Citadel’s Nielsen ratings really don’t match its budget
The freshman Prime Video spy series from the Russo Brothers, which cost over $200 million to make, has yet to crack the Nielson Top 10
Aux News Nielsen ratings
For the third week in a row, Prime Video’s big-budget spy drama Citadel has failed to crack Nielsen’s weekly streaming rankings, a relatively dismal performance given the series’ record-breaking budget. Although Amazon poured significant resources and publicity into the series, its shutout from the rankings indicates that audiences haven’t warmed to the new show from the Russo Brothers in at all the way the streamer thought they would.
Nielsen’s May 8-14 viewing window marked the series’ third shot at making the rankings after it premiered on April 28. Starring Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas as two secret agents with memory loss, Citadel leaned into a well-trod action storyline almost as hard as it did international marketing (the series is already slated to run spinoffs in spinoffs in India and Italy).
However, despite the global push and massive budget, Citadel hasn’t exactly made good on its production level as far as ratings are concerned. For the past two weeks, the No. 1 spot on the Nielsen charts has belonged to Netflix’s Bridgerton spinoff Queen Charlotte, per Variety, another swing and a hit from veteran creator Shonda Rhimes. This week, Netflix occupied all three of the top spots on the Nielsen ranking, with Jennifer Lopez’s action film The Mother and Tom Hanks’ A Man Called Otto taking No. 2 and No. 3, respectively. Could it be that Prime Video actually just wasted a whole lot of money on this series with little to show for it? Well, yeah; we could’ve told you that.
See the full Nielsen charts from the May 8-14 window below:
Top 10 Streaming Programs
1. Netflix, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, 1.8 billion minutes viewed
2. Netflix, The Mother, 1.4 billion minutes viewed
3. Netflix, A Man Called Otto, 1.2 billion minutes viewed,
4. Netflix/Paramount+, NCIS, 875 million minutes viewed,
5. Disney+, Bluey, 706 million minutes viewed
6. Netflix, Firefly Lane, 697 million minutes viewed
7. Apple TV+, Ted Lasso, 670 million minutes viewed
8. Netflix, Cocomelon, 648 million minutes viewed
9. Netflix, Missing: Dead Or Alive?, 634 million minutes viewed
10. Netflix, Sweet Tooth, 575 million minutes viewed
52 Comments
I haven’t watched it, but a friend did, and she said it’s exactly as dumb as the reviews made it sound. James Bond for Dummies, to put it succinctly.
I imagine most people gave up in episode 2, when it stopped being a fun action comedy (sort of), and started taking itself way too seriously.
So, what would have really happened if I’d gotten my dream of a crossover between CASTLE and MARVEL AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D., Jubal Harshaw…?
Haven’t watched it, but you’d think for that much money they could afford a less generic premise.
But—it had Stanley Tucci! That had to make it great….And I’m pretty sure that, if the whole show had just been Tucci sending Priyanka Chopra out on missions and always ending up joining her in time for the climax, it would have been a lot more enjoyable:::building blows up behind Chopra as Tucci slides down behind a car next to her::PRIYANKA: Why are you here THIS time?STAN: There’s a place, not even a mile from here, that Fodor’s says makes the best Osso Bucco….Fridge Largemeat can just star in MAGIC MIKE: THE SERIES.
This is what’s so weird about the streaming services at the moment. With a $200M budget, they could have put 0.5% of that towards purchasing the rights to any of about a thousand decent-to-great spy thriller novels from the last century. And yet they’ve gone with an original premise…that isn’t even original! ‘Amnesiac spies are overdone, but what if *both* the leads have amnesia! Genius!’
Techbro nerds + metrics + algorithms designed to maximise viewership = the most generic, safe, familiar and flat-out uncreative shit ever.They’re gas-station DVD-bin films, except those films didn’t cost $200 million.There’s a great article here by the Beeb about this stream-fodder, and that’s it’s basically…idle cinematic snackfood:https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230504-ghosted-the-films-too-bad-for-the-cinemaFletcher mentioned his plans for an opening sequence in which De Armas would drive through the mountains for three minutes. Executives at Apple Studios vetoed the sequence because, they said, if “something doesn’t happen in the first 30 seconds, the data shows that people will turn off”.None of these vapid, sub-Bond romps would have had audiences flocking to the cinema, but as Fletcher suggests, viewers have different requirements when they’re clicking away at home on a Tuesday night. Ghosted and its fellow direct-to-streaming movies provide blandly undemanding escapism that the whole family can agree to sit through. However terribly reviewed they are, they have enough allure to get us asking, “How bad can it be?”Two hours later, we might well answer that question with the words: “Very bad indeed.” But that doesn’t matter. By then we will have reached “completion”, and in the world of streaming, that’s all the data that counts.Long story short, we really don’t tax these corporations enough.
I really, really don’t get the streamers’ logic. If the idea is to preferentially make movies/TV shows with great hooks to get the streaming audience engaged, which seems like a good idea to me, then why are so many of their shows so bland right from the opening scenes?
Slaves to the metrics. It’s oh-so-easy, and oh-so-tempting, to fallback on a reference when it comes to business (and an established system when it comes to technology). That’s the gale force wind the creatives are pissing into: “No, we have data showing X works. What proof do you have that Y works? We’re not spending money on some novelty bullshit.”Even though half the point of art is, y’know, novelty (or newness, to use a word without the baggage) – you know, creativity – it’s always much safer to go with what’s been done before. That creativity is what drives a lot of the hooks – stuff we’ve not seen before. Metrics only ever show what’s been done before. And the more data you have, the more average it’ll be. By its very nature you’ll only get shit you’ve seen before. The metrics wonks have the stronger argument…mostly because they also hold the purse strings – hell, that’s all they hold. And so when all you have is a hammer…well, all you can do to put you own stamp on a project as a suit at a production company is put more money into it, so hence the quarter-billion dollar budgets.I think for these people, and the audience they target (whether they do so deliberately or not is irrelevant), the familiarity is the point. They want shit they’ve seen before – nerd culture is built entirely around this, especially, and they’re a big voice on the internet. If you want to see the “creative” future we’re heading towards with movies, look at video games. There’s an art/media form that was born in the age of Reagan, of modern capitalism, and driven by the sorts of nerds who only like things they’ve seen before, and have been doing the metrics thing for longer than anybody. It’s an industry that not only openly copies, but does so gleefully, and it’s seen as a good thing by both the producers and consumers – anyone who demands something new is often derided. And it’s now the biggest damn entertainment juggernaut in history.
There’s already a term for this: the McNamara Fallacy, named after the Secretary of Defence during the Vietnam War who refused to listen to any feedback that wasn’t quantitative.
Thanks – I’m not American, but I’ve know of McNamara, of course (because who could forget the guy who sent Forrest Gump to ‘Nam?) but never heard of his fallacy – and it was, of course, a completely unquantifiable thing that sunk the US in Vietnam: public sentiment. It’s a great fallacy, and now I have a term for it. These people hate art being unpredictable, emotional, illogical and – the biggest damnation of all coming from these people – subjective, and well, honey, that’s what makes art…art. Anything less, and it’s merely a product. This fetish of breaking everything down to numbers will be the death of us.
Yep. Going just by metrics, the Tet Offensive was a Vietnamese failure and a resounding win for American forces. But the problem was that American leaders had been telling the public for months that the Vietnamese were exhausted and could hold on grimly but could no longer mount any counterpunch, which of course meant the war was progressing towards inevitable American victory. The Tet Offensive made it clear to the American population that their leaders were either lying to them or completely incompetent (or, as it turns out, both!), which is why most historians consider this the turning point of the war.Just to get nerdy for a moment, the McNamara Fallacy was first described in reference to McNamara’s tenure at Ford. And the author of that piece was at pains to say it was not a criticism of McNamara’s work in the public service…which is ironic given that the fallacy was even more descriptive of his Vietnam involvement than his Ford management!
