Ratings: Season 2 (E01, E02, E03) lost 63% of Season 1's audience according to Nielsen

[books of Robert Jordan]

Nielsen, Dec 18 - Dec 24

 

 The Wheel of Time (16) – 92M

 

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Reacher (12 – the first number was 1,188Mrd (billion)  but Nielsen published the corrected number on Feb 01) – 1,4Mrd (billion), The Boys (24) – 139M, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 109M, The Wheel of Time (16) – 92M, Invincible (13) – 75M, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (43) – 58M, Bosch (65) – 56M

Edited February 7 by books of Robert Jordan

[Elder_Haman]

Putting some of this into perspective:

 

Based on @books of Robert Jordan's numbers as posted here, between October 23, 2023 and December 24, 2023, viewers watched 1.65 billion minutes of the Wheel of Time which works out to just over 103 million episodes watched in the 3 full months following the full release of season 2.

 

That's not bad. 

Edited February 7 by Elder_Haman

[Mailman]

4 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

Putting some of this into perspective:

 

Based on @books of Robert Jordan's numbers as posted here, between October 23, 2023 and December 24, 2023, viewers watched 1.65 billion minutes of the Wheel of Time which works out to just over 103 million episodes watched in the 3 full months following the full release of season 2.

 

That's not bad. 

So thats,

103,000,0000/8 = 12,875,000 individual watches of each episode if we only assume that all watches are of S2. This is obviously not the case there would be considerable S1 rewatches and multiple rewatches from dedicated fans contained in those numbers. If you divide it by the full 16 episodes its close to the 6 million viewers number listed above.

[Elder_Haman]

1 hour ago, Mailman said:

If you divide it by the full 16 episodes its close to the 6 million viewers number listed above.

Where was 6 million mentioned? I must have missed that.

 

1 hour ago, Mailman said:

This is obviously not the case there would be considerable S1 rewatches and multiple rewatches from dedicated fans contained in those numbers.

We are talking about the 3 month period following the release of S2E8, so why should we assume “considerable S1 rewatches” took place during that stretch? Similarly, why should we assume “multiple rewatches” of S2 took place over that time period? Those seem like unfounded assumptions without data to support them. 

[Mailman]

6 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Where was 6 million mentioned? I must have missed that.

 

We are talking about the 3 month period following the release of S2E8, so why should we assume “considerable S1 rewatches” took place during that stretch? Similarly, why should we assume “multiple rewatches” of S2 took place over that time period? Those seem like unfounded assumptions without data to support them. 

You responded too Jaccsen yesterday about the 5.9 million viewers.

 

I was adding some perspective to the numbers you posted and showing that they are probably not too separate to those posted by Jaccsen.

 

There are rewatch parties organized on twitter by various parties (including DM i think) I see multiple people saying they have watched episodes multiple times and I have often rewatched previous seasons prior to new seasons for shows that I have enjoyed. This IMO would have been particularly prevalent considering the extended break between season 1 and 2 for WoT.

[Elder_Haman]

Just now, Mailman said:

You responded too Jaccsen yesterday about the 5.9 million viewers.

 

I was adding some perspective to the numbers you posted and showing that they are probably not too separate to those posted by Jaccsen.

 

There are rewatch parties organized on twitter by various parties (including DM i think) I see multiple people saying they have watched episodes multiple times and I have often rewatched previous seasons prior to new seasons for shows that I have enjoyed. This IMO would have been particularly prevalent considering the extended break between season 1 and 2 for WoT.

You’re correct. I was mixing up that number with 2 million which was mentioned earlier. 
 

Even so, that six million is only over the three months following the full release. That doesn’t include the numbers during the actual run of season 2.

 

There was only one week where viewership dropped below 80M minutes, and that was the week of Thanksgiving. That means you’re getting the equivalent of 5 million series views per week. Even if you say 10% of that figure is repeat viewers (which I think is way too high), that’s still 4 million new viewers per week. 
 

And that’s just in the US. That really can’t  be considered a “failure”. 

[Skipp]

11 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

You’re correct. I was mixing up that number with 2 million which was mentioned earlier. 
 

Even so, that six million is only over the three months following the full release. That doesn’t include the numbers during the actual run of season 2.

 

There was only one week where viewership dropped below 80M minutes, and that was the week of Thanksgiving. That means you’re getting the equivalent of 5 million series views per week. Even if you say 10% of that figure is repeat viewers (which I think is way too high), that’s still 4 million new viewers per week. 
 

