Raft of New Releases Shakes Up Leaderboards (Streaming Wars December 2023)
The rush of new blood benefitted Hulu and Disney+, while Peacock’s progress came to a sudden halt.
Five debuting shows, as well as five other shows that pushed their way into the Top 20 for the first time, made for an unpredictable December. Among the newcomers were two Hulu shows and a Disney+ original — these two platforms, in decline on the leaderboards for most of 2023, strengthened their positions considerably as the year came to a close.
Hulu and Disney’s gains were virtually everyone else’s loss. Netflix is still underperforming according to the high standards it’s set for itself, with six shows on the Top 20. Max, meanwhile, was held to just one: perennial hate-watch favorite The Idol. Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys spinoff Gen V stayed on top for a third consecutive month, but the next-closest Amazon series, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, was all the way down at #38. And Peacock’s share of Engagement, which had been rising quickly, fell back to earth with a drop of almost 2 percentage points.
THE LEADERBOARDS: TOP SHOWS
Photo: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Apple
Though the top spot is solidly in Gen V’s hands, the ranks directly underneath it are much less secure. Apple pulled off a surprising coup by putting both Lessons in Chemistry and Godzilla series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters ahead of November’s #2, Netflix horror show The Fall of the House of Usher. Monarch rose an incredible 45 spots over the last month to do this, signaling it could have a presence on the Top 20 for months to come.
Monarch and Lessons in Chemistry are just two examples of November premieres that strengthened their leaderboard positions in December. FX’s A Murder at the End of the World jumped nearly as many spots as Monarch did, while Blackberry, a serialized TV version of the movie with the same title released earlier this year, put points on the board for AMC. And Netflix’s reality reboot Squid Game: The Challenge successfully revived enthusiasm for the budding franchise — but really, the only surprising thing about that is that it didn’t rank a little higher.
As significant as the shows that pushed their way onto the leaderboards are those that were pushed out. Among them are The Walking Dead: Dead City, Disney+’s Ahsoka, and all three Peacock series that were on the Top 20 last month: Twisted Metal, Based on a True Story, and Mrs. Davis. There’s not much to glean from these departures, since they all premiered at least four months ago, except that it’s a tough break for Peacock. Hopefully some of them will return in the coming months, just as The Continental did in December when it suddenly launched itself onto the Top 20 for the first time since premiering in September.
THE LEADERBOARDS: TOP PLATFORMS
Photo: Percy Jackson & The Olympians, Disney+
Hulu added over a point to its share of overall Engagement in December, while Disney+ vaulted over Paramount+ to become the #6 streamer after nearly a year in the #7 slot. Other than that, the news came in varying shades of grim for streamers in December, with Peacock’s share of Engagement dropping from nearly 7% to around 5%. That put the Comcast streamer less than a point away from Disney, which for years had sat in Peacock’s #5 spot until tumbling down to #7 back in March.
Notable for Disney+ is that only one of its three shows on the leaderboards — Percy Jackson, Secret Invasion, and Goosebumps — is an entry from either the Stars Wars or Marvel franchises. As Disney’s pandemic strategy of flooding the zone with new content begins to show its weaknesses, this may be a sign for the platform to refocus on kid-friendly content rather than put its resources entirely into the work of building its IP empires.
NEW PREMIERES
Photo: The Artful Dodger, Hulu
A quarter of the Top 20 in December is made up of fresh premieres. What do these shows tell us? First, young adult fiction adaptations are finding big success right now, exemplified by Netflix’s My Life with the Walter Boys and Disney+’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Second, explosive shows like Monarch and Netflix’s new action/comedy series Obliterated are also primed for success . Third, viewers are finally giving Hulu originals a shot again, with The Artful Dodger being the first debuting Hulu show to qualify for the leaderboards this year.
Beyond the Top 20, Max’s new comedy Bookie had a promising start at #28 — though with a sentiment score of 67%, it’s not clear how much higher it will go. The news for Hulu wasn’t all good in this department, either, as both The Culprits and Such Brave Girls failed to crack the Top 50 most Watchworthy current shows.
RETURNING SHOWS
Photo: Reacher, Amazon Prime Video
The Crown’s second installment got less interest from viewers than the first, with the show falling from #91 in November to #149 in December. Meanwhile, the second season of Reacher matched its 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes with a 100% sentiment score on Watchworthy, earning an astounding 0 dislikes from streamers in December. The show ranked #80 on the leaderboards overall, a few spots behind True Detective and Young Sheldon.
Apple’s Slow Horses got a somewhat chilly reception from viewers for its third season, ranking #295 overall — though it did earn a sentiment score of 95%. Finally, Netflix’s Money Heist spinoff Berlin premiered a tad too late into the month for us to fairly gauge its potential on the leaderboards, but its performance in future months could speak volumes about the viability of international content.
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.