Streaming Wars • January 2022
With Book of Boba Fett, Disney+ Now Owns Half the Top 10
A year after the MCU first took the plunge into TV, its dominance of the medium is unquestionable: the Top 4 most Watchworthy shows in January 2022 were Loki, WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Hawkeye. With The Book of Boba Fett debuting at #7, half of the Top 10 new shows in January belonged to Disney+. That, along with a pre-premiere appearance of She-Hulk, made for a very impressive month for the streamer. Other services had less than a banner month — HBO Max’s superhero show The Peacemaker failed to crack the Top 20, and Amazon’s very expensive Wheel of Time fell not just out of the Top 20, but also the Top 40.
Photo: The Peacemaker, HBO Max
With Loki Still at #1 and Peacemaker at #34, Does Disney Own Superhero TV?
Disney+’s ownership of the Top 4 shows is made all the more impressive by the underperformance of The Peacemaker, HBO Max’s spinoff of the recent Suicide Squad film. The show stars John Cena and is no doubt meant to compete with the sleek and well-written MCU fare available on Disney, so the fact that the show debuted on the charts at #34 is a worrisome sign not just for HBO, but also for any streamer hoping to ride the wake of WandaVision and co.
But despite all this good news, Disney+ is still far from competitors like Netflix, HBO Max, and Hulu when it comes to overall engagement. Why is that? Because most of Disney+’s catalogue, as popular as it is, was released in the last year — it’s far less dominant when compared to older streaming draws like Stranger Things, Game of Thrones, and Modern Family. It could be some time before Disney+’s MCU success can be converted into forward progress on the Watchworthy leaderboards.
Photo: Disney+
She-Hulk Becomes First Show to Debut on Watchworthy Leaderboard Before Premiering
Disney+’s upcoming Marvel show She-Hulk isn’t set to premiere until mid-2022, but it’s already the #13 most Watchworthy new show. How’s that possible? Engagement on Watchworthy doesn’t just account for the total number of recommendations a given show gets — it also considers how many times a show has been searched for by users, added to Watchlists, and more. That means preliminary interest in She-Hulk is so high, Watchworthy users are engaging with the show more than they are with most series currently on the air.
Photo: How I Met Your Father, Hulu
New Premieres Struggle to Break Through
Peacemaker wasn’t the only new show to premiere last month: Julian Fellowes’s Gilded Age dropped on HBO Max; How I Met Your Father debuted on Hulu; and Wolf Like Me appeared on Peacock. Yet the only January premiere to make the Top 20 was Netflix’s new horror series Archive 81. Months-old series like Squid Game, Mare of Easttown, Only Murders in the Building, and Tell Me Your Secrets led the charge for Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, respectively. As exciting as January was for new premieres, it looks like these new shows have yet to make their impact on TV viewers.
Photo: Y: The Last Man, FX/Hulu
Have We Heard the Last of Last Man?
Even though the show was axed before the end of its first season, FX’s Y: The Last Man has been making a slow comeback on the Watchworthy leaderboards, appearing in December at #21 and climbing up to #17 in January. Could this mean the series is due for a renewal as sudden and surprising as its cancellation? We’ve guessed similar things about shows like Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist that so far haven’t been renewed. But given examples of shows that have been picked up by different networks, such as Lucifer, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and One Day at a Time, fans of the post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller aren’t without reasons to hope.
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 (premiered two years ago or later) 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.
