Plus big movies like Enola Holmes 3 on Netflix and Project Hail Mary on Prime Video.
Long term, we’ve got some big IP news. Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion is getting a sequel, which is great…if this weren’t being sent straight-to-streaming. Seriously, after Freakier Friday and Devil Wears Prada 2, Disney is leaving theatrical money on the table. (My theory is that separate teams internally are buying for the theatrical distribution versus Hulu.)
Meanwhile, Universal is developing a How the Grinch Stole Christmas sequel, which feels like a no-brainer. According to the annual charts, this film is a classic.
Finally, Rocky Horror Picture Show is headed to the Sphere in Vegas. I like this choice.
