(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.)
What’s a “hit”?
It seems simple, but seriously, how would you define a “hit show”? Previously, I’ve called shows in the top 15% of all TV shows a “hit” (or if it’s in the top 15% of shows on a streamer, it’s a “hit for them”; same goes for genres like unscripted TV). After all, I made this determination using the WGA’s own definition of a hit show. To me, a hit show has to be a TV show that is clearly elite, and top 15% is a great line to figure that out. If I’m feeling generous, top 20% also works (and matches the success rate of 1990s broadcast shows).
And yet I keep coming across headlines about “hit shows” that just are not hit shows.
If everything is a hit, then nothing is. Which is why you read this newsletter, to understand the difference. Unlike the hype that other websites need to drive clicks and fuel their business model, I rely on paying subscribers who need accurate information to make decisions, and that means offering actual data and comparisons over anecdata, datecdotes and puff.
Speaking of hits, I am soooooo excited for this week’s Streaming Ratings Report. We have not one, not two, but three (count em, three!) weekly shows returning a year after their last season! Yes!!!! I speak of The Pitt on HBO Max, a procedural, The Traitors, a reality show on Peacock in its fourth season, and Beast Games, another reality show on Prime Video.
All that, plus every streamer (well, every stream sans Disney+) had a big new show this week, streaming football broke another record, a quick look at linear TV shows, Netflix’s latest binge release success story, how many films actually come out each year, a check-in on Landman’s massive number, Stranger Things’ dominance, AI slop, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more.
Let’s dive right 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, 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 January 5th to January 11th, 2026.
You can find a link to my terminology here.)
Television – Revenge of the (January) Weekly Shows
Let’s give Prime Video, Peacock and HBO Max plaudits for executing an “annually-weekly” release strategy to near perfection. In a day and age of two-year gaps between shows, these three streamers each brought back their promising or successful debut shows within thirteen months of a successful premiere, or near to the day after it came out in HBO Max’s case:
- Prime Video released Beast Games season two on 7-Jan; the previous season came out in December-2024.
- Peacock released The Traitors season four on 8-Jan, about a year after season three.
- HBO Max released The Pitt’s second season nearly to the day (8-Jan) after it came out last year. Even better, this show has 15 episodes!
I’ll dig into each show’s trendlines too, along with a comparison to the big weekly shows of December (Landman, Percy Jackson and Fallout), but first, let’s start with a tale of the tape:
Now let’s review each show, from best to worst (and you can see where MrBeast’s Beast Games falls…)
The Pitt Vindicates My Call For More Procedurals
This time last year, I had been a bit chastened because I had called for a streamer, any streamer, to start putting “procedurals”—reminder, weekly stories that usually solve a mystery, most often with police, legal or medical professionals as the leads—on streaming. Most streamers were content to let the broadcast channels air procedurals, and then benefit from day-after-air broadcasts.
Prime Video, Netflix and HBO Max each took my strategy to heart (though I don’t take credit for this, obviously), but January-2025 started out rough! Prime Video’s On Call missed the charts, as did the start of The Pitt. Uh oh, I thought, maybe procedurals really don’t work on streaming after all.
Then The Pitt became the little show that could. It kept gaining viewership and ended up making the Nielsen top ten at the end of its run:
The rest of the year went even better, as the show ended up winning an Emmy for best show. Emmy wins do boost ratings, as HBO put out in a datecdote. Even better, The Pitt actually made the charts the week before the new season came out, showing audiences catching up and some added viewership from its Golden Globes win as well.
And the new season has smashed its previous viewership, up to 15.7 million hours on Nielsen.
(As a reminder, when a chart has no data for a show, like The Pitt season one, it doesn’t meant the show had no viewership, but it was outside of the top ten for that week.)
It makes Samba TV and Luminate for multiple weeks, too. HBO itself put out that the latest season had 5.4 million viewers, which is very strong for an HBO Max-only show, compared to It: Welcome to Derry at 5.7 million and 800K for Industry. (Yes, I still have it on my data to-do list to review HBO Max’s datecdotes for better context.)
Plus, it looks like The Pitt will make the charts for weeks to come. Again, HBO Max remains tiny as a streamer, so this performance is even more remarkable. And like other weekly shows, we need to monitor the show over time.
The Traitors: Cheap Reality Competition Shows for the Win
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…
- Whether Beast Games lost to Traitors…
- …what broadcast viewership looks like compared to streaming…
- …but what under-discussed streaming show tops all of them…
- …the latest Disney film to underwhelm on streaming…
- …why I don’t like gigantic movie datasets…
- …whether AI Slop is coming for YouTube…
- …massive streaming numbers for the NFL…
- …all the flops, bombs and misses…
- 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.
