‘Echoes’ tops streaming ratings; ‘House of the Dragon’ breaks into top 10

By STEVEN HERBERT

“House of the Dragon” was the seventh most-watched streaming program in the first full week it was available, according to figures released by Nielsen Thursday.

Viewers spent 741 million minutes between Aug. 22-28 watching the two first two episodes of the HBO/HBO Max “Game of Thrones” prequel. The first episode premiered Aug. 21 and the second Aug. 28 on both HBO and HBO Max.

“Echoes” was the most-watched streamed program with viewers watching Netflix’s seven-episode mystery thriller for 1.123 billion minutes in the first full week it was available. Viewership was up 114% from the 524 million minutes watched the previous week when it was available for three days and was 14th for the week.

“Me Time” was second with 971 million minutes watched in the first three days the Kevin Hart-Mark Wahlberg film comedy streamed on Netflix. It was among six programs in the latest top 10 that were not in the previous week’s.

“House of the Dragon” was among three programs streaming on HBO Max that were not in the previous week’s top 10. “Game of Thrones” was third with 909 million minutes watched of its 73 episodes while the 2007-19 CBS comedy “The Big Bang Theory” was 10th with 606 million minutes watched of its 265 episodes.

The other program in the latest top 10 not in the previous week’s was “CoComelon.” The 18-episode 3D animated series of videos of traditional nursery rhymes and original children’s songs that streams on Netflix was eighth for the week with 677 million minutes watched, 12.5% more than the 602 million minutes watched when it finished 11th.

Three other Netflix programs were also in the top 10 — “Stranger Things,” fourth for the week with 890 million minutes watched of its 34 episodes; the long-running CBS action drama “NCIS,” fifth with 770 million minutes of its 354 episodes; and the 11-episode fantasy drama “The Sandman,” seventh with 681 million minutes watched.

There was one Disney+ program in the top 10, “Bluey,” ninth with 615 million minutes watched of the 112 episodes of the preschool animated series that originally aired on the Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s part-time channel ABC Kids.

Nielsen also announces streaming viewership of Amazon Prime, Apple TV+ and Hulu programming.

The previous week’s most-streamed program, the Netflix vampire action comedy “Day Shift,” dropped out of the top 10, with viewership falling 66.4% from 957 million minutes to 322 million. Its overall rank was not available.

Also dropping out of the top 10 were the coming-of-age comedy-drama “Never Have I Ever”; the fantasy horror drama “Locke & Key”; the long-running ABC medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy”; the seven-episode sports documentary series “Untold”; and the romantic drama “Virgin River,” all of which stream on Netflix.

The top 10 consisted of two programs that originally aired on HBO, including “House of the Dragon,” two that originally aired on CBS and one on ABC Kids; three original streaming series, one movie, and “CoComelon,” which originated on YouTube.

The top 10 programs were “Echoes”; “Me Time”; “Game of Thrones”; “Stranger Things”; “NCIS”; “House of the Dragon”; “The Sandman”; “CoComelon”; “Bluey”; and  “The Big Bang Theory.”

The figures reflect only television-set viewing, including such television-connected devices as Roku and Apple TV. Mobile-only viewing is not included in Nielsen’s streaming measurement systems.

While Nielsen releases weekly prime-time broadcast and cable ratings two days after the end of the week, except for holidays, viewership figures for streaming services are not released until 25 days after the end of the week because it takes more time to completely capture assets to report and aggregate streaming viewing, according to Nielsen

Nielsen has announced it plans to shorten the release window for its streaming programming in the coming months

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