(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 begin, I’ve got two small corrections to highlight and one very big “Called it!”.
Let’s start with the mistakes, courtesy The Ringer’s eagle-eyed writer, Ben Lindbergh (seriously, this guy is killing it overat The Ringer; follow him!), who noted two corrections in the last Streaming Ratings Report:
- Paramount+’s most recent Tracy Morgan-starring sitcom is titled Crutch, not “Crotch” like I wrote in the “Coming Soon” section (but my title is much funnier and probably what I’m going to call the show from here on out).
- Apple TV+ rebranded their streamer to just Apple TV.
On that last one, hoo boy, I am tired of all the name changes. Studios are changing names (Angel Studios to Angel), corporate conglomerates are merging and making new names (Paramount Global to Paramount Skydance), and streamers are changing names. I just got used to calling “Max” HBO Max, and now I have to update what I’m calling Apple TV; that’s two streamers changing names just this year.
I’ll do my best to keep using the official names, though I’m not going to stress about it. If you don’t want brand confusion, don’t change your name! And when it comes to tech companies and tech platforms, well, I’ll keep using the more famous name. (I still call Meta “Facebook” and X “Twitter”, for example.)
As for the big thing I got right, Austin Karp (another terrific reporter to follow) of Sports Business Journal is reporting that, according to sources, Netflix has cancelled Starting Five, citing my work on the show’s sagging ratings. Of course, that didn’t stop The Sun from running this headline…
Also, here’s a bonus callout for this week. Last December for The Ankler, I described Fulwell 73 as having “One hit and not much else.” And that “one hit” I was referring to was The Kardashians, and that was me being generous. Still, they objected, saying, “No, we make lots of stuff.” Well, one year later—as you’ll see below—The Kardashians still hasn’t made the charts, and I’m not sure what else Fulwell 73 has made this year.
Go to their Wikipedia page. They haven’t made a movie in four years. They haven’t had a new show in years. Go to their IMDb page. Same thing. Their last new show was producing the 2025 Grammys ceremony and a Lion King concert. Go to their official company website; they’re touting four shows: An Evening With Dua Lipa (a special from last year), the 2025 Grammys, The Kardashians (never made the ratings charts), and now…Starting 5, and I don’t have to tell you how poorly that show did!
Reminder: Fulwell 73 merged with the Springhill Company, hence why Starting Five made their website. Again, if they make a lot of other shows, they should publicize them more.
On to this week’s issue, looking a several buzzy thriller/horror films that came to streaming, Netflix’s latest comedy that came out only a year after the last season, a check-in on KPop Demon Hunters versus Encanto, a big “influencer” TV show that just doesn’t make the viewership charts, a glance at Formula 1 ratings in America, all the flops, bombs and misses of the week, and more.
Since I’ve gotten so many new subscribers this week—thanks to Substack’s new film/TV vertical—this issue is free for all and everyone can see just how many bespoke images I make each week.
But we start with some weekly TV shows…
(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 October 20th to October 26th.
You can find a link to my terminology here.)
Television – Checking In on Some Weekly and Batch-Released Shows
The week of 20-Oct felt quiet overall in terms of big, new shows. Only one show broke the 20 million-hour barrier (The Diplomat), while it really looks like Netflix has returned to its domination (+80% share) of the Nielsen original charts. (Last week, no films or shows besides the NFL games broke the 20 million mark.)
In particular, I think we’ve seen this Netflix domination due to some weekly shows struggling to make the charts, including Only Murders in the Building only making Nielsen for a few weeks, and Prime Video’s Gen V and Terminal List dropping off after their premiere weeks. Considering that Wednesday also just fell off the charts, and Task ended the week of 13-Oct, let’s check back in on some weekly and batch-released shows. (For definitions of those terms, go here.)
Let’s start with the biggie: Wednesday. Preparing for Stranger Things’ final season, I looked at the biggest single weeks of all time on the charts, and Wednesday owns the title with its Thanksgiving release three years ago grabbing 99.8 million hours. The current season came out in multiple batches, so this comparison isn’t apples-to-apples, but here’s how it held on compared to Stranger Things and Squid Game, Netflix’s trio of monster hits:
Overall, this show is a massive hit. It peaked at number one on multiple charts and had a great second outing, though it looks to be down somewhat from its incredible prior season.
