Streaming Wars • March 2023

Zero New Shows Break Into Top 20 for First Time in Streaming Wars History

A slow month for new releases translated into a stagnant month Top 20 and good news for Wednesday, The Last of Us, and House of the Dragon.

The Watchworthy leaderboards are typically composed of a mix of enduring popular titles and a handful of breakout debuts. For the first time since we began tallying the results of the Streaming Wars in 2020, no new show managed to get enough Engagement to crack the Top 20. That’s due in large part to the fact that fewer shows than usual were released in March — though we shouldn’t expect the trend to continue in April, as a flood of new premieres are expected through the end of May in anticipation of the 2023 Emmys. 

The slowdown was great for the Top 3 shows — The Last of Us, Wednesday, and House of the Dragon — which stayed the same from February to March. The Last of Us in particular is showing remarkable strength, with an eye-popping 90% of Engagement with the show across Ranker and Watchworthy reflecting positive sentiment. The Recruit was the only series to fall off the Top 20 during this period due to lower Engagement, though Severance and The Dropout also disappeared after reaching the first anniversary since their debut. Those shows were replaced by Tulsa King, The Peripheral, and The Lincoln Lawyer.

For Few New Releases, March Brings Disappointment

The shows that did make their debut in March received a middling reception from viewers. While Shrinking improved its standing by two spots since February, Hello, Tomorrow! was less fortunate, failing to crack the Top 50 in its first full month on the air. Shows like The Night Agent on Netflix and Rabbit Hole on Paramount+ premiered late in the month, but still reasonably could have hoped to be featured in the 50 most Watchworthy shows of March — that didn’t pan out for either of them.

Arguably the biggest disappointments have been for Amazon, which had two big original releases — The Consultant and Daisy Jones and the Six — that failed to register on this month’s leaderboards. While the future looks grim for The Consultant, despite the star power of Christoph Waltz, Daisy Jones ranked #37, suggesting it could rise higher given more time.

Newer Streamers Maintain Momentum

Despite losing a top performer in Severance and seeing disappointing results for Hello, Tomorrow!, Apple TV+ still had a decent month, with Shrinking rising to #4 overall and Black Bird managing to keep a place in the Top 20. Poker Face dropped from #5 to #10, and while that indicates the show’s popularity has a ceiling, it’s not such a big drop to indicate its February performance was a fluke. Paramount+’s 1923 held onto its #20 spot, while Tulsa King jumped up to #19. 

These modest victories amounted to 25% of the Top 20, a considerable feat for historically weaker competitors Apple, Paramount, and Peacock. Apple in particular is coming into its own, increasing its overall share of Engagement for the second consecutive month. That said, both Paramount and Peacock still boast twice Apple’s share.

Amazon Slowly, But Surely Captures Space on Leaderboards

We’ve written plenty of times before about Amazon’s at times disappointing performance in the Streaming Wars (including earlier in this blog post). But despite the fact that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power isn’t quite the powerhouse Amazon hoped it would be, the platform now has three consistently solid performers in Rings of Power, The Summer I Turned Pretty, and The Peripheral. Amazon had more shows on the Top 20 than either HBO Max or Hulu, its two biggest rivals in the fight to overtake perennial winner Netflix.  

Hulu Has Plenty of Aging Favorites, But Lacks New Hits 

The Patient and The Bear have both demonstrated impressive longevity, as did The Dropout for almost the entirety of the year since it premiered. But with The Dropout out of the running, it’s unclear how long Hulu can go without another hit before its standing starts to drop. Back in December of last year, the platform had zero shows in the Top 20 — the following month, it only had one. A late marketing push for the Onyx/Hulu series Unprisoned failed to put the show in the minds of Watchorthy users. The pressure is on for forthcoming Hulu original series, including crime/mystery adaptation Saint X, British import Am I Being Unreasonable?, and Kathryn Hahn vehicle Tiny, Beautiful Things. 

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.

Want to learn more about how we built a TV recommendation engine using Ranker Insights data? We tell the whole story in our Watchworthy white paper, which you can download here for free.

MORE INSIGHTS LIKE THIS: