People preferred streaming old stuff over new in 2023
Smash success Suits and beloved standby Moana top streaming lists showing people favored old content in 2023
Aux News Entertainment, Culture
If ever there was a case to return to the 20-plus episode season, it’s that new Nielsen data shows users streamed several billion more minutes of old, long-running television shows than they did almost anything else. 2023 was a year of (slightly) fewer shows but still plenty of options, and the options people returned to are the tried-and-true classics, according to the year’s Nielsen streaming rankings (via The Hollywood Reporter). Out with the new, in with the old is as true for film as it is for television; the top-ranked entries in both categories have been out for years.
On the TV side, the number one acquired series on streaming is—surprise, surprise—Suits, the year’s incomprehensible breakout hit. The beloved USA legal drama, which wrapped up in 2019, broke all sorts of streaming records and topped the list with a whopping 57.7 billion minutes watched while streaming on both Netflix and Peacock. That’s even more minutes than The Office clocked in its final year on Netflix in 2020 (57.13 billion). And it’s way more than the top original series streamed this year, Ted Lasso. Ted’s 16.9 billion minutes viewed is impressive when you consider it has way fewer episodes and its platform, Apple TV+, has way fewer subscribers than its competitors (per THR). But there isn’t an original streaming show that can hold a candle to the power of the classic, lengthy broadcast show. The top 10 acquired series list also includes NCIS (39.4 billion minutes), Grey’s Anatomy (38.6 billion), The Big Bang Theory (27.8 billion), Gilmore Girls (25.2 billion), Friends (25 billion), Supernatural (22.8 billion), and more. Suits alone had several billion more minutes watched than the top three original shows (Ted Lasso, The Night Agent, and Ginny & Georgia) combined.
On the film side, the top films have also been out a while, too: Moana (11.8 billion) and Encanto (9.7 billion) take the top spots, followed by an original 2023 film, The Super Mario Bros. Movie (8.8 billion). But while Mario’s success at the box office translated to decent streaming numbers, it’s one of only two 2023 films that even managed to make the top 10 (the other being Pixar’s Elemental). The other entries (Minions: The Rise Of Gru, Frozen, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, etc.) have all been out for a year or more.
If there’s one thing this data indicates, it’s that people like to return to the familiar—and, conversely, that original streaming content doesn’t seem to have much rewatch value. It pays to invest in those basic, long-running shows, which is also indicated by the big studios licensing out their content to other streamers (in the case of Suits, Netflix, and Peacock, for example). Further, the entirety of Suits probably cost less than an entire episode of Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, but only one of those series is smashing streaming records more than a decade after it premiered. People want content they can spend time with and sink their teeth into, and the numbers prove that again and again. The question is, will the streaming services adjust to this reality?
17 Comments
“and, conversely, that original streaming content doesn’t seem to have much rewatch value.”
You think Ted Lasso had 16.9 billion people watching it for the first time? You don’t get viewership in the billions of minutes by NOT having people rewatch it.
Jesus, you’re fucking stupid.
I actually really really like Moana, its probably my favorite of the post Frozen Walt Disney Animated Studio films. I’m glad Au’lli Cravalo has been doing pretty good career wise since.
This seems like an argument in favor of getting rid of streaming-exclusive debuts and against spending hundreds – or even tens – of millions of dollars on original content. Streaming can be for watching old shit that has already made back its money. Continue exploring the FAST model and monetizing other distribution models.
I think it is mostly an argument that people like shows that don’t challenge them and are familiar. It’s the same reason that calamari is always the most popular appetizer in an Italian restaurant. It isn’t any better there than anywhere else and probably isn’t the best thing they make, but most people aren’t very adventurous.Except for reality TV which costs almost nothing, police procedurals probably have the best profit margin for networks and they can turn them out in their sleep.
Where would new shows come from then? There are so few scripted shows left on basic cable and the premium cable networks don’t product that much content. Broadcast networks have a lot reality television and procedurals which are better suited to 8 hour blocks on basic cable rather than streaming.
We may be rapidly approaching a future where shows debut on services like Pluto TV. Broadcast television still produces a lot of scripted content as well, and I don’t agree that procedurals wouldn’t do well on streaming. I mean, whatever Suits is, it’s clearly doing well.
I don’t think Pluto TV has any original shows yet, but FreeVee (Amazon’s FAST) and the Roku Channel do. Roku’s Weird Al movie won an Emmy and one of FreeVee shows, Jury Duty, was nominated for three Emmys. So your prediction isn’t too far off.
You could start watching television today and not run out before you die.
at the very least it shows they should be spending marketing budgets promoting the older material instead of solely the original new shit.must be why netflix is doing that ‘here’s some movies from 1974, coming up next: movies from 1984′ thing.
I’m curious if this kind of data could be manipulated. Could you automate a Netflix account to auto play a movie or series over and over again, then replicate that automation over multiple machines using the same or multiple passwords?
of course. there are spotify farms all over eastern europe so i don’t see why there wouldn’t be options for everything else.
If a person has a residual kind of contract based on hours streamed, I could see someone trying to game the system to get paid more.
so we’ve landed on ‘billions of minutes’ as the defining metric? fucking hell.
It’s over 500 million football games long!
People still want new and adventurous content. They still want movies (though they’re likely under threat given how little bang for the buck streamers get for films vs even short-run series). But there’s no question that people want series they can “live” in — longer-running story lines, hangout/bottle/goof off episodes, years’-long arcs, etc. These are the things that keep people subscribed — they don’t want to lose access to their comfort/wallpaper TV. The first streamers to make a genuine effort at turning these out will have an advantage. Because the dividends of older series are under threat. At some point the owners of these legacy shows will wonder if they couldn’t make more cash bringing the content home in a free or cheapo ad-supported tier.
NCIS & Grey’s Anatomy have also been on the air for about 1,000 years, so that also helps rack up the minutes viewed.
There was not a lot of new stuff to watch and a lot of it was only worthy of one watch. Is there a skew in the data like how many people watch something for the first time vs rewatch. I bet people had more watch hours of a show in syndication that watched the episodes first run.