Outer Banks holds the #1 in the Nielsens for the third week running, but we notice who isn’t there…
We tried to come up with a clever reference to the Sherlock Holmes Dog in the Night, and failed. Instead we’ve just stuck to looking at the Nielsen data for the week Aug 9-15. First, let’s revisit last week’s prediction:
We predict Outer Banks to stay number 1 with round 1,200 million minutes viewed, Virgin River to drop to around 450 million and a new entry near the top for What If…? We don’t know if this will be as popular as Loki was, so we’ll estimate 650 million, in other words our top 3 prediction is:
1 Outer Banks
2 What If…?
3 Virgin River…
Well, as Meatloaf once sang ‘Two Out of Three ain’t Bad’ and it takes us to the core of our observation (see later) what happened to ‘What If…?’
On a side note, we had to give the team Friday to watch the final season of Lucifer, and they’ve taken some time to recover (see our review when published). Between muttering about angels, ghosts and the argument of fate vs free will, we got them to look over the numbers. Let’s go!
The latest Nielsen data
As ever we’ve scraped the data for week 9-15 August and added columns marked with ‘*’. This is US data only, but does indicate something important about viewing figures. Here goes:
| Rank | Streamer | Series | # Episodes | Ep length (mins)* | Total Minutes (Millions) | Episode Watches* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NETFLIX | Outer Banks | 20 | 50 | 1,160 | 23,200,000 |
| 2 | NETFLIX | Hit & Run | 9 | 50 | 549 | 10,980,000 |
| 3 | NETFLIX | Grace And Frankie | 83 | 30 | 465 | 15,500,000 |
| 4 | NETFLIX | Virgin River | 30 | 45 | 419 | 9,311,111 |
| 5 | NETFLIX | Car Masters:Rust To Riches | 24 | 40 | 290 | 7,250,000 |
| 6 | NETFLIX | Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings Of Miami | 6 | 45 | 265 | 5,888,889 |
| 7 | NETFLIX | The Snitch Cartel: Origins | 60 | 47 | 243 | 5,170,213 |
| 8 | NETFLIX | Gabby’s Dollhouse | 18 | 24 | 238 | 9,916,667 |
| 9 | NETFLIX | Lucifer | 83 | 50 | 198 | 3,960,000 |
| 10 | NETFLIX | Glow Up | 24 | 45 | 197 | 4,377,778 |
Outer Banks holds onto number one
We’re pleased with our numbers on Outer Banks (actual 1.16 billion minutes vs predicted 1.2 billion) and Virgin River (419 vs 450 predicted). What wasn’t so great was the latest MCU instalment and there could be any number of reasons, and it’s not obvious what they are. Clearly animation scores less highly than live action, and the concept behind the series may not have been well marketed, or perhaps the audience hasn’t raced to grab it yet.
What else happened?
Yet again Netflix has the top 10, and yet again it’s pretty flat in the lower reaches. Hit & Run is proving more hit than run, and no Lucifer bounce in line with trailers and imminent (at the time the data was measured) arrival of season 6. Virgin River has actually done fairly well in terms of chart position, but we note Gabby’s Dollhouse has a below the mean minutes total but the fourth highest episode count. It’s a children’s programme if you don’t know, and it’s relatively rare, in the past few months at least, to see those in the chart.
What do we predict for next week?
If Outer Banks follows the curve, it looks like it will hit around 700 million minutes, making it ripe for #2 if something bigger appears. Virgin River we see dropping to around 330 so maybe #5 or #6. This all depends on what else comes in the top 3. We’d like to see What If…? appear (it was released on Wednesday 11) and might have built up a head of steam. Gabby’s Dollhouse may even make up a few places as well.
Whatever does happen, we’ll bring you our take on developments, as soon as the team stops rewatching Lucifer. Until next time.