Last year, Americans “watched” content for a total of 21 million years — 21% more than in 2022 (17 million years), according to data from the Nielsen company.
The growth is driven by expanding libraries — and given the strikes and lack of new content, much of the credit goes to the “old” shows licensed to streaming services like Netflix. For example, in a top the most popular series on streaming in 2023 turned out to be “Force Majeure” / Suits, the last episode of which was released back in 2019 – the list includes even older shows such as “Friends”, “Gilmore Girls” or “The Big Bang Theory”.
Force Majeure has held the top 10 in the US for 12 weeks thanks to its simultaneous availability on Netflix and Peacock, with 57.7 billion minutes watched in 2023, beating the record of another favourite, The Office, which had 57 .1 billion minutes of views in 2020 during the pandemic.
The producers of “Force Majeure” talked about the 10th season and the possible return of Meghan Markle
The number of streaming services is also increasing — at the end of 2023, the American audience had a choice of 90 different streaming services compared to 51 at the beginning of 2020.
Among original series “Ted Lasso” from Apple TV+ broke into the leaderboard with an indicator of 16.9 billion minutes of viewing in 2023. Also in the top ten were seven Netflix series at once, led by “Night Agent”; one each on Disney+ (The Mandalorian) and Prime Video (Jack Ryan).
In the rating the most popular movies Nielsen highlights two main points:
- “Moana”, released on Disney+ in late 2019, continues to attract viewers with an all-time record of 11.6 billion minutes watched in 2023 (the film has not left the top four for the last four years). In total, since Nielsen began measuring streaming views, “Moana” has been viewed 775 million times in its entirety.
- Released in 2021, the animated film Encanto has maintained its appeal among viewers in 2023 with just under 10 billion minutes of views. In 2022, he topped the rating with 27.4 billion viewing minutes.
It is clear that the impact of the strikes in Hollywood will extend into 2024 as viewers will see less and less new content. However, Nielsen predicts that streaming will continue to dominate in the US, also because some key sporting events are becoming exclusive to them.