HBO’s Task also seems to be a good-to-great show for HBO, but we have less data on it. (It did just get renewed too.) It hasn’t returned to the Samba TV charts, and never made the Nielsen acquired charts. (Luminate doesn’t include shows that air on HBO proper.) As for datecdotes, HBO said the penultimate and season finale episodes both grabbed 4 million viewers in the first three days. As I mentioned before, I haven’t updated my HBO charts because they used to give us live viewership numbers. (My goal is to rectify this by next week with It: Welcome to Derry.)
Prime Video has a winner in The Summer I Turned Pretty, and it has some great stats. It made the Samba TV charts for ten weeks, Nielsen for eleven weeks, and Luminate for ten weeks. Here’s how it stacks up to previous seasons:
But Prime Video decided to cancel this winner, ending it with an upcoming feature film to wrap up the remaining storylines.
Love is Blind’s ninth season also lasted on the Samba TV, Nielsen and Luminate charts. This show isn’t “weekly” as in episodes come out weekly, but they do release it over three weeks, which I count as “weekly”. Here’s how it stacks up to previous seasons:
So it does look like the sixth season was an outlier, and recent seasons have maybe trended slightly down, but overall, this show continues to do great with episodes coming out twice a year. That’s a great performance.
The Great British Baking Show is another reliable show for Netflix, a true weekly release that makes the charts for multiple weeks. The same could be said about Tulsa King for Paramount+ and Only Murders in the Building for Hulu. Here’s how they’ve done this year:
I also included Prime Video’s two weekly releases—Gen V and Terminal List: Dark Wolf—and as you can see, they didn’t keep making the charts, and neither did Paramount+’s NCIS spinoff, Tony and Ziva. Those misses, along with Only Murders missing a few weeks, have helped Netflix return to dominating these charts.
I’d add that I’m also worried about Paramount+’s The Mayor of Kingstown (which Scott Mendelson described as “so relentlessly grim that it’s almost funny”), which might be the “under-performer” of Taylor Sheridan’s catalogue. It missed Nielsen this week—which happens for shows that debut on Sundays—and it doesn’t make the Luminate or Samba TV charts in future weeks (we get that data before Nielsen). It hasn’t made any interest charts either.
All to say, for the next few weeks, Netflix’s domination looks like it will continue.
Quick Notes on TV
- The biggest new show was Netflix’s second season of Nobody Wants This, a half-hour, ten-episode, binge-released dramedy. Again, credit where credit is due, Netflix got the sophomore season out about a year after the first (though the show did have a big creative leadership change). Frankly, I love that aggressive strategy, and I’ve recommended it for all the streamers for years. The show did well, getting to second place on the Samba TV charts and 15.1 million hours on Nielsen. (The last season started with weeks of 17.4 and 20.2 million hours.) On Luminate, it had 21.7 million hours. For a half-hour show, those are solid-to-good numbers.
- Mob War: Philadelphia vs The Mafia is a classic, short-run, true crime docu-series on Netflix. It missed the Nielsen charts, but made it on Samba TV for one week in its second week of release and Luminate. I won’t be surprised if it shows up next week on Nielsen.
- Looking at the Samba TV charts, you can also see the “Netflix domination” on TV, though that may reverse somewhat in November. Monster: The Ed Gein Story fell off those charts, as did The Diplomat, which went for three weeks. Here’s how Monster: The Ed Gein Story compares to previous seasons according to Nielsen, basically flat with the Menendez Bros. season:
- Married at First Sight has started bouncing around the streamers. Netflix had prior seasons and a ton of episodes, but the latest season (nineteen, if you’ll believe it) debuted on Peacock. It missed Nielsen so far, but made Luminate with 4.1 million hours, which is very low, but at least in the top ten. As for other shows, Boots fell off the Luminate charts, as did Black Rabbit and Wayward.
- Technically, HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry came out the week of this report, the 26th of October, but Sunday releases usually don’t make the charts when they come out. We’ll cover it next week, and based on HBO datecdotes, it may be big, third only to House of the Dragon and The Last of Us since this decade started.
