It’s success for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as Disney+ tops this week’s Nielsens
As we suggested last week, Disney+ tops this week’s Nielsens (US streamed viewing figures of certain services) and we expect some celebration later. There’s plenty of churn, several new entries, and even a Hulu show coming into range. As ever we’ve processed the Nielsen data, added our own analysis and outsourced extensive Monte Carlo simulations to a friendly team of computer experts recommended to us by a Nigerian prince. As ever there’s more to the story than the headline figures…
The data
As in previous weeks, this is a blend of Nielsen data and our own interpolation (columns marked with ‘*’). We use the numbers to look at trends and suggested interpretations on the data we have.
| Rank | Streamer | Series | # Episodes | Ep length (mins)* | Total Minutes (Millions) | Series Watches* | Episode Watches* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Disney+ | The Falcon And The Winter Soldier | 2 | 50 | 628 | 6,280,000 | 12,560,000 |
| 2 | Netflix | The Irregulars | 8 | 45 | 424 | 1,177,778 | 9,422,222 |
| 3 | Netflix | Ginny & Georgia | 10 | 60 | 390 | 650,000 | 6,500,000 |
| 4 | Netflix | Who Killed Sara | 10 | 45 | 363 | 806,667 | 8,066,667 |
| 5 | Netflix | The Crown | 40 | 60 | 327 | 136,250 | 5,450,000 |
| 6 | Netflix | Country Comfort | 10 | 25 | 253 | 1,012,000 | 10,120,000 |
| 7 | Netflix | Formula 1: Drive Survive | 29 | 35 | 237 | 233,498 | 6,771,429 |
| 8 | Netflix | The One | 8 | 42 | 217 | 645,833 | 5,166,667 |
| 9 | Netflix | Longmire | 63 | 60 | 200 | 52,910 | 3,333,333 |
| 10 | Hulu | Solar Opposites | 16 | 23 | 196 | 532,609 | 8,521,739 |
We also note the total number of top 10 episode watches was just under 76 million; last week was around 66 million.
Disney+ — the view from the top
It’s a clear win for The Falcon and The Winter Soldier on every analysis. The Nielsens show clear water between them and new entry The Irregulars — this has had mixed reviews (we found it had charm as well as several flaws). It’s more interesting if you look at the date for season watches and episode watches.
Less is more?
Two comedies (Country Comfort and Solar Opposites) have short episode lengths. Falcon… itself comes in around 50 minutes, but the gap between it and Country Comfort (in terms of episode watches) is less dramatic than the Neilsen order suggests. What we see is more watches across the whole top 10, and our count suggests 15% more views across the top 10 (though maybe people aren’t watching other shows as much). It’s good evidence for diverse interests in new shows changing the habits we’ve seen established over the past few weeks.
What next?
We expect Falcon… to hold on for at least a week and several other newcomers to do well for a while. Ginny & Georgia seems to have peaked (for now), and The Crown will drop further down (we’re predicting around #7). Whatever does happen, we’ll bring the analysis. Until next week!