Tiger King Streaming, By the Numbers
Tiger King, the streaming show on Netflix, has proven to be a “hit” by the numbers alone.
Here’s the tale of the tape.
From the trades:
Users watched more than 5.3 billion minutes of the show from March 23-29. That’s more than 50 percent ahead of the second show on the list, Ozark (3.5 billion minutes). The CW’s All American (1.8 billion minutes) — which now has both of its seasons on Netflix — and The Office (about 1.5 billion minutes) also topped the 1 billion mark for the week.
Additionally, the Joel McHale-hosted aftershow released April 12 racked up a sizable first-day audience, topping the best single-day audience for the rest of the series in its first 10 days of release. The Tiger King and I had an average viewership of 4.6 million for its first day, ahead of the single-day total for the series as a whole from March 20-29. The biggest audience for Tiger King in that period was 4.06 million on March 28.
Across its first 10 days, Tiger King averaged 19 million viewers, making it one of Netflix’s biggest shows to date, per the Nielsen SVOD ratings (numbers that Netflix contends don’t give a full picture of its content, as they’re just for viewing on TV sets and only for the United States).
Oof. That’s a heck of a tale. But what are we to make of it.
Tiger King is Netflix’s Biggest Hit to Date
Tiger King has beat out big budget movies like The Irishman and small niche shows like The Great British Baking Show on the platform in a time of enforced social distancing and other public health-related mandates declared by the government.
The streamer is positioning itself as a major player, even with “one-offs” like Tiger King, particularly when its nearest competitors, Disney+ and Amazon Prime, are struggling with generating interest in the “new” content they have on their platforms.
Just consider the Onward streaming numbers.
What Are We To Make of All of This?
When there is nothing to do, nowhere to go, and when you can’t leave your family, there is nothing like the streaming of a tragic show about animal abuse to get you through the day.
From the trades:
Nielsen says viewers streamed 169.9 billion minutes of content in the week of April 6, the most since the novel coronavirus was declared a pandemic in mid-March. It tops the 168.7 billion minutes for March 23-29. Netflix use accounted for about a third of the total, with “others” — Disney+, CBS All Access, Apple TV+ and some niche platforms — making up 27 percent. YouTube was next at 19 percent, followed by Hulu (12 percent) and Amazon (8 percent). Streamers’ share of the audience has remained pretty consistent over the past month.
Tiger King is just the latest example of distraction fueled “entertainment” with no actual value in the world.