- Netflix’s Boots is on a three-week “binge release curve” and may make the charts next week. Monster: The Ed Gein Story, though, fell off after four weeks. As I mentioned above, The Diplomat had a good jump in its second week, the only show over 20 million hours this week.
- I don’t have any breaking news for the Acquired charts, which mostly stayed stable.
- As I hinted at in the introduction, “Miss of the Week” goes to the seventh season of The Kardashians! On the one hand, good for Hulu/the Kardashians/Fulwell 73 for getting two seasons of this reality show out this year. That’s great. Now for the not-so-great: this show has literally never made the Nielsen charts. Or Luminate. Like, not once. In seven seasons! (Which should make it much easier to make the Nielsen charts.) And it’s not like reality shows don’t work on Hulu; The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is a hit reality show that makes the ratings charts every season.
- I’ll take a deeper look at this show in a later issue. Prime Video’s Lazarus (to be clear, technically “Harlan Corbin’s Lazarus”) only made interest charts, which is a pretty big miss. Our “Dogs Not Barking” of the week (my term for any show or film that doesn’t make any of the ratings charts that I track, find an explainer here) include Prime Video’s sports-docu-series, Allen Iv3rson, and Netflix’s The Monster of Florence. I usually don’t cover foreign-language titles in the DNB section, but I expected more from a buzzy crime thriller.
- I can confirm last week’s misses, and there were a lot of them, most notably Netflix’s Starting 5 and Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, Apple TV’s Loot, Hulu’s Obituary and Solar Opposites, and Paramount+’s The Guest. I should note that Hulu’s Chad Powers made all three interest charts, but it hasn’t made an actual viewership chart yet.
Film – The Halloween Films Arrive…
Given that the week of this report is the week before Halloween, it’s not a surprise we saw a few horror and thrillers from the streamers.
The biggest new film is the Oscar-bait, government thriller, A House of Dynamite, from Kathryn Bigelow. Its performance is a bit mixed, grabbing 12.2 million hours on Nielsen. For an Oscar contender, making the Nielsen charts at all is an accomplishment, as many Netflix flicks miss that low bar. That said, anything below 15 million hours on Netflix isn’t great, and this one may have been expensive.
However, it did do very well on Samba TV, getting to second and first place:
Overall, that’s a solid performance for a Netflix film, but just shy of great and well shy of elite. It has a 6.4 on IMDb on 89K reviews, so it’s also not actively hated by customers, just average, which is actually good for Netflix in general.
Weapons made the Samba TV charts after debuting on HBO Max. It has a 7.5 on 248K reviews on IMDb, which is really good for a horror flick! And it raked in $151 million in America at the box office. It only got 5.3 million hours on Nielsen. That’s a solid number for HBO Max, especially for a horror film.
The other films this week didn’t do so well. Hulu remade The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and it’s my “Miss of the Week” as it didn’t make Nielsen or Samba TV, and only had a peak of 2.4 million hours on Luminate, which is very low. If you’re remaking a classic film…send it to theaters!
At least it made the Luminate charts, as Tubi’s Glamping didn’t even accomplish that feat. I doubt this one was expensive.
Overall, this data is a good reminder that horror films often underperform on the streaming charts, especially compared to their theatrical returns, and we’ve seen that for another year. As big as Weapons was in theaters, in particular, it didn’t smash it on HBO/Max.
Quick Notes on Film
- Other than those films (two of which were misses), we had a quiet week in straight-to-streaming films. The Twitsshowed up on Netflix in its second week, but at a lowly 4.5 million hours. I’ll update my Netflix “animated films” chart when In Your Dreams debuts in November. Sony’s I Know What You Did Last Summer also made the Nielsen charts in its third week, at a low 3.2 million hours. It’s rare for a show to chart starting in its third week of release. As I’ve written who knows how many times, horror doesn’t punch above its weight on streaming, and with the Sony films off Netflix’s ad-tier, it’s tough to compare to Netflix originals.
- The Perfect Neighbor has done very well for a documentary, getting up to 16.8 million hours in its second week. Meanwhile, Prime Video’s John Candy documentary, I Like Me, and action flick Play Dirty both fell off the charts, as did Peacock’s How to Train Your Dragon and Netflix’s The Woman in Cabin 10.
