Sam Worthington and Britt Lower in I Will Find You.
Photo by Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix
The weekly streaming charts today coincided with Netflix’s semiannual release of a bunch of internal viewing data. It’s also going to be the last time the company does it on an every-six-months cycle; in a quarterly earnings report, Netflix said it’s switching to an annual release starting early next year.
That’s a bummer for ratings nerds like me (and, presumably, some of you). Since it’s the biggest streamer in the U.S. and globally, Netflix can afford to be a little bit transparent with its viewing numbers in a way that smaller platforms might not want to be. If even it is scaling back reporting — on the heels of some recent reports about flat or falling engagement, which makes it feel a little bit petty — then any hope for more and better data from other streaming platforms is probably not going to be realized.
So before we get to the weekly Nielsen streaming charts for June 15-21, I’m going through Netflix’s list of more than 8,000 shows that streamed somewhere in the world from January to June and picking out some highlights:
At No. 1 in terms of views (calculated as total viewing hours divided by run time) is His & Hers, the Tessa Thompson-Jon Bernthal miniseries that racked up 104 million views. The rest of the top five are Bridgerton season 4 (100.2 million views), I Will Find You (63.9 million — in less than two weeks), Stranger Things’ final season (55.6 million) and Run Away (50.3 million). Both I Will Find You and Run Away are based on novels by Harlan Coben.
No. 100 is season 8 of Rick and Morty with 11.2 million views. Technically it’s tied for 99th with season 4 of Love on the Spectrum, but it’s listed in the 100th spot.
Dropping down to No. 500, we have a German series called Murder Mindfully (Achtsam Morden). It’s one of 17 shows that had 4.4 million views in the first half of the year.
At No. 1,000 is season 1 of The Sandman at 2.5 million views — one of 45 series with that total (Netflix rounds to the nearest 100,000 in all of these releases). We’re getting into “oh yeah, that show” territory now.
And finally, down at No. 2,345, is the last show with at least 1 million views: True: Wuzzle Wegg Day, a 23-minute special related to the kids’ show True and the Rainbow Kingdom. Everything after that — more than 70 percent of the shows listed — had under a million views.
I wrote a bit more about the data dump here and here for my day job at The Hollywood Reporter. Onto the weekly charts …
Overall top 10, June 15-21
Show/Movie | Streamer(s) | Minutes viewed in millions | Episode count |
I Will Find You* | Netflix | 1,844 | 8 |
Love Island USA | Peacock/Disney+/Paramount+ | 1,686 | 265 |
Maternal Instinct | Netflix | 987 | 1 |
Bluey | Disney+ | 927 | 154 |
The Big Bang Theory | HBO Max | 924 | 281 |
Sweet Magnolias | Netflix | 845 | 50 |
Grey's Anatomy | Hulu/Netflix | 721 | 467 |
Dutton Ranch | Paramount+ | 660 | 7 |
House of the Dragon** | HBO Max | 636 | 19 |
SpongeBob SquarePants | Paramount+ | 599 | 336 |
*As mentoned above, I Will Find You had a big start. Worldwide, it’s Netflix’s biggest series premiere of the year so far (as in, not a returning show). In these U.S. numbers, it had the biggest week for any Netflix show since Bridgerton in early March.
**Season 3 of HotD premiered the night of June 21, so most of its total for the week is for the first two seasons. Still, even with just a few hours of availability, the premiere had about 153 million minutes of viewing, 24 percent of the full number.