game of Thrones spin off house of the dragon didn’t breathe enough fire in its first few hours to scorch the rest of the streaming field, but new Nielsen numbers suggest it got off to a flying start at HBO Max.
Nielsen’s weekly rankings for streaming titles were not listed dragon in the top 10 after its premiere on August 21, but its absence was only due to timing uncertainties.
Only a tiny fraction of the show’s premiere was captured in the weekly numbers, as Nielsen measures streaming Monday through Sunday. This methodology meant that in this case only the three hours of streaming in the Eastern time zone were captured in the graph for the week of August 15-21 thrones Prequel watched 327 million minutes in that short period of time. In a release accompanying the numbers, Nielsen said it expects the show to “level out regularly over the coming weeks.”
HBO explained last month house of the dragon its highest-performing original series debut ever, with a combined linear and streaming audience of nearly 10 million viewers. Today’s Nielsen slice is the first look at streaming-only from the outside measurement company. The company tracks US title playback across six streaming platforms on a TV screen only, meaning it doesn’t count mobile: HBO Max, Disney+, Hulu, Apple TV+, Prime Video, and Netflix. The numbers are reported almost a month late.
Jamie Foxx zombie movie day shift ranked first for the August 15-21 period with 957 million minutes of viewing. For the first time since April, no title has surpassed 1 billion minutes watched.
While house of the dragon likely to put in a strong performance during the week of August 22-28, it will face competition from Amazon the following week Lord of the Rings. The legendaryly mysterious tech giant has its highest-profile third-party measurement experience this month between this fantasy epic and the debut of NFL Thursday Night Football.