(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.)
Another week, another set of Streaming Ratings data! Plus I’ve got another round of shoutouts to share.
First, props to Substack for adding a new feature that tells you what Substack articles have linked to you. As a longtime blogger, I absolutely adore this capability, since it can be so hard to figure out who’s discussing your thoughts and linking to you. On to the shoutouts…
- Ted Hope’s must-read blog has been kind enough to link to me multiple times this year, including his must-read list of 2024, my myths of the year article, and including me in a list of cinema Substacks. He also recently highlighted my Ankler article on inequality. Perhaps I’m biased because he’s so generous with links to yours truly, but I’ll say that Ted has one of the best Hollywood news roundups, The5, out there. (He polled his readers asking if they liked this feature. Consider me a vote for yes!)
- Writing about cable channels, TV shows and WBD’s new content strategy, friend-of-the-newsletter, Julia Alexander, used my data, writing that I’ve “done some of the best work in the space when it comes to tracking detailed ratings, so I’m going to let some of his work do the talking here. (I’d also highly recommend subscribing to his newsletter!)” The feeling is mutual! Julia recently joined Puck again full-time and I’m going to miss “Posting Nexus”, but I am excited for her.
- Over at the Ankler, Elaine Low, who is just doing some amazing work, uncovered at least five shows that have earned the WGA’s new “success-based residual”. (Elaine interviewed me about the streaming landscape.) This is excellent reporting and I need to write more about it. Check it out.
- Stephen Follows (who is now on Substack!) recommended my work in his great article on “The biggest forces reshaping the film business right now” Check out the whole thing!
- Kasey Moore, at my favorite Netflix website, What’s on Netflix, also cited my WWE work. He’s one of the best Netflix experts out there, so check it out!
- Some other citations: A non-Sonny Bunch writer at the Bulwark highlighted my work on theatrical releases in an article on the “worsening economics of indie film”. The MMA Draw cited my writing on the WWE. Streaming Made Easy (one of my favorite Substacks) cited my work twice, here and here. And Stephen Armstrong, writing for The Telegraph, cited me in an article on franchises.
On to this week’s issue. No show grabbed over 20.0 million hours, my rough threshold for a “hit” in a given week. But we’ve still got a lot to get to, including the final batch of episodes of one of Netflix’s biggest series, another Netflix romcom, a few big returning shows from Netflix, HBO and Showtime, SNL 50 and the Four Nations Cup’s big linear ratings, some weekly shows hanging on the charts, all the flops, bombs and misses for the week, and a whole lot more. But we start with two non-Netflix straight-to-streaming films.
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, 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 February 10th to February 16th.)
Film – Mad About the Streaming Ratings
This week we had two major straight-to-streaming films. Usually, that means that an Apple TV+ or Amazon or Netflix film skipped theaters (even though it probably should have gone to theaters). But in a twist, Peacock/Universal got back in on the straight-to-streaming action.
I speak of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, another installment in the Bridget Jones series, a well-loved film, certainly loved enough that it’s made $113 million globally as of this writing (on a reported $50 million budget).
On streaming? Well, it hasn’t done great. To be honest, I’m calling this my “Miss of the Week” just based on potential. It missed the Nielsen and Samba TV charts entirely and only made Luminate for one week at 5.0 million hours.
Five million hours on Luminate is right at my threshold for “miss or not”, as a lot of streaming films end up with four to five million hours viewed. But it’s even worse if a film drops off after only a single week on the charts. Based on the cast and franchise, this should have done better.
Apple TV+’s latest big budget film—The Gorge starring Miles Teller and Anya-Taylor Joy in a monster/sci-fi/action flick—also made the Luminate charts. At 13.8 million hours, I’d say that did well for Apple TV+, and it actually topped the most recently released Netflix films! On Nielsen, it had 6.7 million hours, which is good for Apple TV+, but middling for everyone else, but at least it made the charts:
See? Not bad for an Apple TV+ film. Of course, in the wide range of all streaming films, that’s just “fine”. On Samba TV, for example, The Gorge sat behind Aftermath and La Dolce Villa (see next section):
The problem for the “go to theaters” crowd right now is that outside of tentpole films, lots of originals aren’t working. So Apple TV+ could say, “Hey, we tried with Argylle last year and got a lot of bad headlines for our efforts, so The Gorge isn’t going to theaters.” I call this “The Argylle Treatment”, and while I disagree with that logic, I think Apple really does care. That said, if The Gorge wouldn’t make its money back with a theatrical run, it’s not like 6.7 million hours on Nielsen will earn its keep either, especially since most people have no idea what The Gorge is. (Though, to its credit, it does have over 90K IMDb reviews already, with a 6.7.)
That logic doesn’t apply to Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. I mean, it’s a (hopefully) affordably made romcom. It shouldn’t need a nine-figure opening to justify its budget, and a theatrical release would actually help its streaming performance, unlike now, where this film kind of disappeared. I bet a lot of customers have no idea that this film exists.
Quick Notes on Film
- The big Netflix film of the week was Netflix’s La Dolce Villa, a romcom set in Italy. Based on the trailer, this is the type of film that doesn’t look that expensive, so only getting 8.4 million hours isn’t a huge miss. (Though let’s not go calling it a hit either…) It was joined by Aftermath, a 2024 film that’s not a Netflix Original, but is a “new to Netflix” hit, and it actually bested La Dolce Villa with 11.1 million hours on Nielsen so far. (It had a limited theatrical release and VOD release in 2024.) Also, the phenomenon that is The Super Mario Bros. Movie continues to grow, as it switched from NBCUniversal’s Peacock to Amazon’s Prime Video, and made the top ten list again. That’s the third streamer that’s had the Mario film make the Nielsen top ten!
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