And that’s just in the US. That really can’t  be considered a “failure”. 

No one can say for certain aside from Amazon but those do seem like solid numbers following the end of the season.  And the show does seem to have a larger following outside the US from the numbers I have seen.  Not sure how Amazon weighs that type of information.

[Samt]

On 2/7/2024 at 9:49 PM, Elder_Haman said:

 

 

There was only one week where viewership dropped below 80M minutes, and that was the week of Thanksgiving. That means you’re getting the equivalent of 5 million series views per week. Even if you say 10% of that figure is repeat viewers (which I think is way too high), that’s still 4 million new viewers per week. 

I don't think you are doing the math correctly.  The figure as I understand it is 80 million minutes, not 80 million episode views.  

 

There are 16 episodes in the series and approximately 60 minutes per episode.  Thus, 960 minutes per series view.  80M minutes is thus only slightly more than 80,000 series views (per week).  That is not nothing, but hardly a tentpole.  If that level of viewership is maintained for a year, you would barely break 4 million views of the series.  

 

 

[Elder_Haman]

16 minutes ago, Samt said:

I don't think you are doing the math correctly.  The figure as I understand it is 80 million minutes, not 80 million episode views.  

 

There are 16 episodes in the series and approximately 60 minutes per episode.  Thus, 960 minutes per series view.  80M minutes is thus only slightly more than 80,000 series views (per week).

Yeah. I think you’re right about my math being off. 80k series views per week over 12 weeks is 960k series views in the 3 months following the full release. Still not too shabby for the US alone. 

 

19 minutes ago, Samt said:

That is not nothing, but hardly a tentpole.

That’s moving the goalposts though, because no one is arguing that it’s a “tentpole”. Only that it’s not the disaster that some are claiming. 

[Samt]

5 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

Yeah. I think you’re right about my math being off. 80k series views per week over 12 weeks is 960k series views in the 3 months following the full release. Still not too shabby for the US alone. 

 

That’s moving the goalposts though, because no one is arguing that it’s a “tentpole”. Only that it’s not the disaster that some are claiming. 

I don't mean to be moving the goalposts.  I meant my tentpole comment as somewhat tongue in cheek.  To be more clear, I think 80k viewers a week is awful.  Not even breaking 1 million viewers in 3 months is terrible, especially since some of that is probably people that are re-watching.  

 

Much has been said about how the show needs to appeal to more than just the book audience in order to be successful.  But over 100 million books have been sold.  Accounting for 15 books in the series, over 7 million copies of the series have probably been sold.  If the show had just gotten everyone who bought the books to watch it, it would be 7 times more successful than it is today.  

 

In other words, if just making a show for book readers was not financially viable, how is 80k viewers a week anything but abysmal?  

[Elder_Haman]

1 minute ago, Samt said:

Not even breaking 1 million viewers in 3 months

That’s horribly inaccurate. The numbers being included here exclude the people who watched while the show was airing. 
Those numbers were obviously much higher in the weeks that it was airing. 
 

Secondly, you’re getting the equivalent of 80k series views per week. But that assumes that all those are watching both seasons. Certainly some are people who watched season one and just returned for S2 once the whole thing dropped. So it could be up to 160k views of S2. 
 

Third, these are US numbers only. 
 

Finally, books sold is a pretty meaningless comparison. 

 

[books of Robert Jordan]

Nielsen, Dec. 25 - 31

 

The Wheel of Time (16) – 85M

 

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Reacher (13) – 943M, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 186M, The Boys (24) – 127M, Summer I Turned Pretty (15) – 108M, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (43) – 88M, The Wheel of Time (16) – 85M, Bosch (65) – 60M, Invincible (13) – 57M

Edited February 12 by books of Robert Jordan

[books of Robert Jordan]

Nielsen, 2024, Jan 01 - 07

 

The Wheel of Time (16) – 137M

 

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Reacher (14) – 1,376Mrd (Billion), Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 166M, The Wheel of Time (16) – 137M, The Boys (24) – 127M, Bosch (65) – 89M, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (43) – 74M, Summer I Turned Pretty (15) – 65M, Gen V (8) – 54M

Edited February 15 by books of Robert Jordan

[books of Robert Jordan]

Nielsen, Jan 08 – Jan 14

 

The Wheel of Time (16) – 128M

 

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Reacher (15) – 1,058Mrd (billion), The Wheel of Time (16) – 128M, The Boys (24) – 125M, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 102M, Bosch (65) – 81M, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (43) – 75M, Summer I Turned Pretty (15) – 54M, The Man in The High Castle (40) – 47M

[Elder_Haman]

Wow! The show opens 2024 on a hot streak! I think the rumors of its demise have been somewhat exaggerated. 

