Is This TV Show the Most Expensive, Most Overhyped Miss in the Streaming Wars? Yes.
The Streaming Ratings Report for 20-Sep-2024
(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.)
Some of you may have felt like the last edition of the Streaming Ratings Report (which went out just three days ago) felt a pinch short (by a page or two). Lest you feel cheated, today’s report will more than make up for it. It’s almost twice as long as that issue; there’s just way, way, way too much streaming ratings data to go over, including...
What is perhaps the biggest bomb of the entire streaming wars!
Whether the Emmy-nominated shows are popular!
How a bunch of AMC TV shows performed when they came to Netflix!
That’s three mini-dives in this week’s issue, in addition to all the other stuff we have to talk about this week, like a few big straight-to-streaming films, the end of The Boys’ great run, a Spanish language success story on Netflix, my very-short initial thoughts on Netflix’s big data drop, all the flops, bombs and misses of the week, a book genre that deserves the hype, the Democratic National Convention’s TV ratings and what they actually mean, and whole lot more!
Like I said, there’s way, way too much to talk about this week, so let’s get right into it!
(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 August 19th to August 25th.)
TV - What One of the Biggest Bombs of the Streaming Era Can Tell Us About Hollywood
Each week, when my team and I are researching new streaming shows, I do a quick Google search, mainly to check each title’s news coverage as a somewhat crude guide to see if people (or more precisely, reporters and writers) are talking about a new TV show or movie. For example, looking at Netflix reality shows, way more news outlets write about new Love is Blind seasons then Netflix’ less popular reality shows, like The Circle.
This technique, though, doesn’t tell us whether people are actually watching these shows. If you looked at just news articles, you’d think Pachinko was the most popular show of the year. No, seriously, news outlets covered it like it was another season of Game of Thrones. Reporters and columnists are recapping its episode recaps or the first season, not to mention writing some of the most glowing reviews you’ll ever read.
For example, Vulture. Deadline. Today. Collider. IndieWire. Vulture again. The NY Times. The Ringer. I could find dozens more.
Heck, when Town & Country (and THR) are writing clickbait articles on where to watch it, Pachinko must be popular, right? Right? RIGHT?!?!?!
It is not.
Outside of the very online media bubble reality, people aren’t watching Pachinko. It didn’t make any of the viewership charts I track. Nielsen? No. Samba TV? No. It didn’t even make the Luminate charts, and a few Apple TV+ shows have accomplished that even lower bar.
Even worse, in spite of the mountain of news articles, customers aren’t even interested in this show. Pachinko didn’t make any of the interest charts I track, and believe me: Apple TV+ shows do really, really well on interest charts! Especially TV Time.
Yet this show missed JustWatch, missed Reelgood, AND missed TV Time.
Reminder: the first season of this show cost as much as a season of Game of Thrones. Seriously. During the PR tour for the first season, the producers bragged that it was crazy anyone would make this show, but they appear to have toned that message down for season two, probably due to the viewership, ratings, or interest (or lack thereof).
Compare this to what the rest of America is watching.
Prison Break.
No, seriously, the most-watched TV show this week (according to Nielsen) was Prison Break, a twenty-year-old Fox show that I still can’t believe made it to five seasons. (Its fifth season came out seven years ago.)
And yeah, this says a lot about American audiences, Hollywood studios, and the entertainment press. Here’s some takeaways:
The traditional media has no idea what most Americans like to watch. A lot of critics like to think that they know what people like (especially based on online chatter), not realizing that it often represents their own personal opinion and that of their online bubble/silo. It’s also a bit of wish-casting and confirmation bias; most people want the things they like to be popular these days.1 This is basically Nate Silver’s “indigo blob” theory in action, but with pop culture.
In terms of the “conversation”, many analysts assume Apple TV+ isn’t losing the streaming wars because they make TV shows that critics like to watch. (Even if America isn’t watching its shows.) Apple TV+ can win the battle of “public” opinion (mostly coastal, educated, elite opinion) by making TV shows critics rave about. Since they don’t care about (probably) losing money, they can afford to do this.
Hollywood is (slowly) realizing that most Americans don’t want prestige TV. The rest of Hollywood (literally) can’t afford to adopt the same strategy as Apple Studios.2 Don’t believe me? Check out Elaine Low’s post-Emmy article on dramedies, period pieces, and prestige television. Development execs and streamers want more popular fare now. I spotted this trend years before the rest, because I analyzed the viewership charts for the last three years.
Pre-streaming ratings (which started in 2020, roughly), this happened all the time—people thought unpopular shows were popular—but there was no way to prove it. The difference between the 2016-2020 era and 2024 is that we have streaming ratings now, so the flops are obvious. That used to not be the case, and development execs and talent went crazy making passion projects.
Okay, that was a lot, and it was pretty negative...so let’s shift gears into positive territory!
After all, it’s possible to make shows that are both popular and critically acclaimed...and this year’s Emmy winners provide a blueprint!
TV - How Did the Emmy Winners Do on the Ratings Charts? Has Hulu Been Saved?