The Tet Offensive made it clear to the American population that their leaders were either lying to them or completely incompetent (or, as it turns out, both!), which is why most historians consider this the turning point of the war.I believe the North Vietnamese also had a reasonably active anti-war program going in the States, too: sentiment, not numbers!I know he was a big fan of the Body Count Doctrine. You’ve also got his scheme of his tragic Morons, like Forrest, in his cruel Project 100,000 debacle: more bodies will win the war, doesn’t matter who the bodies are, don’t worry – they can use technology to compensate. There was the belief that the use of things like copious training films could both a) compress infantry training, and b) get training through to those with mental disabilities.Whole thing led to a lot of sticking points with the Aussies, since we…didn’t have the money to do all that, plus there was the whole Malaya thing where we succeeded in defeating a communist insurgency by…not doing what the Americans did. (Anti-guerrilla warfare is like 90% good policing and social programs.) We did keep Vung Tau pretty quiet. (Meanwhile, the Strategic Hamlet Program was a disaster.)
Just to get nerdy for a moment, the McNamara Fallacy was first described in reference to McNamara’s tenure at Ford.It’s funny: Henry Ford famously said “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would’ve said ‘faster horses’” – meaning that, yeah, he had to do something completely off-script, left-field, and unproven at the time…like create an affordable motor car for everyone. McNamara would’ve advised him to buy a horse stud.
BTW, I’m not American either. I’d even guess we come from the same country as nobody else is going to get your username!
Ah. Easy assumption to make around here, sorry. And the Sensitive Surfer Dude With Acoustic Guitar craze of the early 00s was brief, but still far too long. The other half is still with us, but likely not for long.
I wonder if they wanted to be in the Russo business so badly that they told the brothers, “We will give you literally hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on any idea you guys have.”And now they’re stuck with Citadel.
For one of those $200M projects, this has got to be the first thing I’d read as online chatter about this show. Otherwise it’s just my dad, who emailed me unprompted to tell me it sucks.
Imagine if they put more money into, you know, actually paying writers to write something amazing, instead of hoping that overblown SFX budget will cover for sub-par and hastily-written scripts.
I would have preferred they stretched it to a full 8 episodes at least. But we enjoyed it.
Right? I mean 6 episodes is a bit on the short side.
I feel like you would need much bigger names than Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas to make that price tag work. They’re not responsible for the low quality of the series (as far as I’ve heard) but getting a return on huge investments is what movie stars are for.
I actually think that Richard Madden is about as close as you can get to a movie star for his generation, which just shows you how much covid, social media, and streaming have disrupted the hollywood status quo.
I think you would have a real tough time getting one random person to admit they know who Richard Madden is before you could get five to say they know who John Mulaney is. He might look like a Cary Grant, but he’s more of a Cary Elwes in practice.Modern stardom is tricky, as you say, but if we’re looking at Millennial actors then I think Robert Pattinson and Anya Taylor-Joy are much better qualified.
Hell, I think you show people a photo of Richard Madden, they’d think he was Bucky from the Cap movies.
I thought Madden was great in *Bodyguard* (despite the last episode of ruining itself — not Madden’s fault), but in no way is he a star in the sense that a lot of people will watch a show *because* he is in it.The younger (<40) actors I think can be put in the star category today are Anya-Joy Taylor, Jennifer Lawrence (hard to believe she’s only 32!), Robert Pattinson, Jonah Hill, and Michael B. Jordan. There are plenty of great actors out there, but they don’t automatically draw an audience.
Yeah, I think Madden is an actor who people would be likely to *recognize* but he’s not a name. If you said his name to most people, with no mention of any role he’s played or a photo, most people would draw a blank.
How young/old do you think Richard Madden is? Because he’s 36 and there are plenty of move stars in their 30s.
You think the guy who’s biggest claim to fame is dying in the third season of an eight-season TV show is the closest thing we have to a movie star?
Above guys like Timothy Chalomee, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Aaron Taylor Johnson? Or hell, take your pick from any one of the Chrises (Evans, Pine, Hemsworth, Pratt).
Really? I never heard of Richard Madden before this show, and I get confused whenever they only reference him by his last name.Priyanka Chopra is unquestionably a huge Bollywood star though.
I only know him from Eternals where he…well he was on the screen for a lot of time, that’s for sure.
