If a Streaming Show Flops in the Forest, But No One Writes About It, Did It Really Flop?
The Streaming Ratings Report for 12-May and 19-May
(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.)
Emmy season remains undefeated.
This week, we have so many new shows, but few hits. In fact, the top show/film for the week of 12-May only had 15.5 million hours (Andor) and the top show the next week (Sirens) only 22.6 million, and that was the only title to eclipse my unofficial 20-million-plus-hours "hit show" mark over the two weeks of this report.
We had so many under-performers for the weeks of 12-May and 19-May that we’re actually going to kick off this issue by covering all the flops, bombs and misses. Luckily, they touch on many topics and themes that obsess me, like social media “stars”, the long gaps between seasons, gigantic production deals, tech companies losing money, and more.
All that, plus whether Andor really deserves its week-leading accolades, Hulu’s best performing reality TV series, the final Best Picture nominees make it to streaming, the data on Apple’s latest straight-to-streaming film, some fun data on ska, the top films at Cannes, Netflix’s episode count, some crazy PVOD developments, Lio & Stitch stats, 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, and 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 May 12th to May 25th.)
Television - A Slew of Misses Dominate the Story This Week
Holy crap, there are so many flops, bombs and misses this week.
Normally, I discuss under-performing TV shows and films behind the paywall—apologies to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Andor and Sirens, the hits of the week, for getting bumped to the quick hits section—but the misses are the big story this week. Mainly, I can’t pick just one “Miss of the Week”, since at least six (6!!!) very notable shows didn’t make any of the viewership charts that I track (or what I call “Dogs Not Barking”, find an explainer here.)
Let’s start with Max’s Duster, a 1970s crime thriller starring Sawyer from Lost, er, Josh Holloway and Rachel Hilson, about the FBI’s first black woman agent hiring a getaway driver to stop a crime syndicate. It only made Reelgood for one week, didn’t make any viewership charts, and boasts a paltry 2.9K reviews on IMDb. Now, you might argue, “But it’s just a weekly show on a small streamer, and it doesn’t look expensive.”
Oh, it was expensive.
After all, it’s the first (repeat: first) TV show from Bad Robot, a.k.a. JJ Abrams’ production company, under their gigantic, possibly half-a-billion-dollars overall deal. And that first show is a flop. Oh, and it was greenlit way back in, checks notes, 2020.
Not to be outdone, the second season of Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers came out a full four years after the original!!!! (To be fair, 45 or so months, but still.)
In the meantime, the show lost almost all of its audience. Even though Hulu is having a pretty successful year (for them), viewers didn’t turn in for this one. And it stars Nicole Kidman! Samba TV put out a datecdote that it only garnered 220K viewers in its first six days, which is very low.
Then again, don’t discount Apple Studios. Their big new show was Murderbot. In classic Apple TV+-style, this show has all the genres: Sci-fi. Action. Comedy. Unlike Duster, this one looks expensive. It didn’t make any of the ratings charts, including Samba TV, which would have accounted for its short run time. But it made all three interest charts and boasts 9.6K reviews on IMDb, which is below average, but not terrible. On the one hand, I love that Apple Studios just throws money at sci-fi shows, my favorite genre, but I can’t pretend like this strategy is working.
What about Prime Video’s Overcompensating? While it’s only a half-hour long and doesn’t look expensive, it didn’t make any of the viewership charts I track (which is the third time I’ve had to write that), and it was binge-released. But here’s the most important part:
It comes from a “social media star”, Benito Skinner, who boasts 1.6 million followers on TikTok, another 1.6 million on Instagram, and 310K on YouTube.1
As we’ve seen before—The D’Amelios, Mr. Beast, The Paul Brothers—social video popularity often doesn’t translate into viewership on streaming; their streaming numbers don’t come anywhere close to their gaudy YouTube “views” numbers. These social media influencers may have devoted fans who love them, but these fans don’t love them enough to actually watch their shows on other platforms.
Unfortunately, very-online people just assume everyone else also lives in their very-online social media bubble, but they don’t, which explains headlines like “I Just Binged 'Overcompensating' and Now I See Why Everyone's Obsessed (Even If I'm Still Confused)”. Everyone isn’t talking about it; it just seems like it to that person.
Lastly: this one comes from A24, and their TV track record seems…not great. And this comes on the heels of an even worse theatrical track record since May. (More to come on that!)
But those aren’t all of the misses!