For the week of Sept. 4, Virgin River racked up 1.9 billion minutes viewed across 52 total episodes. Netflix’s One Piece in turn dipped to No. 2, with 1.4 billion minutes viewed/eight episodes, followed by Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time (up one spot with 515 million minutes viewed/12 available episodes), Netflix’s Dear Child (504 million minutes/six episodes) and Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building (470 million minutes/26 available episodes).
Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building leapt onto Nielsen’s streaming charts for the week of August 7 to August 13. With the debut of Season 3, the series racked up 719M viewing minutes, making it to No. 9 on the overall Top 10 and No. 3 among streaming originals. According to Nielsen, the audience for Only Murders was a “carbon copy” of the series that’s been dominating streaming for the past eight weeks — Suits. That series had another impressive week with 3B viewing minutes once again across Netflix and Peacock.
Netflix shows drive the most viewership — comprising 93% of weekly top 10 lists since Aug. 3 — but the binge release model has its limits.
The Umbrella Academy was the runaway top title on Netflix in its first full week of release, according to figures from Nielsen. The ratings data provider is launching a weekly streaming top 10 list, with the first set of data covering the week of Aug. 3-9. For now, Nielsen measures only programs on Netflix and Amazon, with other streaming providers to be added in the future.
Nielsen said last month that it is developing a way to measure audiences for streaming services, and media people are eager to get a look at that data. “This kind of research simply helps planners better justify shifting dollars across channels and better identify what they are getting for the investment as it relates to the overall plan,” says Katrina Stroh, associate director of media strategy at Media Plus, a Seattle agency.