 Spooky season is in full swing as October arrives this weekend, and if you're looking for a fun, family-friendly way to celebrate the month of Halloween, check out tonight's return of Ghosts on CBS and Paramount+. ABC/Hulu's Abbott Elementary deserves all the love it's been getting, but Ghosts is the other comedy from last season which proves broadcast TV still knows how to make great shows. As for this week's Buffering, the focus is on the biggest streaming bets of the fall: Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon. The two shows have a lot in common, including great early ratings. But they're being rolled out in slightly different ways, and it's worth examining what we can learn from the different approaches. Thanks for reading! –Joe Adalian | | Enjoying Buffering? Share this email with your friends, and click here to read previous editions. | | Stay updated on all the news from the streaming wars. Subscribe now for unlimited access to Vulture and everything New York. |  | ![]() | | HBO's House of the Dragon; Amazon Prime Video's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by HBO and Prime Video | | | | We finally have some third-party ratings for Prime Video's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and the news is good for the streamer: Early Nielsen numbers suggest the show got off to a very strong start earlier this month. Per the ratings giant, the first two episodes of Amazon's big bet generated 1.253 billion minutes of viewing time in the U.S. during its first three days of release, easily making it the most-watched streaming program for the week of Aug. 29-Sept. 4. Despite only being available for three days (and a few hours) of Nielsen's measurement period — the show launched at 9 p.m. ET on Sept. 1 — TROP managed to outscore seven days of streaming for the Netflix KevinHart/Mark Wahlberg movie Me Time (927 million minutes) and, yes, the second full week of measurement for HBO's House of the Dragon (781 million). | | Nielsen's numbers come loaded with caveats, and comparisons between titles is very tricky, but the data so far suggest many millions of viewers in the U.S. checked out the show with the hobbits and fairies and mean, nasty Orcs. The running time for the first two episodes of TROP is about 130 minutes, so if you divide the 1.253 billion minutes reported by that number, it suggests somewhere in the neighborhood of 9.6 million U.S. viewers watched the series during its first few days of release. But that's just a guesstimate; figuring out the actual number of viewers, however, is much tougher, because while Nielsen does look at how many people are watching shows, it reports minutes streamed rather than an average number of viewers, in order to account for differences in program length and number of episodes available. | | Still, nearly 1.3 billion minutes for roughly two hours of content makes TROP the biggest Prime Video series ever on a per-episode basis, passing previous Prime record holder Reacher. (Reacher generated 1.8 billion minutes of viewing within three days with 8 episodes and 400 minutes of content out, while TROP had only two episodes and 130 minutes to work with.) TROP did, however, miss besting the per-minute average for Prime's Eddie Murphy-led comedy film Coming 2 America, which generated 1.4 billion minutes during the first weekend of March 2021 and had a running time slightly shorter than the first two episodes of TROP. Still, movie viewing tends to be front-loaded to opening weekends and the film also bowed during a time when COVID was a much bigger threat (vaccinations had just started rolling out) and movie theaters were relatively empty. | | As for how TROP did vs House of the Dragon, it's important to note that comparisons between the two shows are incredibly difficult to make using just Nielsen data. For one thing, Amazon has never said exactly how many U.S. homes subscribe to Prime Video, so we don't know how many people are able to legally stream the show. We do know that HBO Max and HBO have a combined subscriber base of around 50 million U.S. homes, while Netflix is in about 70 million homes here. It seems safe to assume Prime is in more homes than HBO/HBO Max, if only because of its lower price and because so many people subscribe for access to free two-day Amazon shipping. If we assume Prime is at parity with Netflix — not too much of a stretch — then that will put HOTD at a bit of a disadvantage in terms of generating streaming minutes. Plus, Nielsen's streaming data doesn't measure linear viewership, and unlike Prime Video shows, HOTD does have a linear window, one which generates several million viewers each week. | | HBO has already said HOTD series opened with 10 million linear and streaming viewers during the first day of its availability in the U.S., and that since then, the overall audience here has surged to around 30 million viewers for early episodes. Nielsen, meanwhile, last week reported that HoTD generated 741 million minutes during its first full measurement week (Aug. 22-28), so this week's 781 million number suggests viewership of the series is holding steady. What's more, Nielsen also says that the original Game of Thrones racked up another 792 million minutes of viewing during the early September frame, indicating the spin-off is driving engagement with the HBO Max HOTD library. (There are 73 episodes of the original series available, so on a per-episode basis, HOTD is generating far, far more viewership.) | | As for TROP, Nielsen's report today comes weeks after Prime attached a specific, if still somewhat squishy, viewing number to the series. It said 25 million people around the world watched TROP during its first day on the service, making it the