How narrowly are you defining generation? Jennifer Lawrence, Taron Egerton, Scarlett Johansson, Zac Effron, Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and an assortment of Hemsworths are all in their thirties.
On that top ten streaming list, probably only three are there because the audience was drawn to the stars (specifically Tom Hanks, Jennifer Lopez, and Katherine Heigel). Star power still has traction, but it’s not what it used to be.
Oh, I don’t think stars are necessary for every show (there were no big star in Succession, for example), but when your show is a $200 million new IP, you need every bit of help you can get.
Oh, I definitely agree that if they’re launching a very expensive new show without an existing IP fanbase to parasitise, it makes sense to cast one or two stars, even if only for secondary characters. Each one would cost a minor fortune…but still only a small fraction of the budget.
Priyanka is massively famous outside of the US.
Honestly, I haven’t seen any advertisements at all. Its like Prime was ashamed of it.
I saw a lot of (very generic) ads, myself. But I’ve yet to hear of anyone admitting to watching it.
What’s Nielson got to do with streaming ratings?Do they just compile a list from data the streamers send them, cause it’s not like Amazon needs Nielson to send out a survey to find out who’s streaming what and when. They’ve already got minute by minute streaming data, along with gigs of data on the people streaming.I assumed Nielson would be pretty much out of business by now.
You need third-party verified numbers or else everyone would tell the advertisers “This show gets eleventy gajillion viewers who each spend a million dollars per day on your product category”.
Just wanna point out, Prime’s fantastic show A League of Their Own cost a fraction of what Citadel did, got higher ratings, and Amazon cancelled it anyway because their dudebro execs didn’t like how many gay characters it had. Fuck Amazon.
Amazon showed me an ad for Citadel while I was binging the last season of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and I actually confused it with the ad I had seen the previous day for their show Jack Ryan. I thought they were the same show, as they’re both generic spy shows starring generic handsome white guys who spout generic banter while things randomly blow up, and Prime spent hundreds of millions to make both of them. And I instantly forgot they existed the moment the ads were over. Just seems like Amazon is determined to empty dump trucks full of money on the most garden variety content imaginable. Welp, my membership ends in a week, and I’m not gonna miss it.
I know I’m in a minority here, as I disliked *A League of Their Own*. But if that was the reason Amazon shelved it then that’s appalling. It’s one of the reasons I dislike the streaming services’ secrecy about their numbers and how they collect them and interpret them. They know right down to the frame when a viewer stops watching a show. They know if that viewer comes back to it later. They know what time the show was viewed. They know every other show that viewer watched on their service. Their databank is huge and detailed, and yet all they release are simplistic, lumpy data. The real reason I suspect is it allows the suits to be completely capricious while leaving no evidence to contradict them.
Amazon auditor need to look at those budget since the CGI is abysmal, and you can tell that they didn’t shoot it outside England, well probably some part in Canada.
As far as television shows go, Citadel is fine. Not the greatest spy show you’ve ever seen, but also not the worst. But really, that’s the problem. You don’t make a show on a massive budget for it to only be “fine”.
maybe autistic tech morons shouldn’t produce culture?
Joe, Anthony, I love you, but have you considered going back to comedy? Have they decided who’s going to direct that Community movie yet?
The Russos would be a good, safe choice for that, of course, but I’m holding out hope they can get Oscar Winner Jim Rash to direct
It’s a show that I enjoyed watching and it was very bingeable in the sense that I go through it in two nights but it also didn’t feel like it had much to recommend for it.Comparatively, The Diplomat was hugely bingeable and something that I’ve had plenty of conversations over in recent weeks.
I fucking love The Diplomat, and it’s the exact sort of show Katie Rife should be covering here, if she were still around and this site still did such a thing.Fantastically-written, gripping, with some absolutely gorgeous scenes and setpieces, and timely. I love the gender-role reversal of the leads. And Keri Russell has the best “What the FUCK?” face ever, and gets to make it at least once every five minutes.
That Top 10 isn’t exactly inspiring, anyway.
I miss The Tick.
Yeah how many more seasons of The Tick would $200 mil buy?
Almost enough for me!