Streaming Metrics Show a Tougher Market for Original Content

Theres been some debate over whether streamers are truly off to a slow start in 2023, but the available data is clear: The hits have not kept on coming in the first quarter of the year.

U.S. viewership of the most watched original streaming series, as measured by Nielsen, fell a whopping 19 percent year-over-year through the first eight weeks of 2023. The decline was significant even when including HBOs hit The Last of Us which is included in acquired rather than original programming on Nielsens charts, as its a linear HBO series and not a streaming original with viewership down 11 percent when including that series in the tally.

It is important, as always, to note caveats to Nielsens data, which measures only U.S. viewing on TVs (meaning mobile and laptop viewing are excluded) and does not include data for Paramount+. However, the apples-to-apples comparison remains illuminating: By these metrics, streamers have been turning out less hit original programming so far this year.

Furthermore, even Netflixs own metrics show a slump in viewing; based on the weekly top 10 data released by the streamer, aggregate viewership is down nearly 8 percent this year versus the same timeframe in 2022.

The services biggest hit series so far in 2023 have not matched the heights of last years most popular titles, the miniseries Inventing Anna and South Korean zombie thriller All of Us Are Dead. This years hits have also tended to drop out of the top 10 more quickly. The best-performing TV season of 2023 so far, Ginny and Georgia S2, fell off by its seventh week, while Inventing Anna and All of Us Are Dead remained among the top 10 English and non-English TV seasons, respectively, for 10-plus weeks each.

In short, original streaming hits have been scarce in the first quarter. Indeed, Nielsen recently reported that the most watched show on streaming platforms for February (in terms of minutes streamed) was not an original series but NBCs recently concluded medical drama New Amsterdam, available on both Netflix and Peacock.

The show likely benefited from its surfeit of available episodes; in contrast to freshman series like The Last of Us or short-season streaming dramas like You, there are 76 episodes of New Amsterdam currently streaming. Still, its strong performance highlights a key, often-ignored facet of streaming engagement: Consumers are often more interested in familiar favorites than fresh original programming.

This is likely also a factor in the rising popularity of FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) platforms, which largely offer licensed or library content at no cost to viewers. In recent months, these services have joined the crowded field of streaming platforms claiming a significant share of U.S. consumers viewing time, according to Nielsen data.

In September, Pluto TV became the first FAST service to claim a 1 percent share of total TV viewing in Nielsens monthly The Gauge report; another FAST platform, Tubi, did so in February. Notably, this put Tubi on par with some of the major SVOD services: even with The Last of Us on hand, HBO Max claimed just 1.3 percent of TV viewing in February, while Peacock, despite its breakout original series Poker Face, also claimed 1 percent.

Is it possible that the sheer number of available viewing platforms is finally starting to dilute each services engagement? Netflix, for instance, has seen its share of U.S. streaming viewing time steadily shrink over the past several months, hitting a new low of 18 percent in February. But no one service has broken out in its place; as overall streaming viewing time has risen, consumers time has been increasingly split across a vast field of services.

Further data suggests as much: Analytics company NPAW recently released a report on 2022 streaming trends, which showed average daily user engagement per service fell 4 percent year-over-year in North America, and declined 12 percent on a global basis. In other words, while consumers are spending more time streaming overall, they are spending less time per service.

It's likely this trend will continue as content output finally begins to shrink, with Hollywood companies cutting back on spending, reassessing their streaming strategies and, in some cases, spreading their content across several different platforms. The picture of success in streaming is growing ever more complicated, and marquee original programming simply may not be enough anymore.