platform's biggest-ever premiere. While Nielsen's report only covers the U.S., its data suggests Prime's pronouncement — which covered just 24 hours of viewing and included the entire globe — was probably pretty conservative. Bottom line: Amazon and HBO both have reason to celebrate the launches of their big bets, at least for the moment. Now comes the much harder work of making sure the shows end up as longrunning hits. | | Do Timeslots Matter in the Battle of the Blockbusters? | | In this era of video-on-demand, most streaming programmers have come to accept the Gospel According to Netflix: Audiences now watch TV shows when it's convenient for them, and the specific time of day they arrive is irrelevant for streamers. This is why most streaming shows drop new episodes in the middle of the night U.S. time: Since we are all our own network schedulers now, deciding what to watch and when, there's no reason to "program" new shows and movies for an optimal time of day. But the slightly different release patterns for The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon has had me thinking lately about the wisdom of the dogmatic approach pioneered by Netflix— and whether streamers should be thinking more about what time they release their original titles. | | Because Dragon is produced under the banner of House HBO, its weekly episodes have been premiering on streaming counterpart HBO Max at the same time they're fed to cable and satellite subscribers across the country, Sunday at 9 p.m. ET. By contrast, Prime Video is dropping episodes of TROP at just after midnight ET on Fridays, the same day and hour almost all of the platform's originals debut. Given Nielsen's new numbers showing how well TROP is performing, it's tempting to just conclude that the Netflix theory — timeslots are a vestige of the linear age and simply don't matter — has been correct all along. | | But I don't think that data is that clear-cut. For one thing, the Amazon-owned streamer actually released the first first two episodes of TROP — the ones measured by today's Nielsen report — at the much more (American) viewer-friendly hour of 9 p.m. ET. So if you were so inclined, you could make the case that the early start time is one of the reasons the show came out of the gate so strong. The more accurate way of analyzing the numbers, however, is to admit we have no idea if it made a difference, and may never know. Nielsen isn't in the habit of releasing episode-specific data in its streaming report, so unless that changes, it'll be hard to judge whether a three-hour difference really does boost early viewership. We do know, however, that in this one case, Prime execs thought timing mattered just enough to make a tweak to their usual release pattern. Even if it was just a ploy to pad the Nielsen numbers a bit, someone at Amazon decided there was a benefit to an earlier slot. And I think they were right. | | Beyond the extra gravy it might have provided for the early ratings, dropping the first two episodes of TROP at a reasonable hour in all of the U.S. probably helped ensure the show trended on Twitter and generated lots of activity on other social media channels the night of its premiere. Audiences all over America were able to see the show as soon as it debuted without risking exhaustion the next morning. And those who did could then act as social ambassadors for the series, posting about it on social media or talking about it at work the next day. | | That more than anything is the reason streamers might want to bring back timeslots for some shows: It's good for PR and marketing. Even if technology had made the need for specific time periods a thing of the past, it hasn't rendered obsolete the notion that humans sometimes like to be guided in making choices. And I think the potential social media boost primetime premieres provides offers such assistance because it can act as a reminder to overwhelmed viewers: "Ah, everybody's talking about this episode; I should go check it out." We used to pick up TV Guide every night to remind us what we could be watching; these days, social media sometimes serves a similar function (though you can still subscribe to TV Guide!). | | Indeed, the power of social media is part of the logic behind the trend toward platforms — including Netflix — moving away from the all-at-once binge model and instead offering either split seasons of certain shows or simply returning to weekly episodes. While stretching out the shelf life of a TV season from one weekend to two months helps reduce subscriber churn (because there's less incentive to binge-and-ditch), many execs now believe it can also make it easier to get shows noticed by overwhelmed audiences. When people see online chatter about a show every week as new episodes drop, it essentially serves as free marketing for the series. It's one reason why Prime decided to change up the release schedule for its hit The Boys, switching from the binge model in season one to a semi-episodic approach for season two (three episodes at launch, followed by one per week thereafter). The streamer wanted to capitalize on buzz around the show and bet weekly releases would turn it into an even bigger success. | | Similarly, streamers have been taking a page from the linear playback by becoming more flexible about the days of the week their titles are released and, in some cases, turning specific days into destinations for different kinds of programs. Much the way NBC used to own Thursdays with its quality comedies, and ABC once had a lock on kiddos with its TGIF family sitcoms, Netflix has tried to make its unscripted titles stand out by releasing most of them on Wednesdays instead of Fridays. And HBO Max has benefited from the halo of