The Netflix romantic drama “Virgin River” ended a four-week streak for “Manifest” atop Nielsen’s list of the most-watched streamed programs, according to figures released Thursday.
Viewers watched 2.109 billion minutes of “Virgin River” from July 12- 18, the first full week its 10-episode third season was available. Viewership was up 45.5% from the 1.449 billion minutes watched the previous week, when the third season was available for three days.
“Manifest” was second with 1.294 billion minutes watched of its 29 episodes, 28.5% less than the 1.811 billion minutes watched the previous week. It is the first program to be watched for more than 1 billion minutes for six consecutive weeks. Nielsen began publicly disclosing streaming viewership figures on Sept. 3, 2020, with the first report covering the week of Aug. 3-9 of that year.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe series “Loki” was the week’s other program to be streamed for more than 1 billion minutes, finishing third with 1.011 billion minutes watched of its six episodes. Viewership dropped 6.4% from the previous week when it was fourth with 1.08 billion minutes watched of five episodes.
There were three programs in the latest top 10 that were not in the previous week’s, topped by the Netflix comedy “Atypical,” sixth for the week with 603 million minutes watched of its 38 episodes, including its 10-episode fourth season which was released July 9.
The Netflix action film “Gunpowder Milkshake” was eighth with 543 million minutes watched in its first five days of release.
The long-running CBS drama “NCIS,” which streams on Netflix, returned to the top 10 after a four-week absence, finishing 10th for the week with 481 million minutes watched of 353 episodes.
Dropping out of the top 10 were the Amazon Prime Video military science fiction film, “The Tomorrow War,” the Marvel superhero film “Black Widow” and the 2010-15 Public Broadcasting Service British historical drama “Downton Abbey.”
There were eight Netflix programs in the top 10 and two from Disney+. Nielsen also announces streaming viewership of Amazon Prime Video and Hulu programming.
The top 10 consisted of four programs that originally aired on U.S. broadcast networks, three original streaming series, two movies and “CoComelon,” which originated on YouTube.
The top 10 programs were “Virgin River”; “Manifest”; “Loki”; “Grey’s Anatomy”; “CoComelon”; “Atypical”; “Criminal Minds”; “Gunpowder Milkshake”; “Luca”; and “NCIS.”
The figures only reflect television set-related viewing, including such television-connected devices as Roku and Apple TV. Mobile-only viewing is not included in Nielsen’s streaming measurement systems.
