After a September Surge, 'Ahsoka' Could Soon Be the #1 Most Watchworthy New Series (Streaming Wars September 2023)
Plus, Netflix loses ground despite the success of One Piece and Painkiller, while Peacock puts two shows on the leaderboards for the first time ever.
We suspected Disney+’s latest Star Wars show Ahsoka was just a late bloomer when it debuted at #27 on the Watchworthy leaderboards back in August. But when it bloomed, it bloomed fast: Ahsoka is #2 on the Top 20 most Watchworthy series in September, and thanks to an uncharacteristically weak performance from reigning champion The Last of Us, it could take the #1 spot very soon.
Although the Top 20 shows saw plenty of upheaval in August, the ranking of platforms stayed more or less the same, with the divide between Hulu and Amazon leaning back toward Hulu’s direction. Plus, premieres like Max’s Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake and Apple’s The Changeling showed promise, while some returning series, like Amazon’s The Wheel of Time, failed to make much of an impression.
THE LEADERBOARDS: TOP SHOWS
Photo: Disney+
Ahsoka wasn’t the only August premiere that found its audience last month. Peacock’s Twisted Metal jumped up nearly 20 spots, while Netflix’s Painkiller and Paramount+’s Special Ops: Lioness also gained enough momentum to join the Top 20. The latter series, another in a seemingly endless string of new entries from Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan, is especially promising: even before it had enough Engagement to crack the Top 20, it had a sentiment score of over 90% in August, a feat it accomplished again in September.
The shows with the highest sentiment score in September were Shrinking and Hijack, both at around 96% and both belonging to Apple TV+. But Netflix’s anticipated anime adaptation One Piece came close to these beloved shows with a sentiment score of 94%, making it the highest-rated debut of the month. Other shows crept onto the leaderboards despite having low sentiment scores — The Idol, for instance placed at #14 thanks to a healthy number of Watchlist adds, even though its sentiment score was a dismal 30%. News of the show’s cancellation, it seems, inspired a not-insignificant number of users to slate it for a hate watch.
But perhaps the biggest winner in September was Peacock, which put two shows in the Top 20 for the first time ever. The streamer probably would have liked The Continental to be one of those shows, but if both Twisted Metal and Based on a True Story were able to race up the rankings, there’s good reason for Peacock to be hopeful that its John Wick spinoff will do the same in October. The upward mobility of these relatively new shows signals that Peacock’s days of relying on single hits like Poker Face and The Resort to represent the streamer in the leaderboards could be over.
THE LEADERBOARDS: TOP PLATFORMS
Photo: Squid Game, Netflix
Peacock’s performance in the Top 20 was matched by its total share of Engagement, which increased by half a percentage point in September. Meanwhile, Amazon’s share dropped by a similar margin, as the streamer was stifled on the leaderboards and Engagement with The Summer I Turned Pretty took a sharp turn downward. That doesn’t bode well for Amazon’s quest to overtake Hulu, but there was some good news for the retail giant’s streaming arm in September: it climbed past Disney+ and took the top spot on The Streaming Channels Most Worth A Subscription (2K votes).
Netflix maintained its massive 11-point lead over Hulu in September, but its share of Engagement went down instead of up for the first time since February. That’s surprising when you consider that Netflix streams the three shows with the most Engagement last month: Squid Game, Stranger Things, and Breaking Bad. But the platform’s catalog also got the lowest sentiment of any streamer in September, which negatively impacted its Engagement totals.
NEW PREMIERES
Photo: Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake, Max
Besides One Piece, the only other premiere on the leaderboards in September was Adventure Time spinoff Fionna and Cake, giving Max a much-needed contender as Love and Death and Velma both dropped out of the Top 20. The show’s 94% sentiment score suggests it could be around for some time.
Outside the Top 20, The Changeling performed best, reaching #26 with a sentiment score of 89%. Meanwhile, The Continental debuted at #45 — not a particularly competitive spot, but a fine enough spot for a series that debuted on the 22nd. Having premiered close to the midway point of September, Hulu’s The Other Black Girl has less of an excuse for its start at #41, as does The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon for its debut at #38, but hey: it’s better to start out somewhere on the Top 50 than to miss it completely.
RETURNING SHOWS
Watchworthy data for September brings bad news for The Wheel of Time, which returned at the start of the month and ended up with less Engagement than the recently canceled Supernatural prequel The Winchesters. The results were better for The Morning Show, one of Apple’s longest-running titles, ranking #59 overall, though its sentiment score of 77% is fairly low for an Apple show. Finally, Only Murders in the Building gained momentum as the finale of its third season draws closer. Sentiment for the show jumped up four points from 84% to 88%, and it got enough Engagement to leap up more than 30 spots to become the #31 most Watchworthy show overall.
Our Methodology
In 30 seconds, our Watchworthy recommendation app learns your taste in TV and gives every show a “Worthy Score” specifically for you: the higher a given show’s Worthy Score, the more likely it is you will enjoy that show. Each month we track user engagement across thousands of series for every major streaming service. All of these signals are combined into a single metric called Watchworthy Engagement. This enables Ranker to determine which service’s content has the highest engagement — in other words, the streaming platforms who are winning the Streaming Wars.
The Top 20 shows measures which new series are garnering the most Engagement from our users month to month. The most Watchworthy platform measures Engagement across all TV shows, new and old, and aggregates them according to the platform they stream on.