The arrival of Netflix and its many competitors disrupted television in a big way. As services continue jostling for control of the airwaves, the gold-standard data gatherers at Nielsen have released a comprehensive list of the 100 most-streamed shows. By taking a look at what these shows are and where they came from, we can get some idea of where the movie/television industry is going in the future.
The Popularity of Streaming
Famous for capturing data using their ‘audimeters’, Nielsen was ahead of the game when they also started tracking internet usage in 1996. Then, in 2021, they started aggregating dedicated Streaming Platform Ratings, to see what’s popular in the thriving streaming service industry. Over the last decade and a half, on-demand streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have rocketed to mainstream viewing.
In general, streaming has been a winner for many industries. The same technology has enabled other similar businesses, like video-sharing and iGaming websites, to deliver live-streamed content. As the internet becomes the place for entertainment, users can beam the latest shows to their devices or play online roulette games from the comfort of their homes. While live streams are great for interactivity, on-demand streaming has found institutional backing from the TV industry due to its convenience factor. It enabled new and legacy programming companies to offer a catalogue of movies and TV shows without being restricted by a broadcast TV schedule.
Today, the industry, spearheaded by the likes of Netflix and Roku, is now split between a growing list of competitors. Many offer exclusive, home-brewed content that can’t be watched anywhere else, making competition fierce for IPs and audience engagement. Over the past three years, that competition saw several historic mergers take place between some of Hollywood’s biggest broadcasting companies, like the Warner Bros. Discovery merger. More recently, Paramount has been rumoured to be fielding merger offers from Warner Bros. Discovery, Apollo and now Skydance Media.
Nielsen Figures Between 2021 & 2024
Nielsen tracks a lot of data on a monthly, even weekly, basis. They provide a rigorous data centre that tracks the top ten trending TV in a given period, top broadcast TV and audience share between programming providers. Aggregators have taken 166 weekly rankings between the 1st of March 2021 and the 3rd of March 2024, to get a wider view of which shows are being watched on streaming.
By doing that, it becomes clear that reruns make up nine out of the top ten most-streamed shows. Children’s programming notwithstanding, crime and legal procedurals came out on top – ‘NCIS’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, ‘Criminal Minds’ and ‘Suits’. Many of these shows are broadcast TV holdovers that found immense popularity with general audiences and now are being re-watched and rediscovered by old and new fans alike. Their serialized nature also makes them easy to watch, as storylines are generally contained to the episode.
When expanding outward to look at the 100 most streamed shows, we see a different picture. First, 16 of those shows aren’t shows at all – they’re movies. In total, 53 of the top 100 are originally produced by streamers, so reruns are just overrepresented in the top ten. Unsurprisingly, most of the top original programmes are made by Netflix – shows like ‘The Crown’ and ‘You’.
That’s because Netflix is still the biggest and most profitable of the streaming industry. They’re only rivalled by YouTube in terms of watch time. While YouTube has experimented with dedicated programming, watching user-created videos on the site is much different from studio-produced entertainment from Netflix. As streaming becomes the main way of consuming media, however, we can expect those lines to blur in the future.
