(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.)
Let me make something very, very clear to all of my readers:
I was using em-dashes way before they were cool.
I can tell you exactly when I was inspired/instructed to use them: English class, senior year of high school, reading Trimble’s Writing With Style. I love em-dashes because they’re the perfect way to include asides mid-sentence. I love digressive, detailed writing, and the em-dash is the perfect tool in the writing toolbox for this style. I can also rant about which writing programs make em-dashes easy to use and which ones don’t. Again, I’ve been using them for years.
Then ChatGPT had to come along and overuse em-dashes.
Now, my em-dash usage just makes it seem like my writing could have been assisted by an LLM—barf—and I promise you, whatever else LLMs automate, I won’t let it automate my writing. (Writing is thinking, and outsourcing writing is outsourcing thinking. Plus, I love writing.) Sometimes, I’m self-conscious about my em-dash usage. That, and bullet points. Even more so as LLMs copy those styles. Same with breaking up the page with bolded words; a lot of readers skim articles!
But know, this is my style, and I’m sticking with it.
Digression aside, on to this week’s issue. We’re talking buzzy new shows (Peacock’s The ‘Burbs! Disney+/Marvel’s Wonder Man!), big returning shows (Netflix’s Bridgerton and The Lincoln Lawyer!), and a big action film on Prime Video, The Wrecking Crew. All that, plus the new windows for feature films hit streaming, Apple TV(+) has a returning show hit the charts, Stranger Things starts dropping off the viewership charts, why films don’t last in the cultural consciousness, and 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 26th to February 8th, 2026.
You can find a link to my terminology here.)
Television – Netflix Brings Back Two Big Shows Back-To-Back
As a journalist/writer, I try to explain things to my readers. But sometimes even I struggle to explain why certain streamers make certain decisions. For example, in the two weeks we’re analyzing today, Netflix released the fourth seasons of two of their more successful shows:
- Bridgerton, the steamy period piece romance from Shonda Rhimes.
- The Lincoln Lawyer, the legal drama based on the books of Michael Connelly.
They released the seasons back-to-back, and both come not too long after Stranger Things wrapped up in December. Plus, The Night Agent will follow them in February. That’s a lot of big returning shows coming out back-to-back-to-back-to-back!
Why rush all these big shows? Well, I can venture a guess, which is that Netflix both wanted to avoid the Olympics—which started 6-Feb, the last Friday of the period of this report—but had the shows ready to go and didn’t want to hold them for too long. (I’ll note: Bridgerton is coming out in batches, so it will come out again after the Olympics end.)
Both shows proved their strengths, but Bridgerton showed why Shonda Rhimes would be my second overall draft pick in a hypothetical “showrunners” draft. (Yeah, Sheridan is first.) With just four episodes, the show got 50.5 million hours in its first week on Nielsen. So it joined the 40 million hour club:
(I’m now starting this chart at 2023, since with 2022, it got too long. By the way, after this week, I now have 100 entries in my 40 million hour club.)
Here’s how that stacks up to other “huge” Netflix shows, which are mostly big, expensive fantasy/sci-fi/horror plays:
On Samba TV, Bridgerton made it for two weeks, topping the charts for one week, then falling off. Yes, that’s a quick run, but again, this batch was only four episodes long. On Luminate, season four topped out at 38.3 million hours, and notably, no other seasons of the show made the charts. Partially, that’s due to some of the weekly competition on the charts, but it’s a sign of how much the fans consume this show in real time, not needing to binge to catch up. (Though that may also be a sign the show isn’t wooing new customers.) Lastly, while IMDb is normally unkind to female-skewing shows, Bridgerton has a 7.4 on 223K reviews, very good numbers for a non-genre show.
In contrast, Netflix binge-released The Lincoln Lawyer right before the Olympics, and had strong numbers too, though they feel a step down from Bridgerton when accounting for the “four episodes versus ten episodes” factor. With all ten episodes, it only had 33.3 million hours according to Nielsen. However, on Luminate, it had 61.7 million hours. It also made it to second place on the Samba TV charts for two weeks in a row.
Here’s a fun fact to impress your friends: The first season of The Lincoln Lawyer is also available on Prime Video! It’s a rare co-production where the production partner can (and is) selling to other streamers. (I still have the show listed as “Netflix only” on Nielsen, since the first season’s viewership on Prime Video is likely minimal.)
Lastly, many Netflix shows over the last year or so have actually seen their viewership dip season over season, but according to Kasey Moore of Whats-On-Netflix, that isn’t the case with The Lincoln Lawyer (though it was with Bridgerton):
I’ll be monitoring a few things over the next few issues. First, do the Olympics steal viewership from streaming? This will be a bit of a “chicken and egg” question, because most streamers look to be ceding the TV landscape to NBC/Peacock and aren’t releasing many new, buzzy shows.
Second, will either The Lincoln Lawyer or Bridgerton grow their audiences? Elite shows grow over time, and we’ll see if these franchises are finally maxing out their reach.
Third, does Netflix have more heavy artillery in 2026 since they seem so front-loaded with these shows? It’s obviously a sign of their own belief in themselves that they put out so many big returning shows this early. They do have the 3 Body Problem, Outer Banks, One Piece and Avatar: The Last Airbender on the schedule, and folks are optimistic about Little House on the Prairie…but that’s not a lot of shows for long stretches of time. It’s only February!
Television – Who Won the Battle of Genre Shows, Disney+ or Peacock?
If you had come to me in 2022 and said a Disney+ Marvel show would square off with a Peacock reboot of a 1980s film that grossed $49.1 million in 1989, I’d have wagered a lot of money on the MCU show.
My, how times have changed.
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