Netflix still leads but share of most-watched shows drops from 80% to 50%

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: Netflix accounted for more than 80 percent of the most-watched shows in streaming in 2021, but that figure has since fallen closer to 50 percent thanks to an influx of rival services all competing for the same customers.

According to Nielsen data recently shared by Bloomberg, Netflix was once one of three major streaming services available; now, they're among a field of seven or eight top-tier players capable of putting out AAA-quality original content.

Among the top 10 most popular streaming shows so far this year, Netflix accounted for four of them. Squid Game, The Night Agent, and Ginny & Georgia ranked first, third, and fourth, respectively. You garnered ninth place honors. Paramount Plus was the only other streaming service with more than one program in the top 10. 1923 ranked sixth and Landman came in 10th place.

The 10 most popular streaming shows (Nielsen)

Program	Platform	Millions of minutes
Squid Game	Netflix	15,074
Reacher	Prime Video	13,313
The Night Agent	Netflix	12,219
Ginny & Georgia	Netflix	10,201
Severance	Apple TV+	9,275
1923	Paramount+	8,536
The Pitt	Max	8,227
The Handmaid's Tale	Hulu	8,165
You	Netflix	8,097
Landman	Paramount+	7,826

Amazon, Apple, Max, and Hulu each had one entry in the top 10. Max probably should have had at least two other shows – The Last of Us and White Lotus – but Nielsen classified them as acquired content because they originally debuted on HBO's linear network – thus, not a streaming exclusive. Peacock and Disney Plus failed to get a title into the top 10, even with the latter's Andor doing very well.

Despite the growing competition, Netflix has been able to maintain its position as top dog thanks in part to a large user base and the firm's willingness to spend big on new content. But it's not just paid competitors that Netflix and others have to worry about these days.

The amount of time people spend watching free streaming services like YouTube and Roku is catching up to paid watching, and the gap is closing quick. Another closely-watched category – acquired content, or reruns – is dominated by Hulu. Among the top 10 most streamed reruns, six can be found on Hulu.

Image credit: Matoo Studio

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Netflix still leads but share of most-watched shows drops from 80% to 50%

 

[yRaz]

Why use millions of minutes as a unit of measure when hours, days and years exist?

 

[Kirby1]

I don't really like Netflix much these days. Too much of their content feels like filler and just number padding, and the shows that are good are so few and far between.

 

[mcnabney]

Why use millions of minutes as a unit of measure when hours, days and years exist?

Yeah, minutes doesn't translate super-well. I wouldn't convert to days or years either. Hours are something that viewers can understand. A typical movie is about 2 hours and series are about 1 hour per episode.
So if they wrote Squid Game's 15 million minutes as 250k hours it wouldn't be too hard to deduct that the new season has had 250k-ish episodes watched for that time period.

 

[rmcrys]

Why use millions of minutes as a unit of measure when hours, days and years exist?

Because using minutes is much more precise.

Either way this is not worldwide and American "taste" is very different from let's say European.

 

[yRaz]

Because using minutes is much more precise.

Either way this is not worldwide and American "taste" is very different from let's say European.

you only need precision relative to the margin of error. We're talking about people watching TV, the margin of error isn't that important. Decimals also exist so you can keep the same level of precision if that's so important

 

[axiomatic13]

I've given up on Netflix because they keep cancelling shows I was invested in. Amazon killing The Wheel of Time while keeping the far inferior The Rings of Power is another annoyance. I would like to applaud Apple TV for not doing this as much as others.

 

[RudyBob]

I'm watching a Netflix show now. "The Last Kingdom". The first three seasons were quite good. The fourth season is to much man hugging for me. I don't prescribe to Netflix

 

[acrossthestars]

Yeah, minutes doesn't translate super-well. I wouldn't convert to days or years either. Hours are something that viewers can understand. A typical movie is about 2 hours and series are about 1 hour per episode.
So if they wrote Squid Game's 15 million minutes as 250k hours it wouldn't be too hard to deduct that the new season has had 250k-ish episodes watched for that time period.

If "time is money" and minutes are analogous to dollars, like they are on creator content sites like TikTok and YouTube, then "millions of minutes" sounds like "millions of dollars".

Also, we're not the target audience. This chart is for shareholders. We're blessed to behold it. The only reason Nielson has access to this data, is because all of these corporations are publicly-traded. Private labels are not obligated to disclose their financials, nor would they.