Netflix’s Un-Un-Order Thrives

(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.)

The big data news of the week is that Nielsen has accelerated their release schedule of streaming data by two weeks. This brings them in line with two of the other data services I use weekly, Samba TV and Luminate, along with two of the interest charts I track, Reelgood and JustWatch.

For those curious, here’s when various viewership analytics companies release their top ten reports (and the day they start that week):

(Is this in the weeds? Sure, but whenever I go super in the weeds, I get feedback that folks love it.)

Does this new timeline have ramifications for this week’s report? A bit. First, I need to catch up, and we had a lot of topics to cover, so the rough plan is to just dive in with streaming ratings reports for the weeks of 24-Aug, 31-Aug and 7-Sep nearly back-to-back. I looked to see if I could combine some weeks into double issues, but each week has enough interesting shows, films or specials to justify its own report. I’ll alternate those with some strategy takes, so a few extra issues may be inbound. (Do expect some tight paywalls though.)

On to this week’s report. I’ll start by admiring an unheralded show on Netflix, then take another look at Reelgood’s data for TV show catalogues. All that, plus Netflix’s latest film isn’t a hit, another sitcom struggles on streaming, one dearly departed celebrity drove great ratings, another true crime docu-series success, big professional golf viewership, all the flops, bombs and misses of the week, and a whole lot more.

But we start with a show that was cancelled, but then got renewed. Plus, it has one of my favorite release strategies in the game.

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, JustWatch and Reelgood interest 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 August 24th to August 30th, 2026.

You can find a link to my terminology here.)

Television – Beauty in Black Justifies Its Rescue

Netflix had a pretty good week in the Nielsen originals charts, with two shows displacing Reacher at the top spot:

I covered Outer Banks last week, and it had a nice little bump into its second week. (Though it still has shrunk from previous seasons.)

Really though, the big story is the saga of Beauty in Black. For those long time readers, I once wrote this in my “renewals and cancellations” report:

“Finally, Beauty in Black. Chef’s kiss to Netflix and Tyler Perry for making a TV show that puts out more than twelve episodes a year. With eight new episodes coming out every six months or so, this show is, surprise surprise, growing its audience!…Wait, what’s that, it’s cancelled? Seriously? Wow.”

And yet…here we are with another season! (To be clear, Netflix had planned to end the series after its third season, but now it will keep going.) This is the first un-un-order, a term I just coined, that I’ve ever seen. And the explanation is pretty simple: the show does well. Here’s how it’s trended season-over-season:

That’s right, each season is growing its audience, a trend I (and many others) have explained is not the case with Netflix’s other shows. Partly, its growth is driven by an insanely steady release calendar:

Between Outer Banks and this, Netflix has again pulled up from its Q2 slump. Considering how late I Will Find You debuted in Q2, they also had a strong start to the quarter.

Now, other Beauty in Black data is just “fine”. On Samba TV, it only made the charts for one week at eighth place. That’s only okay. On Luminate, though, it jumped to 26.7 million hours for its debut. On IMDb, it only has a 6.0 on 6.6K reviews, which is low.

In terms of buzz and industry trade coverage or Emmy awards, almost no one ever talks about this show. I never see headlines or think pieces about it. Yet it’s a very solid to great success story for Netflix.

I made this analogy last week and—due to popular demand, I’ll repeat it—Beauty in Black is like a sleeper fantasy pick that keeps paying off. For the 2026 fantasy football season, it’s the Parker Washington of performers, for the super deep NFL fantasy football fans out there.

Content of the Week – Reelgood’s TV Catalogue Data

It’s time for a second round of data in my “How do the various catalogues stack up?” analysis, featuring Reelgood’s TV data. I’ll remake the three charts I did last time, but with a focus on TV shows. First, here’s a snapshot of how each service stood in August:

And here’s how they grew from the previous month:

Overall, Amazon is just much bigger than every other streamer. My guess is this is because Prime Video Direct allows a lot of independent creators to publish automatically onto Prime Video. Though Disney+ actually had the most new shows in August, which might be tied to their Hulu integration:

Here’s how those catalogues have trended over time:

The most interesting story here is that Disney+ just passed Peacock in total number of TV shows.

By the way, I should emphasize that Reelgood has excellent data for tracking where shows have been and for how long. Their data helps support anyone from content licensing and acquisition to research and content strategy to rights and legal departments. When I mention I’ve been partnering with “b2b” companies, Reelgood is one of the folks I’m talking about.

Quick Notes on TV