Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
In olden times, studios made all their money in the summer, when kids fresh out from school could go see all the movies they want at the box office. The television networks made all their money during “sweeps” months (November and May), when the ratings in those months set advertising rates for the entire year.
Nowadays, streamers make their “money” in December.
That’s because streamers have the best opportunity to attract new subscribers. Christmas is the time for giving, and a lot of folks give new devices like connected TVs, video game consoles and iPads. These new devices are often pre-loaded with streaming applications, and each streamer wants you to try them out first. If they can hook you in December, you’ll likely pay them throughout the year (and longer).
This fact explains why Christmas Day was such a banner day for new content. We saw the release of not one, but two blockbuster films, and a new series from one of Netflix’s biggest showrunners, Shonda Rhimes.
So who won the most important streaming month of the year? Let’s find out. In this edition, I’ll run through the candidates by streamer, then we’ll look at what the various data points, and decide on a winner. At the end, we’ll have a bonus holiday surprise.
(Caveats: Since the streamers don’t release data, we’re left to sift the tea leaves and judge who won by various metrics like Google Trends, IMDb ratings, Nielsen ratings and what not. Also, this is a US only look, since it’s the country we have the best data for. Read about past winners here, here or here.)
AT&T’s Big Entrant: Wonder Woman 1984
If this were a contest to win the news-cycle, Warner Bros won that prize hands down in December. If you missed it, Warner Bros announced that that all their films would be released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max (for one month). Wonder Woman 1984 was the first test of this new strategy.
Did it work?
It looks like it! HBO Max announced that Wonder Woman 1984 “set records,” though it was vague on what those records were. Over half of their “retail” subscribers watched Wonder Woman 1984 when it came out via HBO Max. Unfortunately, we still don’t know how many folks actually watched Wonder Woman 1984. (Two good tweet threads on that here or here.) This was far and away HBO’s biggest hit of the month.
(Wonder Woman 1984 also netted $16.7 million in their opening weekend, which is good, considering a vast majority of theaters are closed.)
Disney’s Entrants: The Mandalorian and Soul
For the first time in this series of articles, a TV series is vying for the top prize two months in a row. The Mandalorian is a juggernaut of fan interest, and the season 2 finale didn’t disappoint. (I won’t spoil it if somehow you didn’t watch yet.) From a ratings standpoint, The Mandalorian continues to be the one non-Netflix show to make it in Nielsen’s weekly ratings. (Nielsen releases ratings after a four-week delay.)
Disney also released Soul—the Pixar summer tentpole that was delayed due to Covid-19—straight to Disney+ on Christmas Day. Earlier in the fall, Disney rebased Mulan to Disney+, but for an extra $30 price for early access. Likely, the Mulan release disappointed for Disney, especially compared to the huge demand for Hamilton. Hence, Soul is mimicking the latter release strategy.
As for their other streaming service, Hulu had a fairly light month for new releases. This makes sense, since Hulu’s biggest value is airing broadcast and cable shows the day after they air. As such, Hulu originals tend to come out in the summer, not the fall. Disney+ also released Godmothered, but I didn’t see a lot of evidence that it moved the popularity needle.
Netflix’s Entrants: The Midnight Sky and Bridgerton
Before the month, I would have told you that Bridgerton was Netflix’s biggest contender for the winner in December. It was getting strong early buzz, and it comes from a hit making showrunner in Shonda Rhimes. Grey’s Anatomy was recently described by Netflix as their most watched TV show on the platform by total hours watched. And this week Netflix revealed that, yes, Bridgerton is a hit for them. Specifically, their 5th most watched TV show to date and 10th most watched as a percentage of Netflix customers:
The surprise for Netflix in December was The Midnight Sky, a George Clooney helmed sci-fi flick. This I would not have guessed. Netflix revealed to Deadline that The Midnight Sky will be watched by 72 million folks over its first 28 days on the service. For context, that would make it the 9th highest film that Netflix has released over its history and 15th most watched by percentage of customers:
Netflix of course is known for volume as much as anything. It’s other contenders this month include Virgin River, which released at the very end of November, but led the ratings for Nielsen’s ratings for the week of November 30th:
Prime Video’s Entrants: The Expanse
When Syfy cancelled The Expanse, Amazon swept in to continue the series. This move made sense for Amazon since they were already licensing the rights for the rest of the world. Like The Boys, which is most likely Amazon’s biggest series, The Expanse was also released weekly to drive buzz. Unlike The Boys, The Expanse is unlikely to crack the Nielsen Top 10. While this series remains very popular with fans, who have rated it an 8.5 on IMDb, with 103,000 votes, it hasn’t broken out of its core sci-fi demographic.
(By the way, I’m a HUGE fan of the book series, so I’m rooting for this show.)
So Who Won December 2020?
As always, we don’t really know. Each service tells us something different and usually declares everything was a wild success. I’m going to focus on my tried-and-true Google Trends data, but also a new metric, IMDb ratings. Of our contenders, these are the top five highest rated shows on Google Trends for the month of December:
You could look at this in two different ways. Wonder Woman 1984 had the peak of all the content evaluated in December. This was likely driven by their advertising campaign, which probably outspent every other contender except for Soul.
However, in terms of average interest over December, Disney’s The Mandalorian and Soul took those prizes (at 20 and 19 average interest). (Though Soul was likely inflated a bit by folks googling for “soul” in general.) Netflix’s Virgin River could fall off Nielsen’s ratings fairly quickly, as it only netted a 6 in average Google searches after its launch. The Expanse fared the worst of our contenders, with a peak of only a 4 on Google Trends.
For another look at this, I pulled the IMDb ratings for each of these contenders. While IMDb data isn’t perfect (and look, no data source is perfect in streaming) it does a good job of capturing which films and shows are both buzzy and well-received. I like to measure both the number of ratings and the average of those ratings, since both correlate with viewership. The goal is to get as high to the upper right as possible:
A few interesting tidbits and caveats for this chart. First, The Mandalorian and The Expanse benefit from being released for much longer than the other shows on this chart. And as you’d expect the longer a piece of content is released, the more reviews it gets. That caveat aside, The Mandalorian is in rare territory, with hundreds of thousands of views and nearly a 9 rating. Of the shows or films that are brand new to 2020, Soul is the big winner. That film had nearly as many ratings as Wonder Woman (95K to 110K), but a much better rating of 8.2 to 5.5.
So who won? We gotta give it to The Mandalorian. It had the highest viewership likely (in the United States) and the highest (positive) customer reviews. Given that Disney still had this and Soul, they take the “streamer” crown for the month.
What Else Were Folks Watching? Christmas Films
Last month, I said that you can tell the history of Hollywood through Christmas films. With that on my mind, I looked at Google Trends for a few buzzy Christmas films. Here’s how they compare to Wonder Woman 1984:
In other words, on Christmas day, a lot of films that were released 20 or more years ago were the most in-demand films in America. This makes sense, but also shows the value of owning a content library.
The Entertainment Strategy Guy writes under this pseudonym at his eponymous website. A former exec at a streaming company, he prefers writing to sending emails/attending meetings, so he launched his own website. Sign up for his newsletter at Substack for regular thoughts and analysis on the business, strategy and economics of the media and entertainment industry.
