Nielsen Revamps Streaming Top 10 Lists, Reporting Viewership Two Weeks Behind Instead of Four Weeks

The Nielsen Streaming Top 10 just got a major update. After years of reporting streaming viewership with a four-week delay, the audience measurement company has enhanced its analytics capabilities enough to cut that lag-time in half. From now on, Nielsen’s weekly streaming charts will rank titles from only two weeks prior.

“While Nielsen has made a number of material improvements to streaming measurement over the years that have broadened and deepened platform and program coverage, this may be the most significant enhancement to Streaming Content Ratings since its launch in 2017,” said Brian Fuhrer, senior vice president of product strategy and thought leadership, in a statement. “As the speed of change across the media landscape increases, providing our clients with more immediate, up-to-date audience data helps them keep pace with the consumer.”

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As such, the most recent Top 10 ranker covers the week of Aug. 31 to Sept. 6. “Reacher” on Amazon Prime Video was the most-watched title of the viewing window, hitting 1.2 billion minutes watched. Season 4 of the Alan Ritchson-led series ran from Aug. 12 to to Sept. 16, meaning that its first five episodes were available for the entirety of the viewing window, while Episode 6 was available for five days. Nielsen combines viewership of all seasons of a series into its tallies, meaning catch-up viewing of previous “Reacher” seasons also factor into the 1.2 billion-minute total.

“The Big Bang Theory” was the No. 2 title of the week, hitting 1.1 billion minutes streamed on HBO Max, while Netflix’s “Beauty in Black” was just 13 million minutes behind it in the first full week of availability of Season 3.

“Ted Lasso” took fourth place with 899 million minutes watched on Apple TV during the Aug. 31-Sept. 6 window, during which the fifth episode of Season 4 was released. At No. 5 was the Netflix film “The Whisper Man” with 863 million minutes watched in its first full week of availability.

Rounding out the bottom half of the chart were “Lioness” (805 million minutes watched on Paramount+), “Death of the Pastor’s Wife” (796 million minutes watched on Netflix), “Outer Banks” (762 million minutes), “Bluey” (760 million minutes) and “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” (727 million minutes).

See the full Nielsen Streaming Top 10 for Aug. 31-Sept. 6 below, beginning with the overall chart and followed by streaming originals, acquired titles and movies.