‘House of the Dragon’ tops streaming rankings

“House of the Dragon”/Photo from HBO

HOLLYWOOD – “House of the Dragon” topped the latest weekly streaming rankings, while “Bluey” was the only other title to top the 1 billion minutes watched mark, according to figures released Thursday by Nielsen.

A week after finishing fourth, “House of the Dragon Season 2,” rose three spots to first, with 1.312 billion minutes watched of the 18 episodes of Max’s “Game of Thrones” prequel between July 29 and Aug. 4. Despite facing a full week of Olympics coverage it did not face the previous week, viewership was up 26.3% from the 1.039 billion minutes watched of 17 episodes the previous week.

A general view of atmosphere is seen at the premiere of “House of the Dragon” on Wednesday, July 27, 2022, at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

“Bluey,” which streams on Disney+, was second for the second consecutive week with 1.168 billion minutes watched of the Australian animated children’s series’ 154 episodes, a 9.8 percent increase over the 1.064 billion minutes watched the previous week.

“Bluey” has top the 1 billion minutes watched mark for 18 consecutive weeks.

The previous week’s leader, “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” dropped out of the top 10, with viewership of the supernatural comedy film falling 66.1% from 1.405 billion minutes in the first seven days it was available on Netflix to 476 million.

Two other titles dropped out of the top 10 — “Cobra Kai,” Netflix’s sequel to the 1984 film “The Karate Kid,” and the 2006-13 Showtime crime drama “Dexter,” which streams on Netflix and Paramount+.

Moving into the top 10 were the drama “Prison Break,” which ran on Fox from 2005-09 and returned for a nine-episode fifth season in 2019, and streams on Hulu and Netflix, the Fox animated comedy “Bob’s Burgers,” which streams on Hulu, and the 2016 action thriller film, “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” which streams on Netflix and Paramount+.

There were two titles in the top 10 that stream exclusively on Hulu, one each that stream exclusively on Disney+, Netflix and Max, two each that stream on Hulu and Netflix and Netflix and Paramount+ and one on Hulu and Paramount+.

Nielsen also announces streaming viewership of Apple TV+, Prime Video and Starz programming.
The top 10 consisted of nine acquired programs and one movie. This was the first time there were no original programs in the top 10, according to Nielsen. Nielsen has released weekly streaming figures since January 2020.

The top 10 programs were “House of the Dragon”; “Bluey”; “Grey’s Anatomy”; “Family Guy”; “Prison Break”; “Criminal Minds”; “Bob’s Burgers”; “All American”; “NCIS”; and “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.”

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. (CNS)