Back in January, after this year’s other Emmy telecast, a prominent media pundit introduced an Emmy recap podcast by saying something along the lines of, “I know some people don’t think that the Emmys matter, but they matter for public perception of your company,” kind of admitting that there’s a gulf between what actually matters (viewership and profit) versus media chatter.
Well, you can include me among those people who don't think the Emmys matter (in terms of business strategy). If a studio or streamer is more focused on winning awards than grabbing eyeballs, they’re doing it wrong.
As we’ll see today, Emmy nominations and wins don’t correlate to viewership or customer interest. This makes sense because, frankly, not that many people outside of New York and Los Angeles even consume Emmy content. In a country of over 300 million, only 7 million people watched this year’s telecast. (Which was up from an all-time low two years ago.) And it’s not like positive headlines help either; I mean, look at Pachinko up above…it gets tons of positive headlines.
Emmy nominees and wins do have some impact. Nominees get slight bumps in viewership if they win an award, but it almost never justifies the marketing costs (or accounts for all the prestige shows that got made, but didn’t win anything, and thus got no bump.)
Still, folks (like me!) want to know how popular the Emmy winners are, plus there are insights to be gleaned. Let’s break the Emmys down, with the good (popular shows), the bad (unpopular shows that won), and the ugly (overrated in this case).
The Good - Has Hulu Been Saved?
Hulu’s best-performing show, Shōgun, took the drama series crown, accomplishing something very, very rare: merging critical acclaim with incredible popularity.
Shōgun has taken the Game of Thrones belt, since Game of Thrones was both crazy popular and critically acclaimed. And Hulu’s other two most popular shows, The Bear and Only Murders in the Building, were also nominated for “Best Comedy Series”.
I’ve long been a Hulu bear. (Not “The Bear”, but a Wall Street bear.) Year after year, Hulu puts out tons of dour dramedies and expensive mini-series and prestige dramas, but so few of them resonate. They had an awful winter and first half of the year, save for Shōgun. I just asked if all the misses outweighed the one hit.
Hulu has at least three genuine hits, and all three are critically acclaimed, which is very hard to pull off. They’ve also been doing a smart job of keeping the shows on schedule, putting out new episodes of Only Murders and The Bear every summer. The lesson I would take away from this is to make comedies that are actually funny (looking at Only Murders in the Building) and make prestige TV shows that are actually genre shows, like Shōgun, a war show. (Compare Shōgun to Pachinko.)
Now, the bad news for Hulu: it took Hulu years and years (and show after show) to get to this point, and they need another hit soon. When is Shōgun even going to start filming its next season? (It was originally a limited series.) How many more seasons do The Bear or Only Murders have in them?
The Bad: Hacks is Pachinko With an Emmy Win
As we saw with Pachinko, many people assume/believe that critically acclaimed, award-winning shows are popular, when most of them aren’t. Just look at Hacks.
Here’s an indicting by omission fact:
Nielsen published the top Emmy shows by viewership and left out Hacks.
To be blunt, this show is not a hit. In three seasons, it’s made the Nielsen charts once. Once. And everyone seems to know this around town. (Again, read Elaine Low’s piece.)
This is the age-old battle in Hollywood between critics and audiences. There’s always going to be a tension between what development execs/talent want to make (and what critics like to watch) versus regular people, most of whom didn’t go to college.
This doesn’t mean that a streamer can’t ever make shows like this, just that they have to balance them out with more popular fare. The team at HBO gets this as well as anyone in town. HBO makes broadly-appealing-but-critically-acclaimed genre shows like House of the Dragon, The Last of Us, and the upcoming The Penguin and makes them for the right price, which allows them to take swings on shows like Hacks. (One quibble? Hacks should be on HBO. I think HBO/Max’s dual-cast model works best to drive viewership.)
The Overrated: Baby Reindeer Still Is a Hit, But NOT This Year’s Biggest Show
Baby Reindeer won for “Best Limited Series”. While this show was popular enough to be called a hit, I don’t think it was as big of a hit as the narrative around town. Tons and tons and tons of people were talking about this show all the time online, while its ratings were on par with other Netflix shows that got far less attention.
“...this show was way over-hyped online...If a show has half the runtime, but gets ten times the attention, it’s still getting way more attention than other shows. (I’d also add, some other measurements that focus on viewers or unique households also show Baby Reindeer’s relatively weaker performance to some big hits.)”
What would that views count look like? Glad you asked...
Honestly, looking at it by views...yes, I still think this show was really overrated.
That said, like HBO, I think Netflix understands the balance between prestige and popular about as well as anyone. Especially in the last two years, they’ve definitely shifted their TV shows to broadly popular TV shows, with enough prestige shows to keep up their reputation.
(Prime Video did well this year, too, with Fallout and Mr. and Mrs. Smith both garnering Emmy nods, though let’s be honest: Prime Video didn’t scrimp on their FYC campaigns.)
The Ugly: Pachinko Doesn’t Even Win Awards
To close, we’ll see how Pachinko does next year in the Emmy race, especially since it’s coming out so early in the award cycle. Last time, it got one nomination. For its opening credits.
