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Heard the other day that half of all program viewing is now streaming. John Nolte on Breitbart glommed onto the Nielsen list of the 20 top shows streamed in the first half of 2025, and the results follow my personal experience, so my biases are being confirmed here:
Nielsen ranked the top 20 streaming programs for the first half of the year, and Disney+ earned just one title out of 20. Hilariously, it’s not even a Disney original show. Bluey is imported from Australia and distributed by Disney. It’s a sweet, little animated children’s show. It also ranked at number one on the streaming chart.
Other than that, the groomers got skunked. Despite literally spending billions of dollars on a countless number of Marvel and Star Wars streaming shows, not a single one placed in the top 20, and yet a whole bunch of older shows did, including Grey’s Anatomy (#2), NCIS (#3), Family Guy (#4), Spongebob (#6), Criminal Minds (#13), and, yes, Gunsmoke (#18).
If the narrative is that dinosaurs like me and older are hanging old style, and it's the younger folk streaming on their laptops, tablets, and phones, then this result captures the viewing habits of the younger audience. Obviously, Spongebob does. Nolte is delighted, of course, that the groomer gaggle was shut out of the top 20, as am I. Nothing they produced could outcompete James Arness' Gunsmoke. Makes one wonder how Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie would fare one-on-one against She-Hulk and Secret Invasion. Did any of them exceed the Clampetts in honor and dignity?
Discussion (49)
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Does this mean that Gunsmoke was made for modern audiences?
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Netflix and Amazon Prime do a lousy job of suggesting what to watch based on my past use. If the streaming industry were to make better use of AI to refine offerings, will that doom distribution of much modern sludge or will the AI try harder to try to make me watch it? In a completely customized consumer experience how will that affect what gets made?
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I almost never go for what the AI presents me, and the AI-chosen for me stuff is execrable 90% plus of the time. Occasionally it will pop up a treasure from the 30s or the 40s, but the algorithm seems more driven by the quarterly incentive package for the VP of marketing or corporate partnership agreements than from anything I have watched or might watch.
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The metric that Nielsen uses for streaming is so different from what they use in broadcasting/cable that it’s hard to compare them. While broadcasters sell viewers and shares of homes using television, the online programmers are counting minutes streamed.
And they break it down into far different categories. There’s Overall, Original, Acquired and Movies. And no, those movies don’t have to have had a theatrical release.
It would hurt Nolte’s premise that last week the live action version of Snow White playing on Disney+ was the 6th most streamed movie at 284M minutes. But since we’re now counting minutes are shorter films penalized? Snow White runs 109 minutes. The #2 movie, The Accountant 2 runs 132 minutes.
When you start counting minutes then longterm series such as Gunsmoke has a better chance to break into the Top 10. With 20 seasons worth of content, there’s over 26K minutes of Matt Dillon to watch.
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Yes, but not for a post-modern one.
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