the HBO cable network's decades-long domination of Sunday nights. Even though time is supposed to be a moot point in the video-on-demand world, millions of HBO Max customers still click into the app on Sunday nights because of the power of the HBO Sunday brand. When I asked one industry insider whether House of the Dragon was getting a boost from having a reasonable 9 p.m. timeslot, he suggested the boost was less about being on earlier in the night and more about streaming Sundays on an HBO-branded platform. "There's just so much history there," he said of the network's marquee night of programming, which over the decades has hosted everything from The Sopranos to Game of Thrones. | | To me, this is another argument in favor of earlier timeslots. Rather than dumping its big blockbuster tentpoles on Fridays with everything else in streaming, imagine if Prime Video were to turn Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET into the spot where the streamer rolled out fresh episodes of TROP, The Boys, Jack Ryan, and other big-budget spectacles which lend themselves to appointment viewing? Similarly, why aren't HBO Max originals like Hacks, The Flight Attendant, or And Just Like That debuting on Sundays instead of quietly debuting in the middle of the week? No, they're not linear shows which require you to tune into a channel, but data shows most people who watch House of the Dragon or Succession or Euphoria on Sundays don't do so via their cable box but via the HBO Max app. It's not TV that makes people watch these shows on Sundays, it's the HBO brand. | | But while streamers are experimenting with different premiere days and moving toward more episodic releases, any shift toward earlier timeslots has been much slower — just a trickle, really. When Disney+ stole Dancing with the Stars away from ABC, it opted to continue airing the show live Mondays at 8 p.m. ET, the same time it ran on ABC for years, rather than switch to a taped format and announce the eliminated contestant the following week. Prime Video is obviously airing Thursday Night Football live in primetime, and does the same with new franchise the Academy of Country Music Awards. And Paramount+ has always offered subscribers the ability to stream CBS-branded original series live (via a simulcast of their local CBS affiliate), while Peacock last year began simulcasting NBC's Saturday Night Live. | | Outside of live events, however, only a handful of streaming shows premiere in primetime across the U.S. HBO Max subscribers first get access to shows produced by HBO Entertainment (Euphoria, White Lotus, Succession) at the same time they're telecast on the HBO cable channel, but everything else — library titles, movies, and series labeled "Max Originals" (Hacks, …And Just Like That, and, yes, the very buzzy The Flight Attendant) uses the Netflix model: Premiere time is 3 a.m. ET. Disney+ is similarly stingy, making even folks on the west coast stay up until midnight to catch new episodes of Andor or She-Hulk. Paramount+ and Peacock are also in the early-morning premiere business. | | The only streamer seemingly all-in on primetime premieres? Apple TV+. While most of its titles officially still premiere on Fridays, for more than a year now the streamer has been quietly making episodes of many of its biggest shows available Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT. A rep for the company declined to comment on strategy, but an insider at a rival platform theorizes the company sees a upside to going early. "They're probably trying to get ahead of the releases on other services" on bigger platforms such as Netflix and Prime, he said. And because Apple has kept its marketing message simple ("New episodes each Friday"), the risk of audience confusion is pretty low. | | Despite anecdotal evidence that there's a benefit involved, streaming industry insiders I've talked with don't share my enthusiasm at the idea of earlier premieres. While Prime moved up the premiere time for the first two episodes of TROP, it went back to its usual midnight ET release time the next week, in part because that's how almost all of its shows get released but also because the streamer didn't want to have to compete with its own Thursday Night Football franchise. Instead, Prime has been (smartly) using football to repeatedly remind viewers of each week's episode of TROP. Meanwhile, even though HBO Max usage spikes when HBO originals premiere on the platform Sunday nights, a source at the company tells me there have been no internal discussions about adapting a primetime model for HBO Max originals. And an exec at another streamer this week told me he doesn't see much movement away from the industry norm of dropping episodes around midnight, in part because doing so might make it harder to have a consistent marketing message in countries around the world. "It makes it more confusing if a show premieres on a Thursday in the U.S. but a Friday somewhere else," the exec explains. "The inconsistency becomes the problem. Audiences don't know when the show will drop." | | Perhaps that's true, and certainly if you're a platform as big as Netflix, trying to schedule your premieres around U.S. viewing times doesn't make sense, especially if you're still releasing 5, 8 or 10 episodes at once. But for streamers which release individual episodes each week, or which don't yet have a massive global footprint, there's also a case to be made that what matters more is maximizing buzz. And if earlier launch times in the U.S. might help achieve it, why not start experimenting more and see if it moves the needle? | | Sign up to receive Vulture's 10x10 crossword every weekday. | | | |
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