‘The Witcher’ Returns To Dominance On U.S. Streaming Chart; Nielsen Says Streaming In December Hit All-Time High Of 183B Minutes

Dade Hayes
·2 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

The Witcher, which returned to Netflix for a second season on December 17, dominated Nielsen’s weekly U.S. streaming chart with almost 2.2 billion minutes of viewing that week.

The latest chart covers the period of December 13-19. A distant second place was CoComelon on Netflix, with 840 million viewing minutes.

More from Deadline

Along with its weekly rankings, Nielsen also delivered a new edition of its month-by-month viewing analysis, The Gauge. In December, the company said, overall streaming reached a new all-time high of 183 billion minutes. That beat the 160 billion minutes during the onset of Covid in March 2020 as well as the 178 billion this past November. Streaming accounted for 28% of total viewing time on TV sets, but the percentage rose to 33% during Christmas week.

Hawkeye on Disney+ added another episode during the timeframe as part of its one-at-a-time release pattern, but its five episodes managed a solid-but-unspectacular 580 million minutes. That was good enough for fourth place given the consolidation of viewing in the No. 1 spot.

Other notables in the top 10 included two very different original films on Netflix. The Unforgivable, a dramatic thriller starring Sandra Bullock, drew 566 million viewing minutes, finishing sixth, and animated feature Back to the Outback collected 485 million for ninth.

Created by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, The Witcher is based on a fantasy book franchise of the same name by Andrzej Sapkowski. Henry Cavill, Freya Allan and Anya Chalotra head the cast. Each of the show’s first two seasons has had eight episodes.

Nielsen’s streaming numbers account for only viewing via a TV set and only on Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video. They are reported after a nearly month-long delay due to current challenges in data-gathering in streaming.

Below is the week’s full top 10. Unless otherwise noted, all shows are on Netflix.

The Witcher – 16 episodes, 2.2 billion
CoComelon – 15 eps., 840M min.
Criminal Minds – 317 eps., 631M min.
Hawkeye (Disney+) – 5 eps., 580M min.
Lost In Space – 28 eps., 569M min.
The Unforgivable – film, 566M min.
Seinfeld – 166 eps., 511M min.
NCIS – 354 eps., 494M min.
Back To The Outback – film, 485M min.
The Wheel of Time (Prime Video) – 7 eps, 467M min.

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.