The Book of Boba Fett, the latest Star Wars spinoff series to hit Disney+, cracked Nielsen’s top 10 chart for the week of January 3 to 9 as Cobra Kai had a strong repeat No. 1 showing.
Cobra Kai tallied 2.15 billion minutes of streaming for the week, down just a bit from the 2.4 billion it racked up in the prior week. One-third of its audience was in the 35-49-year-old age bracket, Nielsen said, and 40% of viewership occurred in multicultural households.
Nielsen measures only streaming via a TV screen for Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV+ and Amazon’s Prime Video. The measurement company said the week was the third-largest total ever recorded for overall streaming, behind the Christmas and New Year’s weeks.
The holiday surge lifted all titles, including the two Disney titles on the chart. Encanto, which had a 30-day theatrical run before being added to Disney+ as a title available for all subscribers, finished No. 2 for the week with 1.5 billion minutes.
Viewing of Boba Fett nearly doubled from its premiere in December, and is outperforming other Disney+ originals after two episodes. About two-thirds of the week’s viewing was of the second episode, whose longer length (51 minutes vs. the pilot’s 38) also helping add viewing time.
The well-worn industry notion of “legs” doesn’t come up often in streaming, but Encanto viewing fell by only about one-third from the previous week, in large part due to 38% of its audience being kids between 2 and 11. The film’s soundtrack has also kept the Thanksgiving release in the Zeitgeist. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is the first Disney soundtrack song to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 since “A Whole New World” from Aladdin in 1992.
Boba Fett scored the highest concentration of male viewers of any original this week, with 63%, Nielsen said.
In addition to the weekly stats, Nielsen added more demographic context for its 2021 streaming rankings, which Deadline was the first to report on January 21.
Squid Game, while it did not finish as the No. 1 original of the year (that honor went to Lucifer) was the most-streamed original among Hispanics and African-Americans, Nielsen said. Asian homes watching the Korean-language version of the drama (as opposed to the one dubbed into English) accounted for 45% of all U.S. viewing. One-third of viewership of the Korean-language version came in Hispanic homes.
Cocomelon, the preschool smash whose 15 episodes netted 33.3 billion minutes of viewing to place second on the annual ranking of acquired streaming titles, got there on the strength of its multicultural appeal. The show had the highest multicultural audience of any of the top 15 titles, Nielsen said, with 56% of its audience coming from African-American, Hispanic or Asian homes.
Below is the full weekly top 10. Unless otherwise noted, all titles are on Netflix.
Cobra Kai – 40 episodes, 2.153 billion minutes of viewing
Encanto (Disney+) – film, 1.5B min.
The Witcher – 16 eps., 1.1B min.
Stay Close – 8 eps., 988M min.
Don’t Look Up – film, 807M min.
CoComelon – 15 eps., 748M min.
Queer Eye – 52 eps., 723M min.
NCIS – 354 eps., 689M min.
Criminal Minds – 319 eps., 672M min.
The Book of Boba Fett (Disney+) – 2 eps., 563M min.
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