- Time to check back in on KPop Demon Hunters, and its quest to best Encanto! It’s down to 10th place on Samba TV and at exactly 10.0 million hours on Nielsen, showing its energy dissipating. But Encanto at the same time only got around 6 million hours per week, so KPop is gaining ground.
- The story among library films is the start of the holiday season, beginning with Disney’s Halloween family films, like Hocus Pocus and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Non-exclusive library films Taken in Plain Sight and Don’t Say a Word also made the charts.
- Netflix’s The Elixir (from Indonesia) made the Luminate charts at a lowly 200K and 1.9 million hours. The film DNBs include Apple TV’s Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost and Netflix’s Who Killed the Montreal Expos? and two standup specials, Netflix’s Michelle Wolf: The Wall and Peacock’s Leslie Jones: Life Part 2.
Datecdote of the Week – Roku Total Hours Growth
In their latest earnings report, Roku touted that they had 36.5 billion hours streamed, up 4 billion hours from the year before. This number includes all streaming video on their platform, which actually feels a pinch low to me, and the growth is “fine”, but without larger usage stats from other platforms, it’s tough to put this number into context.
Anecdata of the Week – Graphic Novel Sales Are Slightly Down
According to BookScan, 41 million graphic novels were sold from Sep-2024 to Sep-2025, a decrease of 4.7%, which still “shows that the market has stabilized around the higher post-pandemic level in the book channel” according to Kristen McLean, Senior Executive Director, The Circana Entertainment Knowledge Group.
As happens most years, kids graphic novels did best, rising 5%. But YA graphic novel and adult sales were down.
Linear Ratings of the Week – Big Broadcast Numbers for DWTS and Tracker
Dancing With the Stars is having a big year. Their Wicked-themed night had 6.6 million viewers, the fifth straight week of viewership growth, a first since Nielsen started its electronic measurement system. The Halloween episode averaged 6.7 million viewers, the highest in seven years. The 20th anniversary show averaged 6.7 million. The semi-finals averaged 7.2 million. Some of this might be Nielsen’s move to their Big Data panel, but still, week-over-week growth is impressive regardless.
CBS’ Tracker debuted with 13 million viewers in its first seven days. Boston Blue nabbed 8.9 million, and DMV grabbed 6.6 million.
Sports Ratings of the Week – A Formula 1 Check-In
While we wait for Formula 1 to head over to Apple TV+, er, Apple TV, let’s check in on some end-of-season viewership.
- The US Grand Prix averaged 1.5 million viewers at 3 PM Eastern on ABC. Samba TV’s data matched this.
- The Mexico Grand Prix averaged 1.5 million viewers at 4 PM Eastern on ABC.
- The Brazilian Grand Prix averaged 784K on ESPN 2.
ESPN’s PR team touted that thirteen Formula 1 events set a record this season! They’re averaging 1.3 million viewers per race, up 17% from the year before. The viewership is so good that…Disney let Formula 1 leave to Apple. Again and again, follow the money, not the PR hype.
The reason Disney let them walk is pretty obvious: these viewership numbers are tiny and not worth $140 million per year, especially those very low numbers for afternoon events on ABC.
Coming Soon!
Next issue, we’ll take a look at the fourth season of The Witcher…will it continue its slide? And Prime Video’s Hazbin Hotel returns for its third season; will it bounce back after a lackluster second season? Plus, Apple TV+ had Down Cemetery Road (starring Emma Thompson) and the dinos head to Peacock in Jurassic World: Rebirth.
But the big shows are coming all month, like Landman on Paramount+, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on Hulu, Palm Royale on Apple TV+, A Man on the Inside and The Beast in Me on Netflix, plus a bunch of notable theatrical films like The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Materialists, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, Freakier Friday, Nobody 2, and, I guess, Eddington. Plus, straight-to-streaming films like Frankenstein, In Your Dreams (can Netflix replicate KPop?), Prime Video’s Playdate and Apple TV’s The Family Plan 2.
Speaking of Netflix animation, The Mitchells vs the Machines is getting a sequel, and so is KPop, though it might not arrive until 2029!
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Appendix
