Outer Banks is a clear winner in the latest Nielsens, pushing recent champions Virgin River back into second place
We have the Nielsen ratings for Jul 26 – Aug 1, and they have a few surprises. As a reminder, last week we predicted:
Surely Virgin River has another week at the top, based on what we’ve seen, though keeping abreast of all releases gets tricky. Loki looks like it’s up for another hefty drop, and we think four or five titles might drop out. Numbers are generally lower than they have been, so it would be easy for a couple of new names to grab spots high up the chart.
We see to have overlooked this weeks dramatic new entry, so have consigned our market research team to cleaning the Cultbox Manor cellar.
Our data scientists were unable to score any festival tickets for the Bank Holiday, and decided instead to process this week’s data with the aid of something they call sticking a pin in a list while blindfolded. Let’s see how they did…
The Nielsen data
We take the published data, and add columns marked ‘*’. Don’t forget these are US ratings only and are a few weeks behind.
| Rank | Streamer | Series | # Episodes | Ep length (mins)* | Total Minutes (Millions) | Episode Watches* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NETFLIX | Outer Banks | 20 | 50 | 1,423 | 28,460,000 |
| 2 | NETFLIX | Virgin River | 30 | 45 | 782 | 17,377,778 |
| 3 | NETFLIX | Never Have I Ever | 20 | 39 | 328 | 8,410,256 |
| 4 | NETFLIX | Love Is Blind | 14 | 55 | 300 | 5,454,545 |
| 5 | NETFLIX | Atypical | 38 | 30 | 291 | 9,700,000 |
| 6 | NETFLIX | The Movies That Made Us | 8 | 47 | 272 | 5,787,234 |
| 7 | NETFLIX | Lucifer | 83 | 50 | 202 | 4,040,000 |
| 8 | AMAZON | Bosch | 64 | 43 | 187 | 4,348,837 |
| 9 | DISNEY+ | Loki | 6 | 45 | 180 | 4,000,000 |
| 10 | NETFLIX | Orange Is The New Black | 91 | 60 | 164 | 2,733,333 |
Outer Banks is top
Outer Banks is #1 with over 1 billion streamed minutes (here’s our guide on understanding what that means) and look how Virgin River had dropped. Last week Virgin River had well over 1 billion minutes for the third week in a row, now way down (but still healthy). While we don’t suggest the audience for the two shows has an unusual overlap, it does seem as though Netflix released Outer Banks to plug a viewing gap. Probably coincidence, but…
What else happened?
While we overlooked the new #1, we were right on Loki having a hefty drop, numbers near the bottom are low and we did have some drop outs. We thought Lucifer might pick up more momentum ahead of September 10, and Atypical had a good episode count, but shorter episodes means fewer minutes. On this basis, Orange is the New Black is an anomalous entry, and given it finished two years ago, this is either random, or just a sign the numbers from here on down are small and therefore the exact order of shows can vary massively with small changes in the data.
What about next week?
Outer Banks looks good for the win, Virgin River should begin a downward drift, and we expect more churn, with Bosch in the firing line. General interest in the Loki story might keep it around a further week. We won’t see What If…? for another week, but we may well have missed another arrival on one of the streamers.
Whatever happens, let’s catch up again next week;-)