The Umbrella Academy, Shameless Top Most-Watched Streaming Shows

Key Insight:While Netflix's Umbrella Academy drove viewership, most of the other most-watched series are older library titles. Netflix U.S. subscribers watched more than 3 billion minutes of the Netflix original series The Umbrella Academy during the first full week of August, according to new viewership data from Nielsen. Beginning today, the measurement company has added subscription-based streaming platforms, which will include viewership from Netflix and on Amazon Prime, to its weekly top 10 ratings offerings. All 10 shows in Nielsen's Top SVOD Programs list are streaming on Netflix. As is the case with Nielsen's streaming metrics, the numbers account for content viewed via a connected TV device like Roku, Apple TV, video game consoles and smart TVs. The Umbrella Academy, whose second season debuted at the beginning of August, drove nearly 2 billion more minutes watched than the second most-watched show on streaming, Showtime’s long-running drama Shameless,. More than 1.1 billion minutes of Shameless were watched from Aug. 3 through Aug. 9, Nielsen reported. The popularity of The Umbrella Academy, a superhero series with Ellen Page and Tom Hopper as part of its ensemble cast, mark a success for Netflix as it has continued to develop original series aimed at driving viewership to the service as the streamer stands to lose popular library series to rival services. Since Aug. 1, the show has been on Netflix’s own top 10 list of overall titles on the service, and was either No. 1 or No. 2 overall for two weeks. The rest of Nielsen’s top 10 streaming list is otherwise dominated by library titles on Netflix, showing the long-standing appeal for many viewers to older shows. In addition to Shameless, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (918 million minutes streamed), NBCUniversal’s The Office (897 million minutes) and CBS' Criminal Minds (697 million minutes) rounded out the top five most-watched programs on streaming in terms of minutes watched. Those four shows each have more than 100 episodes, while The Umbrella Academy has only 20, meaning each episode brings in fewer minutes watched on average. NCIS was No. 6 overall with 524 million minutes streamed that week, followed by In the Dark (418 million minutes), Dexter (316 million minutes), The CW's Supernatural (315 million minutes) and Parks and Recreation (304 million minutes). The rankings from Nielsen also reveal the long-standing “Netflix bump” that shows from other networks enjoy on Netflix after they begin streaming on the service. In The Dark, The CW crime's low-rated drama-comedy, which has been renewed for a third season, was watched for 418 million minutes on Netflix from Aug. 3 through Aug. 9. (For the sake of comparison: that show was among the top 10 most popular shows on Netflix in mid-July, but had dropped out of Netflix’s own top 10 by Aug. 5.) Other CW shows, like All American, have also seen that “Netflix bump,” although new series from CW will either move to HBO Max, or land on CBS All Access. (Previously running shows will continue to appear on Netflix.) It’s a perk other networks are enjoying, too. Netflix users watched 316 million minutes of Showtime’s Dexter, which has 96 episodes, in the measurement period.