Interesting reading in the latest Nielsens as The Crown knocks WandaVision back into third place
Last week we tipped The Crown to do well in the current set of Nielsens (for the week 8-14 March 2021) as a consequence of that interview on Oprah. We didn’t predict Ginny & Georgia holding onto the top spot, proving you can only go so far with predictions. This week we’ve dusted off our original Cultbox abacus and crunched the numbers again, adding our own unique insight.
The Nielsen data (8-14 March 2021)
As ever, this is taken from the published information and we’ve added columns marked with ‘*’.
| Rank | Streamer | Series | # Episodes | Ep length (mins)* | Total Minutes (Millions) | Series Watches* | Episode Watches** |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netflix | Ginny & Georgia | 10 | 60 | 722 | 1,203,333 | 12,033,333 |
| 2 | Netflix | The Crown | 40 | 60 | 449 | 187,083 | 7,483,333 |
| 3 | Disney+ | Wandavision | 9 | 40 | 388 | 1,077,778 | 9,700,000 |
| 4 | Netflix | Murder Among The Mormons | 3 | 50 | 264 | 1,760,000 | 5,280,000 |
| 5 | Netflix | Behind Her Eyes | 6 | 60 | 261 | 725,000 | 4,350,000 |
| 6 | Netflix | Last Chance U: Basketball | 8 | 55 | 234 | 531,818 | 4,254,545 |
| 7 | Netflix | Longmire | 63 | 60 | 202 | 53,439 | 3,366,667 |
| 8 | Netflix | Bridgerton | 8 | 60 | 198 | 412,500 | 3,300,000 |
| 9 | Netflix | The One | 8 | 42 | 186 | 553,571 | 4,428,571 |
| 10 | Netflix | The Great British Baking Show | 65 | 65 | 184 | 43,550 | 2,830,769 |
The headlines are clear: a consistently strong performance from Ginny & Georgia, and The Crown has charged up to second spot. Even ignoring that, it seems WandaVision has peaked and may drift further. The rest of the list consists of regulars and one new entry (Last Chance U: Basketball) we suspect is more relevant to US viewers (who are the ones the Nielsens measure).
The story behind the story
Although we headlined with The Crown Knocks WandaVision into third place, on episode watches it remains in second, though Murder Among The Mormons has a better series count (shorter seasons). The series watch for The Crown is not likely to be relevant, as we imagine more than 80% of viewers just watched the recent season again (ten episodes), but even so more episodes of WandaVision were watched than The Crown.
Next week we expect The Crown to fall back, and we get the first episode of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, so we might see two Disney+ titles in the list for the first time in a few weeks. We’ll be back next week!