Explaining the Business of Entertainment
Deep dives into Nielsen and other data that provide insights into streaming.
Today, Netflix’s global viewership data will start to sneak into this report. But just the initial peeks. If the Netflix data were a garden, consider these the budding flowers just poking out of the dirt. For an introduction to this new data, I wrote a “Quick Explainer On Netflix’s New
What a week for data! For those who haven’t seen it, Netflix announced the biggest data news yet of the streaming wars. Specifically, each week they’ll release, in near real time, the total hours viewed for their top English and Non-English language film and TV series. Forty data points each
If this week has a theme, it’s Halloween, since the ratings period covered by Nielsen—October 11th to 17th—is smack dab in the middle of October. But honestly you know what is scarier for others streamers? How well Netflix is doing. (If you missed it, my thoughts on Black Widow’s disappointing
As usual, we have a lot of stories in the streaming ratings this week, from Squid Game’s second 50 million hour week to Black Widow showing back up on the Nielsen charts to Seinfeld’s debut to the usual flops and misses. Instead of those, we’ll look at the first appearance
I often write that this is a “hits driven” business. (And yes, I often write both hit-driven and hits-driven. I’m not sure which is more accurate. Disney, for example, thrives not off one hit but multiple hits.) Nothing proved that this quarter quite like Squid Game. Let’s dive into a
I know what you’re here to read this week: my analysis on Squid Game launching from 3.4 million hours in its first weekend to 31.8 million hours in its second week. Yikes, that’s a jump! Well, I’m going to disappoint. My Squid Game thoughts were so good, I sent them
Suddenly, this ratings report feels very cosmopolitan. A streaming ratings report of the world. You’ve got TV series from Spain and South Korea vying for attention with cop dramas from America. And German films trying to knock American animated films off the lists. That’s right, I’m talking about Firedrake the Silver
Today, it’s all about a foreign international title and its performance in the U.S. What’s that you say? Something about an octopus match? A cephalopod competition? Squid Game you say? Let me check. Give me a few minutes. Okay back. Yikes, Squid Game is popular! As I was writing this
To quote Will Ferrell in Old School, Hulu is going streaking! Specifically, they’ve launched their second successful TV series in August. Toss in an okay film performance and The Handmaid’s Tale’s good run, and they’ve had a successful summer. Of course, a Hulu “success” isn’t a Netflix success, or even
Folks, last week I promised you a show down of straight-to-streaming films, and by golly, we got it. Given the datecdotes, Nielsen ratings and creative auspices of the films involved, the battle lived up to the hype. (Reminder: The streaming ratings report compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership