The Nielsens for September 6-12 are out and Clickbait holds Lucifer off the top spot, but it’s close
We have the latest Nielsen data, and there’s a lot to talk about, Before we dive in, here’s what we predicted last week:
We are very bullish (biased!) about Lucifer and expect season 6 to storm in at #1, with Clickbait hitting anywhere from 750-950 million minutes (shows tend to show a quick drop after a quick rise). Money Heist should stay in the chart for a while, and we can see it growing to around 650 million.
Expect everything else to drop with Outer Banks and Virgin River drifting out across October.
On a quick read we were more right than wrong, so we’ve gone back to the Cultbox canteen to ask whoever’s there on a Friday afternoon for their take on the numbers. Everyone had gone for the weekend except for one of the security guards. Here’s their analysis…
The Nielsen data
Don’t forget this is US data, we take the published material and add the columns marked with ‘*’.
| Rank | Streamer | Series | # Episodes | Ep length (mins)* | Total Minutes (Millions) | Episode Watches* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NETFLIX | Clickbait | 8 | 45 | 1,108 | 24,622,222 |
| 2 | NETFLIX | Lucifer | 93 | 50 | 1,052 | 21,040,000 |
| 3 | NETFLIX | Turning Point: 9/11 And The War On Terror | 5 | 60 | 691 | 11,516,667 |
| 4 | NETFLIX | Money Heist | 41 | 50 | 538 | 10,760,000 |
| 5 | HULU | Nine Perfect Strangers | 6 | 50 | 346 | 6,920,000 |
| 6 | HULU | Only Murders In The Building | 4 | 30 | 334 | 11,133,333 |
| 7 | NETFLIX | The Circle (USA) | 29 | 55 | 292 | 5,309,091 |
| 8 | NETFLIX | Grace And Frankie | 83 | 30 | 271 | 9,033,333 |
| 9 | DISNEY+ | What If | 5 | 30 | 258 | 8,600,000 |
| 10 | NETFLIX | Sharkdog | 7 | 20 | 238 | 11,900,000 |
Clickbait holds Lucifer off the top — but what else happened?
Both Clickbait and Lucifer broke the billion minute barrier and the difference was around 6% in favour of the three weeks running champion. It’s numbers dipped but not by as much as we’d predicted. Both Outer Banks and Virgin River have drifted out, and Money Heist picked up numbers but was still pushed down. As a whole numbers are good this week, and there’s plenty of churn.
There’s also a new entry at #10 for children’s cartoon Sharkdog, and both Nine Perfect Strangers and Only Murders in the Building areflying the flag for Hulu.
What do we predict for next week?
We see Clickbait numbers dropping, but can’t decide on Lucifer. When the much delayed season 5B dropped (see our review) it started with over 1.2 billion minutes then grew to over 1.8 billion. Despite our review of season 6, we get a sense the anticipation for this final outing wasn’t as high, and while it scored well the first weekend, it won’t sustain as long as the previous (pandemic delayed) release.
We still can see Lucifer taken the top spot from Clickbait, What If…? may hang around the bottom and we’d like to see Sharkdog in the chart again (we like the picture!)
Whatever happens, we’ll bring our usual analysis.