By STEVEN HERBERT
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – “Wednesday” drew the fourth-largest viewership in Nielsen’s brief history of releasing streaming viewership figures, one week after drawing the second-largest, according to figures released Tuesday.
Viewers spent 5.326 billion minutes between Nov. 28-Dec. 4 watching the eight episodes of Netflix’s supernatural mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ (Jenna Ortega) years at Nevermore Academy.
“Wednesday” was watched for 5.988 billion minutes the previous week when it was available for five days.
“Stranger Things” holds the record with 7.203 billion minutes watched of its 32 episodes May 30-June 5, including the first seven episodes of the fourth season of the Netflix science fiction horror series which were released May 27.
“Stranger Things” is also third on the list with 5.911 billion minutes between June 27-July 3, which included the first three days that the fourth season’s final two episodes were available.
Nielsen began releasing weekly streaming figures in January 2020.
“Firefly Lane” was among four programs in the latest top 10 not in the previous week’s, placing second with 967 million minutes watched of the Netflix drama’s 19 episodes, including the nine episodes of the first part of its second season, which were released Dec. 2.
The Norwegian action-adventure film “Troll” was fourth with 880 million minutes watched in the first four days it was available on Netflix.
The Netflix documentary series “Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields,” was seventh with 737 million minutes watched of its three episodes the first six days they were available.
The Brad Pitt-starring action comedy film “Bullet Train” was ninth with 701 million minutes watched in the two days it was available on Netflix.
Dropping out of the top 10 were the Netflix mystery-science fiction television series “1899”; the Netflix fantasy adventure film “Slumberland”; the Paramount Network neo-Western “Yellowstone,” which streams on Peacock; and the Netflix romantic drama film “The Noel Diary.”
All the programs in the top 10 stream on Netflix. Nielsen also announces streaming viewership of Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, “Peacock” and Prime Video programming.
The top 10 consisted of six original streaming series; two movies, one acquired series — the CBS action drama “NCIS” — and “CoComelon,” the 18-episode 3D animated series of videos of traditional nursery rhymes and original children’s songs that originated on YouTube.
Nielsen considers “Manifest” an original streaming series because 10 of its 52 episodes initially appeared on Netflix. The other 42 first aired on NBC.
The top 10 programs were “Wednesday”; “Firefly Lane”; “Dead to Me”; “Troll”; “CoComelon”; “The Crown”; “Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields”; “NCIS”; “Bullet Train” and “Manifest.”
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 the viewership figures from streaming programming in the coming months.
