Reacher Knocks Out the Competition

(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 into today’s issue, just a quick heads up to any and all public relations reps out there:

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Okay, on to this week’s issue. The streaming news of the week—which I’ll explain more in my next issue—is that Nielsen has accelerated their streaming viewership release schedule. That’s awesome! So I’ll have to pack in a lot of viewership into the next few issues. (Of course, the news of the week now is a certain merger going through. More on that soon!)

Over the two weeks of 10-August and 17-August, we had a few big shows and films, with a smattering of misses. Today, I’ll look at Outer Banks’ strong opening for Netflix, Ted Lasso and Lioness rolling on, whether Tires can break out, updates on Silo, King of the Hill, Futurama, Furious and Lanterns, a streaming film that got a rare viewership-derived bonus, Formula 1’s struggles this year, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more.

But we start with a hulking monster. I don’t just mean Alan Ritchson—star of Reacher on Prime Video—but Reacher’shuge opening.

Let’s dive 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, 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 August 10th to August 23rd, 2026.

You can find a link to my terminology here.)

Television – Reacher Smashes It! And Outer Banks Drops, But Still Helps Netflix

We have a new number one on the top of the Nielsen charts this week:

That’s right, Reacher is back and it’s top of the streaming originals—if not overall—charts. Reacher has made the first or second spot on the originals charts sixteen times out of the twenty-seven times it’s made the top ten. And looking forward, it looks to have a stranglehold on the charts. As I mentioned above, I have two extra weeks of Nielsen data to parse, so I know that Reacher is going to have a strong run. It won’t be the top show the week of 24-Aug—Outer Banks beats it by less than a million hours— but it will be the top show the week after that.

Its opening weeks of 25.0 and 25.3 million are down slightly from last season, but still basically in line with previous seasons. Here’s how it stacks up:

Reacher also looks set to dominate the Samba TV charts too, making the top spot for multiple weeks.

Other data—I realize I use this phrase quite often—backs this up. Luminate had it up to 30 and 20 million hours, making it the third biggest single week for Prime Video, only behind Fallout (which I would have guessed) and Cross (which I would not have). On IMDb, it boasts an elite 8.0 on over 300K reviews, so customers love it, too.

Lastly, I’ll say I really, really, really appreciate how Amazon has kept this train running on time. From February of 2022 to August of 2026, Prime Video put out four seasons of this show! Not quite one a year, but damn close, and it puts out episodes weekly, so it makes the gap less painful.

The other big show of the week is Outer Banks, a show that quietly performs for Netflix. In my renewals and cancellations update last week, I noted that Beauty in Black, in fantasy football terms, is a “quiet sleeper pick”; well, I’d say Outer Banks is a step above that. Maybe the “Amon-Ra St. Brown” of streaming: a player who is routinely one of the top five at his position, but never ranked as the best overall.

Outer Banks isn’t quite the best, but it had one of the best openings we’ve seen on Netflix this year, to very little fanfare. Here’s a chart I made last week for My Life with the Walter Boys updated through season five:

That said, there’s good news and bad news. It’s tough to compare Outer Banks to its last season, since Netflix put that one out in two batches. But it still looks to be down from seasons before that, especially season three that opened to 52.6 and 36.9 million hours.

The good news is this show ranks well compared to Netflix’s other drama/melodrama/YA-style shows, opening better than Sweet Magnolias and My Life with the Walter Boys. On Luminate, it had weeks of 33.3 million, which is very good and it made Samba TV for two weeks at fifth and seventh place. It also has a 7.5 on 115K reviews on IMDb, good numbers for romance-style shows.

And the success of Outer Banks definitely helps continue their upswing in Q3…

So overall, the season-over-season slump continues for Netflix, but Outer Banks at least opened very well for Netflix so far this year. Notably, though, while Reacher is down slightly from previous seasons, it isn’t down nearly as much as comparable Netflix shows.

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By the way, if you’re looking for more data on kids content performance, I recommend Emily Horgan’s half-year streaming reports. Where you can find excellent charts like this one…

The Netflix Kids Content Performance Report is the only independent biannual analysis of children’s content performance on Netflix, now in its sixth edition. Published by kids media specialist Emily Horgan—a friend of this newsletter—major streaming platforms, global toy manufacturers, and leading licensing companies rely on this report to make sense of Netflix’s engagement data and stay ahead of shifts in the kids streaming landscape.

Quick Notes on TV

• I almost included Netflix’s latest half-hour show in the above chart. I speak of Tires, the Shane Gillis comedy, that’s been coming out roughly annually since 2024. It has never dominated the charts, but it’s been steadily growing its viewership, with the latest at weeks of 8.0 and 9.4 million according to Nielsen. That’s up from 5.0 and 9.6 million hours for the previous season. On Luminate, it got up to 10.6 million hours and we haven’t seen it on Samba TV yet. It has pretty good IMDb scores too, at a 7.7 on 26K reviews. Again, I wouldn’t call this a “hit”, because the viewership is just too low. But for its price, it could be developing an audience and might be a slow-burning sitcom hit, as we used to see in the broadcast/cable era à la It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

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…