“The Watcher” was the most-watched streamed program in the weekly figures released Thursday by Nielsen, with viewers spending 2.355 billion minutes watching the seven episodes of the first season of Ryan Murphy-produced mystery thriller in the first four days they were available.
“Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” dropped to third with 1.108 billion minutes watched of the 10-episode Netflix biographical crime drama between Oct. 10-16 following first-place finishes each of the first three weeks it was available.
“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” was second with 1.137 billion minutes watched of its eight episodes, including its first-season finale, which was released Oct. 14.
There were three programs in addition to “The Watcher” in the latest top 10 that were not in the previous week’s.
“The Blacklist” was fifth with 906 million minutes watched of its 196 episodes, including the 22-episode ninth season of the NBC crime thriller, which became available on Netflix Oct. 6.
“The Midnight Club” was sixth with 867 million minutes watched of the 10-epsiode horror mystery the first full week it was available on Netflix.
“Halloween Ends” was eight with 717 million minutes watched in the first three days the horror film was available on Peacock.
Dropping out of the top 10 were the fantasy comedy film “Hocus Pocus 2” which streams on Disney+; the action thriller film, “Last Seen Alive”; the 2000-07 WB/CW comedy-drama “Gilmore Girls”; and The CW crime drama “In the Dark,” which all stream on Netflix.
The top 10 consisted of seven programs that stream on Netflix and one each on HBO Max, Peacock and Prime Video.
Nielsen also announces streaming viewership of Apple TV+, Disney+ and Hulu programming.
The top 10 consisted of four original streaming series, three acquired programs — one each that originally aired on CBS, HBO and NBC — two movies; 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 “House of the Dragon” an acquired program because it also airs on HBO.
The top 10 programs were “The Watcher”; “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”; “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”; “House of the Dragon”; “The Blacklist”; “The Midnight Club”; “CoComelon”; “Halloween Ends”; Last Seen Alive; “Luckiest Girl Alive”; and “NCIS.”
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 its streaming programming in the coming months.
