The Irregulars tops the Nielsens in the chart for March 29 – April 4. As ever we dig deeper into the numbers…
A quick look at the latest Nielsens reveals two things (at least); a new #1 as The Irregulars tops the Nielsens, and there are three streamers apart from Netflix in the list, with Amazon at #10. We’ve co-opted the Cultbox GPU farm normally used to run CultCoin (TM) our own cryptocurrency and processed the data extensively. We’ve then ignored that to bring out usual mix of speculation and opinion. Let’s start with the data…
The Nielsen data analysed
First our usual notes: these are US streamed and audited only and we’ve extrapolated (interpolated?) columns marked with ‘*’ as we feel this gives extra insight. All source data is public domain.
| Rank | Streamer | Series | # Episodes | Ep length (mins)* | Total Minutes (Millions) | Series Watches* | Episode Watches* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netflix | The Irregulars | 8 | 45 | 643 | 1,786,111 | 14,288,889 |
| 2 | Disney+ | The Falcon And The Winter Soldier | 3 | 50 | 628 | 4,186,667 | 12,560,000 |
| 3 | Netflix | Who Killed Sara (English) | 10 | 45 | 553 | 1,228,889 | 12,288,889 |
| 4 | Netflix | Ginny & Georgia | 10 | 60 | 292 | 486,667 | 4,866,667 |
| 5 | Netflix | The Crown | 40 | 60 | 287 | 119,583 | 4,783,333 |
| 6 | Netflix | Nailed It | 33 | 35 | 250 | 216,450 | 7,142,857 |
| 7 | Hulu | Solar Opposites | 16 | 23 | 171 | 464,674 | 7,434,783 |
| 8 | Netflix | The Great British Baking Show | 65 | 65 | 170 | 40,237 | 2,615,385 |
| 9 | Netflix | The Serpent | 8 | 60 | 161 | 335,417 | 2,683,333 |
| 10 | Amazon | Invincible | 4 | 45 | 139 | 772,222 | 3,088,889 |
The big stories
It’s useful to have a quick peek at least week’s charts; The Falcon… is down but its episode watch (and raw millions of minutes) are identical. We assume a coincidence, but look at The Irregulars with a big leap in viewing in just one week. Some of this will be word of mouth, though we also suspect many viewers will be like us: we try a few episodes of several shows, then watch out the rest of some of the series a week or two later. Many of our predictions were wrong (The Crown has gone up), but we did get the further decline of Ginny & Georgia correct.
The other stories
Hulu has improved its placing with Solar Opposites and we see Nailed It come in the chart. Again we wonder if we should be tracking genre as shorter, comedy / lighter programmes seem to do well for a week or two. BBC’s The Serpent has had success, and if the US reflects the UK audience it may hang around.
What next?
We won’t be surprised to see Falcon retake the top spot as it has new content each week, whereas The Irregulars is done and dusted. Total top ten episode watches was nearly 72 million, a little down on last week’s 76 million. We’ll keep tracking that. We’d like to see the mix of streamers continue, and it seems Solar Opposites might be here for a few weeks more. The Crown keeps on pulling in the audience, so we imagine it will remain a while longer. As ever we’ll bring you our unique analysis next week.