Current Events > Nielsen: Wandavision dropping, less viewers during second week.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Turns out that weekly release is a bust.

https://twitter.com/Abdelmou2taleb/status/1362495646884900873?s=20

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Maybe, like half of CE always says, they are waiting for them to all be out so they can binge it at once. So many people here say this about weekly releases.

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MabusIncarnate posted...

Maybe, like half of CE always says, they are waiting for them to all be out so they can binge it at once. So many people here say this about weekly releases.

Agreed, I have been keeping up with it but I can totally understand binging it. People would rather sit and watch a show for a few episodes than set aside a half hour every Friday or another arbitrary day to do it, imo

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I hate weekly releases so this makes me a tiny bit happy.

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Also, the show is weird AF and doesn't explain itself until episode 3 or 4.

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I want to see the numbers for episodes 3 to 6, honestly. I can see people getting turned off by the throwbacks to the old black and white sitcoms, but the show picked up a lot in episodes 4 - 6.

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Cowthief posted...

I hate weekly releases so this makes me a tiny bit happy.

I'm half and half, when they all release at once, I piss an entire day away because I usually try to watch it all in one or two sittings and I do nothing else productive. Other side of me kind of hates episodes ending and I want more and it sucks waiting another week, this happened a lot with The Boys season 2.

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week 5 will be the tell, i think.

that being said... GIVE BINGE DROPS

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CableZL posted...

I want to see the numbers for episodes 3 to 6, honestly. I can see people getting turned off by the throwbacks to the old black and white sitcoms, but the show picked up a lot in episodes 4 - 6.

This too, after episode 2 I was kind of iffy and wondering if the series was just basically gonna be Marvel sitcom and I wasn't feeling it. It grabbed me in hard by episode 4.

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I didn't know we got good numbers for streaming service viewership

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Yeah I didnt watch at all until episode 5 came out because I wanted to binge but couldnt wait any longer.

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I'm sure this matters a lot.

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I like weekly releases for shows like this

i enjoy the speculation and anticipation. Glad some places are going back to weekly drops

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I despise binge dropping so this is disappointing


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TheGoldenEel posted...

I like weekly releases for shows like this

i enjoy the speculation and anticipation

For real, it'd be no fun if it dropped all at once.

It'd be like Stranger Things where it comes out and everyone watches it then a week later no one gives a fuck anymore.

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Should release 2 at a time

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Oh is this the part where people make gigantic takes based on a two-week data trend and a viewership rating model designed to favor binge-drop shows?

Here are two fun stats:
All shows, regardless of release format show a drop after the first episode.

Nielsen's SVOD on demand model measures viewership minutes for a series over the week. This obviously benefits shows who drop everything at once as they have more total minutes available to watch. This means it is functionally a useless metric for Disney. What they care about is total viewership minutes over a much longer length of time.

tl;dr - No meaningful analysis can be gained from there numbers at this point.

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Doom_Art posted...

For real, it'd be no fun if it dropped all at once.

It'd be like Stranger Things where it comes out and everyone watches it then a week later no one gives a fuck anymore.

I also like getting the chance to talk about the episodes with friends every week. If I binged a whole season in a day or two, Id probably talk about it with a friend over a much shorter time span than with the weekly release schedule.

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These kind of things are a good reminder that the only opinion that matters is your own.

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To be fair the first 2 episodes weren't that good to start off. Didn't pick up at all until they actually started explaining what the fuck was going on.

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The Popo posted...

I also like getting the chance to talk about the episodes with friends every week. If I binged a whole season in a day or two, Id probably talk about it with a friend over a much shorter time span than with the weekly release schedule.

Actually I take back what I said about binging. I have really enjoyed the discourse and speculation after each episode.

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Compsognathus posted...

Here are two fun stats:
All shows, regardless of release format show a drop after the first episode.

Is there really no show ever that has increased viewership episode 2 from episode 1?

I mean I know it's typical to expect a drop off for tv but I tried to see if it's ever happened and I couldn't find a single example


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All these numbers are made up bullshit.

