(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.)
As longtime readers know, I’m a huge fan of IP and franchises in Hollywood. Even though they’re not popular among elite tastemakers, audiences love them. The biggest breakout hits over the last few years (Minecraft, Barbie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie) are obviously based on very popular IP.
There’s really no analysis you can run where that’s not the case among movies and TV shows.
But as I try to stress, the situation is nuanced. You need a balance of old IP, new IP/franchises, and original material; no studio can exist on just rehashing pre-existing IP and franchises. It sounds trite, but you don’t get KPop Demon Hunters (a new franchise!) without trying to make KPop Demon Hunters, an original film!
Disney—who executed this strategy nearly flawlessly in the 2008 to 2020 timeframe—seems to have forgotten that lesson.
This week, Disney released Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires. On the one hand, that’s great! I think they need to be making more Disney Channel Original Movies-type movies. On the other hand, they’re barely releasing new Disney Channel Original Movies, emphasis on new. For now, Disney can try to juice profits by banking only on profitable made-for-streaming movies from known franchises. But they won’t thrive (let alone survive) in the 2030s if they don’t develop new Disney Channel Original Movie franchises as well; they need more than Zombies/High School Musical/Descendants spinoffs and sequels.
Okay, on to this week’s issue, including a formely-reliable theatrical franchise has a new installment that went straight-to-streaming, Prime Video’s YA success The Summer I Turned Pretty, Netflix’s under-discussed hit show of the summer, the Peacock show that gave Squid Game a run for its money this summer and set a new Peacock milestone, MLB and WNBA All-Star Game viewership, all the flops bombs and misses (there were a bunch), and a whole lot more. I know I say that every week, but seriously, there’s a lot of stuff to discuss below.
But we start with…crime and TV.
(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 July 7th to July 20th.)
Television – Crime Steals All the Streaming Viewership
What’s the old saying? “Crime pays.”
Well, on streaming, crime pays.
More precisely, TV shows starring criminals, cops and/or murder mysteries seem to constantly deliver solid, if not great, viewership for streamers. Over the first two full weeks in July (the weeks of 7-July and 14-July), the verdict is in: crime still pays.
Untamed on Netflix
In Untamed, Eric Bana stars as a park ranger solving a mystery. Sounds like a mystery-crime show to me! And it’s doing great.
It’s the winner of this two-week period, with 35.1 million hours according to Nielsen, 60 million according to Luminate, and 2.4 million households in the first four days according to Samba TV. Naturally, it took the top spot on those charts for its first two weeks.
The only worry—and heck, all I do is worry for the industry—is that, at just six episodes, it won’t last long for Netflix. But Netflix knows they have Wednesday coming shortly, and they cleared the schedule out for that monster, so this may be part of the plan.
Ballard on Prime Video
At this point, the Bosch extended universe may be Prime Video’s most reliable franchise. Bosch ended its run as Amazon’s longest-running series, and even had a spinoff on Amazon Freevee, when that streaming service was (briefly and confusingly) a thing.
The latest is Ballard, a ten-episode crime show that’s a spinoff from Bosch. It didn’t put up either Reacher or Fallout numbers, but still had a solid 17.1 million hours on its opening, according to Nielsen. That said, it was binge-released, which means it’s a little behind some other big Prime Video debut seasons of years past:
Other viewership numbers match this, with Luminate having a 23.3 million opening and Samba TV having the show four three weeks at 6th, 5th and 10th place. Ballard does seem a bit behind Cross from December, another police show success story from Amazon (but adapted from a different mystery novel series by James Patterson), which opened to 22.7 million hours.
Dexter: Resurrection on Paramount+/Showtime
That brings us to Dexter: Resurrection, a spinoff of the Showtime hit series. It’s a reboot of the original, though to be honest, I can’t quite explain the plot. As for the criminal/cop dynamic, this one breaks all the rules, because a criminal is the cop catching other criminals.
Anyways, it hasn’t made the Nielsen charts yet, but it did make Luminate with 6.5 and 3.9 million hours in its first two weeks. Samba TV put it at 550K households in its first three days, which isn’t a hit for Samba TV, but solid for Paramount+. We also got a datecdote from Paramount+, though they keep changing their metrics. They said it had 3.1 million viewers globally in the opening weekend.
Overall, it’s tough to judge this Dexter reboot with the numbers we have. For a reboot of a successful premium cable series, these numbers feel weak, even for Paramount+. But since it’s weekly, we really need to see if it builds on these initial numbers.
