As New Content Production Slows to a Halt, Who Has the Most Rewatchable Content?
The writers’ strike will soon create a dearth of new content for viewers. Streamers with the content people love to rewatch will be at a serious advantage.
Photo: Friends, Warner Bros.
They don’t call it the era of “Peak TV” for nothing. Save for 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic briefly put a kink in the content pipeline, the amount of new scripted television shows being produced has grown larger every year since 2015. The explosion of streaming has produced so much new TV that viewers often struggle to sift through it all (don’t worry: this problem does have solutions).
But overwhelmed viewers should be careful what they wish for. With no end in sight for the ongoing writers’ strike, episodes of new and returning shows will be more and more rare as the backlog of series written and produced before May 2, when the strike began, begins to run out. Some streamers see their strike salvation as international content; others pin their hopes on unscripted shows. But perhaps the most important factor in determining who will fare best during the writers’ strike is rewatchability: which streamer has the most content that viewers will be watching again and again as we all wait for the Hollywood dream machine to return to business as usual.
Which shows are people rewatching during the strike? We analyzed the user activity on Watchworthy to answer just that question. We looked at the shows that are at least a year old that were added to users’ Watchlists between now and the start of the strike back in May. Though undoubtedly some of these adds are first-time views, the age and popularity of the series in question suggests that a healthy majority of them are planning rewatches. What we found was that some streamers — and one in particular — have a lot more rewatchable content than others.
What Were the Most Rewatchable Platforms?
If you’re a follower of our regular Streaming Wars segment, you likely won’t be surprised by these results: Netflix trounced its competition, with more than half of all Watchlist adds during the strike period going to shows that stream there. Seven of the Top 10 most rewatchable series stream on Netflix; 13 of the Top 20. You could choose to chalk that up to inertia, with the older Netflix retaining a larger number of users than its new competitors, users who are more likely to rewatch whatever is available on the platform rather than branch out. But Hulu and Max (in various forms) have been around for quite some time, too. No matter how you slice it, Netflix is in a relatively good place to retain the interest of viewers as the strike wears on.
Max comes in second with well under half the Watchlist adds of Netflix. Its status is bolstered not just by HBO Originals like Succession, which ranked at #12, but also shows produced by Warner Bros. like The Vampire Diaries and Young Sheldon. Hulu, meanwhile, was only the fourth-most rewatchable platform. Only one of the Top 40 most rewatchable shows that stream on Hulu, American Horror Story, does so exclusively — Hulu had to share credit for shows like New Girl and Schitt’s Creek with Peacock and Amazon, respectively.
The “new wave” of streamers that came around starting in 2019 — Disney+, Apple TV, Peacock, and Paramount+ — are at a disadvantage here, as they haven’t been around long enough to produce the trove of blockbuster hits that Netflix and Max have. Peacock, on the other hand, outperformed expectations by coming in third, by far the strongest of the “new wave.” Though Peacock’s recent, original series don’t always grab viewers’ attention the way a platform like Disney+ does, its trove of NBC series like Parks and Recreation (#32), House (#40), and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (#30) give it a big advantage when it comes to rewatchability. Paramount+ is in a theoretically similar position, given that it has plenty of classics in its content library, but with so many of its biggest hits like Comedy Central’s South Park, CBS’s Young Sheldon, and Paramount Network’s Yellowstone licensed to other streamers, it didn’t come close to rival Peacock.
Perhaps the most disappointing result was Amazon, which came in sixth place behind Showtime. The only original in the Top 40 most rewatchable during this period is The Boys at #22; the only other entry streaming on Amazon is Schitt’s Creek. As popular as shows like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and The Man in the High Castle are, it seems they aren’t particularly rewatchable.
What Were the Most Rewatchable Shows?
Which series were being slated for rewatches the most from May 2 through the end of June? Euphoria ended up coming out on top here, making up nearly 5% of all Watchlist adds during the period. Though Max earns the distinction of owning the most rewatchable show of the strike so far, its rival Netflix came very close with Squid Game, which is just 11 adds behind Euphoria. Squid Game came out in 2021 and has just one season, so it’s easy to catch up on, which probably means a good portion of people adding it to Watchlists are actually planning to watch it for the first time. That said, the series is explosive and exciting, and viewers have plenty of reasons to return to it even after the twists and turns of the plot have become familiar.
Following Squid Game is Showtime’s Shameless, an 11-season dramedy behemoth that just screams “rewatch me!” The William H. Macy-fronted series beat out perennial favorite Stranger Things (which tied for fourth place with fellow Netflix original Outer Banks), even though Shameless has been off the air for more than two years. Tied behind Stranger Things and Outer Banks are Breaking Bad and The Vampire Diaries, both of which have been off the air for at least six years and frequently top competitive genre TV lists. Rounding out the Top 10 are CBS’s Young Sheldon at #8, as well as Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia and You tied for ninth place.
As interesting as the shows that cracked the Top 10 were those that didn’t — Game of Thrones underwhelmed us by ranking #17, behind The Umbrella Academy and Never Have I Ever. The mega-popular The Witcher barely got any Watchlist adds, coming in at #41. And The Office got no adds at all, even though it was, for a long time, the show synonymous with the very idea of a rewatch. Are viewers finally tiring of touring Scranton, or is rewatching it on Peacock so hardwired in their brains that they don’t need a Watchlist to remember it?
While some streamers may fare better than others during this strike, it’s clear that what’s best for everyone — producers, creators, and viewers — is a resolution to the strike. Let’s hope that day will come sooner rather than later. But some streamers that tend to do well when it comes to new and returning shows, like Hulu, Disney+, and Amazon, apparently fare worse when what’s being watched is limited to older series. It will be interesting to see if that plays a factor in these streamers’ willingness to come to the bargaining table as the strike wears on. Until then, all we can do is wait and watch — and rewatch.
