Virgin River tops the Nielsens thanks to the release of season 3
The Nielsens for the week July 5-11 are out and there’s a new number 1. Last week we predicted some churn, drop-off for a couple of shows but did think Loki would keep top. We’ll get to the figures in a moment, but it’s safe to say we were caught out as Virgin River tops the chart.
We’ve conducted our usual analysis to dig deeper into the data, and this week we’re using our pioneering FITA(TM) approach to predicting the trends for next week (FITA stands for Finger In The Air). Let’s look at the data.
The Nielsen data for 5-11 July 2021
As usual we take the published data (and note it’s for America) and add columns marked with ‘*’.
| Rank | Streamer | Series | # Episodes | Ep length (mins)* | Total Minutes (Millions) | Episode Watches* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NETFLIX | Virgin River | 30 | 45 | 1,449 | 32,200,000 |
| 2 | DISNEY+ | Loki | 5 | 45 | 1,080 | 24,000,000 |
| 3 | NETFLIX | Sex/Life | 8 | 48 | 489 | 10,187,500 |
| 4 | NETFLIX | Atypical | 38 | 30 | 400 | 13,333,333 |
| 5 | AMAZON | Bosch | 64 | 43 | 355 | 8,255,814 |
| 6 | NETFLIX | Lucifer | 83 | 50 | 354 | 7,080,000 |
| 7 | NETFLIX | Too Hot To Handle | 19 | 45 | 306 | 6,800,000 |
| 8 | NETFLIX | The Boss Baby: Back In Business | 49 | 24 | 229 | 9,541,667 |
| 9 | NETFLIX | Workin’ Moms | 57 | 22 | 200 | 9,090,909 |
| 10 | HULU | The Handmaid’s Tale | 46 | 50 | 185 | 3,700,000 |
Virgin River tops the chart, and other obvious stories
It’s a big win for Virgin River, but note both it and Loki broke through the billion minute barrier. It’s a much-overdue new season drop for Virgin River, while Loki was revealing mysteries ahead of the final episode. Virgin River has already been renewed for season 4.
Bosch and Lucifer both fell back, and it’s not just because some surprises crept in above them. Last week was close at the top, and it only needed 10% growth for Sex/Life to take #3.
Look at the data though; two big shows both on episode count and total minutes; some clustering then Handmaid’s Tale hanging in with one of the lowest top ten numbers we can recall for a few weeks.
What else happened, aka where’s Sweet Tooth?
So, where is recently renewed Sweet Tooth? It launched well, but after only five weeks it’s out of sight. If we look across the weeks we see a similar pattern for Shadow and Bone as well as Firefly Lane, so we conclude Netflix like big numbers short term over more integrated market penetration.
A new season of ten episodes of coming-of-age drama Atypical also scored well, and we have it third in our episode watches calculation.
We do we predict for next week?
We suspect the same top three, perhaps top four barring any other launch we’ve overlooked. Bosch and Lucifer will drop-off further. Whatever does happen, we’ll bring you our unique interpretation.