Amy Bradley is Missing on Netflix
When I say crime pays, I don’t just mean scripted shows about criminals or cops, either. Docu-series can do well as well. The latest Netflix success in this regard is Amy Bradley is Missing, whose title seems to explain most of the plot. It opened to 11.8 million hours on Nielsen and 14.4 million hours on Luminate.
If anything, I like docu-series even better than scripted series. In some cases, the viewership approaches scripted TV shows’ viewership, but for a fraction of the cost. This is also a great reminder that, while sports docu-series got A LOT of buzz a few years back, true crime docu-series deliver hits in a way sports docu-series do not, and they almost certainly cost less to make.
Quick Notes on TV
- The Summer I Turned Pretty has consistently done well for Prime Video, going from a slow-growing hit in 2022 to a genuine hit in 2023. Note that that was two years ago, and somehow, for a show with minimal special effects and production work, it took Amazon two years to get the third season out. Despite the gap, the numbers seem up from previous seasons, with 10.7 million hours according to Nielsen and 7.1 million hours according to Luminate. It also made Samba TV on the lower end. I’d argue that Prime Video needs to figure out how to get future seasons of The Summer I Turned Pretty coming out annually, like Hulu’s hit shows, The Bear and Only Murders in the Building...but this season is its last. That feels like a missed opportunity for Prime Video. This show also did the classic “episodes get longer every season” problem. My guess is this happens when streamers have a hit and suddenly let the creators call more of their own shots. In positive news, it is coming out weekly, as it should!
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds came to Paramount+ on 17-July, the third season of this Star Trek spinoff. Unlike, say, the Sheridan-verse shows, the Star Trek sagas don’t blow your socks off but provide steady ratings, like the 7.9 million according to Nielsen or the 7.1 million hours according to Luminate. Those below ten million numbers aren’t great, but are mitigated somewhat by Paramount+’s smaller size. Here’s how it stacks up to previous returning shows on Paramount+.
- Love Island USA’s total numbers continue to wow me. It finally managed the accomplishment of becoming Peacock’s first number one title on the Nielsen charts. It ended its run on 13-July, and yeah, it has a TON of episodes, but those are still great numbers for this reality series. (It doesn’t matter if you put out a ton of episodes if customers don’t watch them all!) For some context, Samba TV put out that 1.8 million households watched some Love Island USA before the finale.
- By the way, for fun, here’s Love Island USA versus Squid Game Nielsen’s performances as they vie for the title of “show of the start of summer”. (Why start of summer only? I fully expect Wednesday to best these numbers. Then I expect Stranger Things bests both later this year.)
- At this point, I do question the logic of Netflix releasing so few episodes for “season 3” of Squid Game. (Why quotes? Because, as one commenter pointed out—and I agree with this assessment—this really feels more like a “season 2b” than a true third season of Squid Game. In other words, Netflix arguably “batched” this one rather than put out two seasons.) Either way, it’s having a faster fall off than some other shows with longer runs, like say The Waterfront. (On Nielsen, after debuting to 53.4 million hours, it dropped down to 11.6 million the week of 14-July.) The latter made Samba TV for four weeks, compared to Squid Game’s three. When you have a hit that will perform on streaming, keeping customers coming back week after week, you gotta feed that beast, and Netflix, for whatever reason—likely creative/talent—didn’t here, stopping at only six episodes. In other Samba TV news, Stick showed back up on the Samba TV charts, so that may be a genuine hit for Apple TV+. The Gilded Age also continues to do well, and I’ll check in on that show in future reports.
- Has The Bear peaked? Maybe. It only lasted three weeks on the charts, going from 15.3 million to 14.9 to 9.6 million hours. As you can see, that stacks up poorly compared to the growth from season two to three to now. (It also only had a four-week run on Luminate at 32.4 million hours, but that’s down from a five-week run and 43 million hours last season.)
- Well, Marvel Studios’ Ironheart did fall off the charts after only two weeks, because like Squid Game, it only ran for six episodes, and Disney put them out in two batches. As such, the ratings look weak compared to past Marvel successes. Very weak.
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…
- A look at a straight-to-streaming franchise that used to go to theaters…
- MLB and WNBA All-Star game ratings…
- What unheralded Netflix show had a long run on the charts…
- Quite a few TV show flops…
- …including another sports docu-series shanking its kick…
- All the flops, bombs and misses…
- And a lot more…
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