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Cowthief posted...

I hate weekly releases so this makes me a tiny bit happy.

what a dumb opinion lmao @Cowthief

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bluezero posted...

Also, the show is weird AF and doesn't explain itself until episode 3 or 4.

True. After the first episode, I didn't know what to expect.

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Balrog0 posted...

I didn't know we got good numbers for streaming service viewership

They started recently, they functionally use the same method Neilsen uses for traditional TV viewership (sampled population records what they watched for a week, which is projected), but it is hard to claim if they are good.

Like even traditional Nielsen TV measurement is probably not good, but it is the best available and necessary for its customer's (networks and their advertisers) to make decisions. So effort is put into make it as reliable as can be.

The business purpose of Nielsen's SVOD ratings is still pretty unnecessary. The services know exactly what the viewership data on their shows looks like and a lot of the major players don't even have advertisers. Even for the ones that do, the Nielsen data largely exist to provide some external validation of the data provided to the advertisers from the services more than anything. So there is a much lower incentive for any of the parties involved to have the data be particularly accurate.

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Doesn't every TV show lose viewers after the first episode?

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Yeah this whole streaming ratings stuff sounds like an attempt for Nielsen to stay relevant. Disney and Netflix get a ridiculous amount of viewership metrics that they don't want to share. Nielsen ratings for broadcast television did seem to make an impact when shows got cancelled or renewed but I doubt this does.

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Blue_Target posted...

Doesn't every TV show lose viewers after the first episode?

I believe so.

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Balrog0 posted...

Is there really no show ever that has increased viewership episode 2 from episode 1?

I mean I know it's typical to expect a drop off for tv but I tried to see if it's ever happened and I couldn't find a single example

Oh there have definitely been series that improved viewership from the first episode, but the general rule is that your first episode is probably going to be higher than the second. Particularly for weekly shows.

What can happen is a show builds hype and starts to trend up after a few episodes, or pick up up new audience through streaming that can cause later episodes in the season or the next season to pick up viewership but even that is exceedingly rare. The most notable example in recent years being Empire on Fox.

That said the Nielsen ratings for SVOD would only display this trend for weekly released shows. It isn't diffentiating which episode of Bridgeton someone watched only how many minutes.

Even Wandavision is going to be skewed as the first week dropped two episodes compared to the single episode the second week. And even that is indirect because someone could have watched all three episodes on week two.

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I don't think gauging interest by measuring weekly viewership works on streaming platforms.
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Darmik posted...

Yeah this whole streaming ratings stuff sounds like an attempt for Nielsen to stay relevant. Disney and Netflix get a ridiculous amount of viewership metrics that they don't want to share. Nielsen ratings for broadcast television did seem to make an impact when shows got cancelled or renewed but I doubt this does.

Neilsen doesn't need to really stay relevant. They are still the end all be all for what they do, provide advertisers on broadcast/cable media listener/viewership to help make advertising decisions. While we as media consumers might consider that less relevant as traditional media outlets take up proportionally smaller amounts of our media consumption, advertising spend on those outlets really has remained consistent for years despite the increasingly lower viewership those outlets get. So Nielsen is still influencing relatively the same number of dollars as it always had.

The SVOD aspect is mostly that they already have the infrastructure in place to measure viewership so adding SVOD options to their measurements isn't a particularly hard or expensive thing for them to do. So why not.

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They no longer make money by selling ads that run during the show, so weekly watch numbers don't really mean shit anymore. Its all about subscriptions

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Compsognathus posted...

Oh there have definitely been series that improved viewership from the first episode, but the general rule is that your first episode is probably going to be higher than the second. Particularly for weekly shows.

Oh yeah, I specifically meant "higher audience for episode 2 than episode 1"

I mean it makes sense

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Whats the viewership for later episodes when compared to bulk dropping? I mean the weekly model makes perfect sense logically. It makes people talk about the series for far longer than a bulk drop. Instead of speaking a single month or so raving about the show, you now spend months discussing each episode as they come out weekly and it stays in the mind longer.