[books of Robert Jordan]

Nielsen, Jan 15 – 21

 

Wheel of Time (16) – 84M

 

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Reacher (16) – 1,231Mrd (billion), The Boys (24) – 175M, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 114M, Bosch (65) – 101M, Gen V (8) – 84M, Wheel of Time (16) – 84M, Hazbin Hotel (4) – 76M, The Man in The High Castle (40) – 59M

[books of Robert Jordan]

Nielsen, Jan 22 – 28

 

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Reacher (16) – 725M, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 155M, Zorro (10) – 124M, Bosch (65) – 121M, Hazbin Hotel (8) – 111M, Expats (2) – 106M

 

[Elder_Haman]

5 hours ago, books of Robert Jordan said:

Nielsen, Jan 22 – 28

 

 

What were the WOT numbers?

[books of Robert Jordan]

Nielsen, Jan 29 – Feb 04

 

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Mr. & Mrs. Smith (8) – 964M, Reacher (16) – 411M, Hazbin Hotel (8) – 161M, The Boys (25) – 136M, Expats (3) – 126M, Bosch (65) – 113M, Zorro (10) – 106M, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 102M

Edited March 12 by books of Robert Jordan
wrong dates

[books of Robert Jordan]

Nielsen, Feb 05 – Feb 11

 

It looks like that Amazon's WOT has irrevocably disappeared from Nielsen's list – something similar happened to Amazon's LOTR ("why"?) –, and while I understand Amazon a little bit (for not allowing Nielsen to disclose the figures), I think publishing low numbers is better than zero publishing...

 

So, I will not post Amazon's numbers anymore.

 

(But who needs real data after all, the marketing department will tell us that Amazon's WOT is the biggest and the best television show ever (I'm a little bit confused: according to the PR team Amazon's LOTR is the biggest and the best television show ever), and everybody (especially the "modern" audience) loves it, so it was such a brilliant idea tossing (you know the drill) the dated and toxic and bad books of Robert Jordan out of the windows.

 

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Mr. & Mrs. Smith (8) – 765M, Reacher (16) – 314M, Hazbin Hotel (8) – 118M, The Expanse (62) – 105M, Expats (4) – 104M, Bosch (65) – 73M, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 72M

[books of Robert Jordan]

Just to be sure... Checking the latest data...

Nielsen, Feb 12 – Feb 18

 

Again, no data regarding Amazon's WOT...

 

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Mr. & Mrs. Smith (8) – 416M, Reacher (16) – 309M, Expats (5) – 121M, The Expanse (62) – 105M, Hazbin Hotel (8) – 93M, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 89M, Bosch (65) – 84M, Marry My Husband (10) – 64M

[Skipp]

Not sure where people have their sources for this type of information But I found this on twitter.  Apologies if not accurate.

 

[books of Robert Jordan]

Nielsen, Feb 19 – 25

 

The Wheel of Time (16) – 69M

 

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Mr. & Mrs. Smith (8) – 310M, Reacher (16) – 209M, Expats (6) – 125M, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 82M, Hazbin Hotel (8) – 78M, The Wheel of Time (16) – 69M, The Boys (25) – 59M, Bosch (65) – 57M

[books of Robert Jordan]

Nielsen,  Feb 26 – March 03

 

The Wheel of Time (16) – 47M

 

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Mr. & Mrs. Smith (8) – 229M, Reacher (16) – 195M, The Boys (25) – 83M, Red Queen (7) – 73M, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 73M, Expats (6) – 70M, Hazbin Hotel (8) – 69M, Marry My Husband (10) – 53M, The Wheel of Time (16) – 47M

[books of Robert Jordan]

Nielsen, March 04 – 10

 

The Wheel of Time (16) – 40M

 

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Reacher (16) – 160M, Mr. & Mrs. Smith (8) – 142M, The Boys (25) – 85M, Hazbin Hotel (8) – 74M, Red Queen (7) – 69M, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (30) – 61M, The Expanse (62) – 41M, The Wheel of Time (16) – 40M