Inventing Anna still tops the Nielsens, but for how much longer?
In a week where we learned the Nielsen organisation is worth $16 billion, the latest set of data for February 28 – March 6 show Inventing Anna topping the chart for the third week. It’s close though, and the top 10 has several new entries.
Last week we suggested:
Worst Roommate Ever: Season 1 looks to keep Vikings: Valhalla from the top spot. Inventing Anna might make the top 3, and Reacher should make another week as should Space Force
We were about 50% right, as we’ll discuss below.
The Nielsen data
As ever this is US only, we add the columns marked ‘*’ and it’s a few weeks behind (so no Bridgerton for a while!)
| Rank | Streamer | Series | #Episodes | Ep length (mins)* | Total Minutes (Millions) | Episode Watches* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netflix | Inventing Anna | 9 | 67 | 1,168 | 17,432,836 |
| 2 | Netflix | Vikings: Valhalla | 8 | 50 | 1,079 | 21,580,000 |
| 3 | Netflix | Worst Roommate Ever | 5 | 43 | 1,032 | 24,000,000 |
| 4 | Netflix | Love Is Blind | 25 | 60 | 998 | 16,633,333 |
| 5 | Netflix | Pieces Of Her | 8 | 50 | 752 | 15,040,000 |
| 6 | Amazon | The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel | 32 | 60 | 682 | 11,366,667 |
| 7 | Netflix | Ozark | 37 | 60 | 510 | 8,500,000 |
| 8 | Amazon | Reacher | 8 | 60 | 372 | 6,200,000 |
| 9 | Netflix | Sweet Magnolias | 20 | 50 | 329 | 6,580,000 |
| 10 | Hulu | The Dropout (2022) | 3 | 50 | 255 | 5,100,000 |
Inventing Anna tops the list… just
Last week the gap between first and second was vast, this week the lead is relatively small (but enough to confuse our predictions). With over one billion minutes for the third week running, the show has now reached accumulated over 7.75 billion minutes viewed in the US alone. It did drop around 50% from last time.
Looking at the Netflix Top 10 site, scrolling to the bottom reveals the top 10 shows for audience in the first 28 days from release. At the moment this shows Inventing Anna at #4 with more than 500 billion hours watched worldwide — the Nielsens are minutes and US. Massive numbers.
What else happened?
We didn’t get the prediction as accurate as we’d have liked, but we’ll put that down to difference between how Netflix presents the data and Nielsen (there are various rules around watching at least two minutes for example). Space Force has already dropped out, but there’s a remarkable consistency towards the lower reaches of the table, with The Dropout a surprise at #10. New show Pieces of Her has a decent first week at #5.
The top 4 are each separated by 50-100 million minutes but look at our episodes column — in reality a lot more episodes of both Worst Roommate Ever and Vikings: Valhalla were watched.
What are we watching out for next time?
This will be March 7-13, and Upload season 2 appeared on Prime, so we expect that to arrive in the next few weeks Nielsen chart. Netflix should score well with Pieces of Her doing very well; Last Kingdom season 5 and season 1 both appearing in their own data, so a good race for #1. Inventing Anna should drop a few places, which is to be expected, and Reacher may also drop out.
Whatever happens, we’ll bring our usual take next time.