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‘Cobra Kai’ tops streaming ratings
The Industry Oct 06, 2022
| Photo courtesy of Glenn Carstens-Peters/Unsplash
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By STEVEN HERBERT
“Cobra Kai” was the most-watched streamed program in the weekly streaming ratings figures released by Nielsen Thursday, coinciding with the first three days its 10-episode fifth season was available on Netflix.
Viewers spent 1.737 billion minutes watching the 50 episodes of the sequel to the 1984 film “The Karate Kid” between Sept. 5-11. The audience consisted 20% of viewers ages 18-34 and 35% 35-49 year-olds.
“Cobra Kai” was among three streamed programs in the latest top 10 not in the previous week’s. The Marvel Cinematic Universe film “Thor: Love and Thunder” was second with 1.5 billion minutes watched in the first four days it was available on Disney+.
The Tom Hanks-starring film “Pinocchio” was sixth with 930 million minutes watched in its first four days it was available on Disney+.
Dropping out of the top 10 were the Kevin Hart-Mark Wahlberg film comedy “Me Time,” the science fiction horror series “Stranger Things” and the mystery thriller “Echoes.” All three stream on Netflix.
The previous week’s leader, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” dropped to fourth with 1.203 billion minutes watched of its three episodes, 4% less than the 1.253 billion minutes watched the previous week when two episodes were available of the Prime Video series set thousands of years before the events of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
“House of the Dragon” was fifth for the second consecutive week with viewers watching the four episodes of the HBO/HBO Max “Game of Thrones” prequel for 1.016 billion minutes, 30.1% more than the 781 million minutes watched the previous week when three episodes were available.
Weekly episodes of “House of the Dragon” also air on HBO but that viewership is not included in the streaming figure. If it did, it would increase the total by approximately 30%, according to Nielsen.
This was the first week four platforms had at least one program that exceeded the 1 billion minutes watched threshold — Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and HBO Max.
“Devil in Ohio” was the other Netflix program that exceeded the 1 billion minutes watched threshold, finishing third with 1.377 billion minutes watched of its eight episodes the first full they were available. Viewership was up 92.3% from the 716 million the previous week when the suspense thriller limited series was available for three days and finished sixth.
The top 10 consisted of five programs that stream on Netflix, two each on Disney+ and HBO Max and one on Prime Video.
Nielsen also announces streaming viewership of Apple TV+ and Hulu programming.
The top 10 consisted of three original streaming series, two programs that originally aired on HBO, including “House of the Dragon,” and one each on ABC and CBS, two movies, and “CoComelon,” the 18-episode 3D animated series of videos of traditional nursery rhymes and original children’s songs that originated on YouTube.
The top 10 programs were “Cobra Kai”; “Thor: Love and Thunder”; “Devil in Ohio”; “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”; “House of the Dragon”; “Pinocchio”; “Game of Thrones”; “NCIS”; “CoComelon”; and “Grey’s Anatomy.”
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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