Nielsen is on a bit of a shaky release schedule right now, with them releasing early June data earlier this week…and on Friday they’ve followed up with next week’s data. Anyway… Nelson has now added Acolyte Episode 3 (a flashback episode about the power of maaaaannyyyyyyyyyy) to their charts. We can finally compare The Acolyte’s full week on the Luminate Streaming chart to its full week on the Nielsen chart. How do the numbers compare? very funny! Click to see all the details!
Power…nothing…
Tracker ranked sixth on the original series streaming chart, with 370 million minutes watched, which is pretty bad.
Interestingly, this is actually the same number reported by Luminate. The first week’s data differs because the two companies use different time intervals, Friday to Thursday versus Monday to Sunday. But now that both Nielsen and Luminate have charts showing that The Acolyte had a full week to rack up watch minutes, we find that both Luminate and Nielsen agree. Luminate’s number is even higher, at 380.5 million minutes, compared to Nielsen’s reported 370 million minutes, but all in all, it’s completely consistent. It also spelled potential disaster for the show on the Nielsen rankings, as The Acolyte fell out of the top 10 on the Luminate rankings and saw viewing hours drop significantly as more episodes were released.
In comparison:
Ahsoka played 487 million minutes in Week 2. Even Andor has 485 million minutes. The third episode of “The Acolyte” is one of the longest episodes at 42 minutes, but it still only has 370 million minutes.
If everyone only watched episode 3, that means 8.81 million people watched it, and of course people also watched the previous episodes this week. However, the same metric for “Andor” gives us 10.32 million views, and before “Acolyte,” “Andor” was the least-watched show on Disney+. Of course, people also watched the Andor episodes prior to that week. But the fact that The Acolyte’s Week 2 numbers are already worse than Andor’s numbers says it all!
Still, I believe it’s much better to look at season averages, so total play time vs. total minutes watched!
The Acolyte (Nielsen): 865 million minutes, 119 minutes, average views 7.27 million
Ahsoka (Nielsen): 1.316 billion minutes, 132 minutes, average views 9.97 million
Andor (Nielsen): 1.109 billion minutes in total, 161 minutes in total, 6.89 million average views
Obi-Wan Kenobi (Nielsen): 1.984 billion minutes, 135 minutes, 14.7 million average views
The Books of Boba Fett (Nielsen): 952 million minutes, 89 minutes, average 10.7 million views
“The Mandalorian Season 3” (Nielsen): 1.712 billion minutes, 77 minutes, average views 22.23 million
On the Luminate chart, “The Acolyte” was the most watched in its second week, and over the next few weeks, the show saw just under 300 million minutes watched, all the way down to about 220 million minutes before dropping out of the rankings List.
Although Andor is off to a very slow start, with three lengthy episodes released simultaneously and a day late (The Following airs on Tuesday night, Andor is released on Wednesday!) The Following is already just ahead of Andor too much. If you directly compare the data from week two, Andor is already ahead of The Acolyte, which is embarrassing. The Acolytes’ season average will likely soon be below Andor’s average.
Only 75% of Ahsoka’s audience are Acolytes. Ahsoka’s ratings were “okay” at best, ranking second worst behind “Andor,” which preceded “Acolyte.” In fact, Andor’s ending will end up being better than Ahsoka’s.
Many people don’t even like this season as much as The Mandalorian Season 3, The audience for “The Acolyte” is less than a third of The Mandalorian’s audience, or 32.7%. This means that more than 2/3 of potential viewers of the Star Wars series on Disney+ have never seen “The Acolyte” and never bothered. A large number of fans said “no” from the beginning. This should give Lucasfilm food for thought.
Even more embarrassing: Bridgerton, a female-centric show, is actually watched by women for more than 9 times as many hours (!!!). 3.4 billion, compared with $370 million for The Acolyte. This is also consistent with Luminate. However, Nielsen does not have data for individual seasons, only overall data for the entire show.
It must be pointed out again: Lucasfilm spent $180 million on this before marketing. So it’s almost certainly over $200 million. It was a ratings failure. It’s pathetic to see it already falling behind Andor in its second week. If Luminate and Nielsen remain aligned, things will only go downhill.
There’s no way to sugarcoat this: The ratings for “Acolyte” were terrible, and they’re likely to get worse as Nelson adds more episodes. We can also say now that Luminate and Nielsen are very consistent in terms of numbers, which may be a bit surprising but speaks to the reliability of these third-party analysts. Even Nielsen and Luminate’s “Bridgerton” have similar numbers, with both ranking the show as the No. 1 original streaming series.
“House of the Dragon” premiered with 741 million minutes. That’s true even though it’s also on cable TV (so it’s on the acquired series chart). It’s crushing Star Wars. Both shows cost about the same. Merely an unfinished book series and a spin-off from last season’s controversial and hated streaming show could easily surpass what was once one of the most successful Hollywood series of all time. Let us understand this. It crushed the acolytes. How could it become like this? Of course, in terms of audiences, the two shows have a lot of overlap…it’s strange that “House of the Dragon” wasn’t “review bombed”…
Additionally, Disney only has four entries on the Nielsen rankings. Bluey, as usual, isn’t even their IP, Inside Out, Moana (as usual) and The Acolyte. Even Paramount+ has six entries. Disney+ falls further behind in streaming market share. Egger is happy about this. And the super-expensive The Acolyte makes things even worse. The upcoming series will be a disaster for Disney+, and Agatha After All will almost certainly fail. Skeleton crews may have at best a similar number of followers, if any. Why should people subscribe to Disney+ unless they want to watch old movies? Maybe “Inside Out 2” will give Disney+ a boost once it’s released. Star Wars and Marvel certainly are not. This is really sad. Star Wars should reign supreme. The Force Awakens is one of the most watched movies of all time. Now this.
Nielsen Streaming Chart
