Explaining the Business of Entertainment
As we head into the new year—somehow, we’re in the 22nd year of 21st century—I’m pondering changes to this streaming ratings report. The biggest idea on deck is to split it into two parts, one film and one TV. So we’re going to try it this week, since the Nielsen
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
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 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
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
Let me level with you: if Netflix took over the entire rankings list for another week—like they did the last two weeks—I probably would have quit. That level of dominance ceases to be impressive and just starts to be boring. (Fine, I wouldn’t have actually quit. But I would have
Manifest had quite the summer. The show of the summer, if you will. It went from cancelled on NBC—with a cliffhanger—to thriving on Netflix. Most headlines/coverage repeated something along the lines that this proved that Netflix could make hits where broadcasters like NBC had failed. At least, that’s the narrative.