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I'm of the opposite opinion of basically everyone else here - I loved the first two episodes, and then when they started actually explaining shit I became significantly less interested.

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Balrog0 posted...

Oh yeah, I specifically meant "higher audience for episode 2 than episode 1"

I mean it makes sense

Yeah the first episode is the make it or break it episode for a lot of viewers so it is higher because they are curious. If it doesn't catch them that first episode they don't tune into episode 2. The people who watch episode 2 are much more likely to watch 3 and so on. But 1 to 2 has the big drop. If the show is super lucky, buzz might start to form over the later episodes and they can bring people back in or grab new viewers entirely but that typically take a few episodes to do, so the 1 to 2 drop stays.

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Cowthief posted...

I hate weekly releases so this makes me a tiny bit happy.

I like the weekly releases because everything is so well paced. Friday is the start of my weekend, and I'm currently having a release from MCU every week for the rest of the year, and I like the discussion it breeds discussion about it. If you don't want to watch it weekly, then don't - you can binge it, just later.

LightHawKnight posted...

Whats the viewership for later episodes when compared to bulk dropping? I mean the weekly model makes perfect sense logically. It makes people talk about the series for far longer than a bulk drop. Instead of speaking a single month or so raving about the show, you now spend months discussing each episode as they come out weekly and it stays in the mind longer.

That's the thing. There is very little data out there to make any sort of analysis.

There have been like 2 legitimate hit shows that released weekly since Nielsen started tracking. The Mandalorian season 2 and the Boys season 2. Both consistently stayed in the top 10 while airing, but again they are season two shows with an established fanbase and a backlog of episodes (available minutes) for the viewers to watch. So they can benefit from new viewers binge-watching to catch up and old viewers rewatching to prep for the new season/episodes. Wandavision is the first big show to premier as weekly series since Nielsen started measuring.

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Fuck binge drops. Weekly releases have been great. Weeks of talking and speculating about the show. Lots of fun.

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Sir Will posted...

Fuck binge drops. Weekly releases have been great. Weeks of talking and speculating about the show. Lots of fun.

Yea

The Boys, The Expanse, The Mandalorian, and Wandavision have been a ton of fun these last several months

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Isnt Wandavision the most popular show in the world right now? I doubt Disney is sweating too much

That was a weird episode

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Loving WandaVision but yeah I would prefer to binge watch this show, especially since it took a while to get into the actual plot

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The show is terrible. I know it suppose to be a parody of sitcoms but that portion of it is very uninteresting. You really have to skip the first 3 episodes for something to happen. I don't blame people for not watching it.

Maninstagnate posted...

The show is terrible.

Nope.

Maninstagnate posted...

I don't blame people for not watching it.

Millions are watching it.

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I dont blame the weekly release schedule. The show was just so damn cringey & boring until the last 5 minutes of episode 3.

Thats the week 1 to week 2 dip. Im curious what its been after.

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Compsognathus posted...

Oh is this the part where people make gigantic takes based on a two-week data trend and a viewership rating model designed to favor binge-drop shows?

Here are two fun stats:
All shows, regardless of release format show a drop after the first episode.

Nielsen's SVOD on demand model measures viewership minutes for a series over the week. This obviously benefits shows who drop everything at once as they have more total minutes available to watch. This means it is functionally a useless metric for Disney. What they care about is total viewership minutes over a much longer length of time.

tl;dr - No meaningful analysis can be gained from there numbers at this point.

Sounds like youre upset this show is a flop

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Personally for me, I'm only watching it with a friend. So I only watch it when me and her get chance to get together.

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MabusIncarnate posted...

Maybe, like half of CE always says, they are waiting for them to all be out so they can binge it at once. So many people here say this about weekly releases.

I do this lolo. I didn't for boys season 2 tho but like 6 eps were already out when I got to it

Not watching wandavision tho