The debuts of Season 11 of Showtime series Shameless and Season 8 of the NBC hourlong drama The Blacklist bolstered an already potent Netflix off-network programming stable for the week of Oct. 11-17, with five acquired Netflix series finishing in Nielsen's weekly top 10 of the most watched shows in U.S. subscription streaming.
The Emmy-winning Shameless, starring William H. Macy as alcoholic patriarch Frank Gallagher, debuted its 11th season on Netflix on Oct. 11 and captured 964 million viewing minutes across all 134 series episodes available on Netflix to finish fourth among all shows for the week.
The Blacklist, licensed from producer Universal Television and starring James Spader as criminal mastermind Raymond "Red" Reddington, finished in sixth place, with 656 million viewing minutes across 169 episodes on Netflix. The eighth season of The Blacklist debuted on Netflix on Oct. 6.
Comedy classic Seinfeld, a former Hulu on-demand selection which premiered on the top SVOD platform a week earlier, drew 581 million viewing minutes across 166 episodes to finish seventh.
Meanwhile, stalwart animated kids series Cocomelon (fifth place with 662 million streaming minutes) and CBS procedural NCIS (eighth place with 572 million minutes) also sustained their almost weekly appearances in the top 10.
Not surprisingly, it was Netflix's Korean-language series Squid Game--the platform's biggest debut ever--that sustained its position at the top of the rankings, with nine first-season episodes garnering 2.254 billion viewing minutes.
This whopping viewership total actually marks the dystopian-themed show's first major audience deceleration--Squid Game, which debuted on Netflix on Sept. 17, drew 3.021 billion viewing minutes the week of Oct. 4-10.
As far as original series go, besides Squid Game, it was the Season 3 premiere of Netflix's You, which stars Penn Badgley as dangerously charming and obsessive protagonist (antagonist?) Joe Goldberg, finished in second place with 1,938 billion viewing minutes.
Another Netflix original, Maid, finished third and in the top 10 for the third straight week, with the domestic-servant-themed freshman series garnering 1.474 billion viewing minutes across 10 installments.
As is most often the case, Netflix shows occupied all 10 slots on Nielsen's rankings of the top subscription streaming services, which also account for viewing on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus.
These ratings aren't like the traditional flat everyone-gets-every-channel measurements of linear TV old. Around 74 million North American households pay for Netflix, which is just under twice as many as the SVOD platforms it competes with in Nielsen's rankings.
Besides being distorted by the differing scale of the respective platforms, Nielsen's rankings are also a month old. Flawed or not, however, their one of the view looksies the general publics into the realm of streaming program performance.
With that in mind, the one sub-ranking not dominated by Netflix, SVOD movies, had five Disney Plus titles in it this week, starting with Marvel title Black Widow, which exited the $30 "Premiere Access" PVOD window and arrived in the Disney Plus smorgasboard on Oct. 6. The movie, starring Scarlett Johansson in the title role, drew 441 million viewing minutes.
Notably, the chart below incorrectly lists Disney's Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas as a Netflix title.
Previous Weekly Rankings:
Oct. 4-10: Not for Nothin', But a Show That Left Broadcast TV 23 Years Ago Just Cracked the Top 10
Sept. 27 - Oct. 3: Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Is the First Show to Garner 3 Billion or More Viewing Minutes in the Post-Pandemic Era
Sept. 12-19: Netflix Phenom ‘Squid Game’ Got Off to a Surprisingly Slow Start
Sept. 6-11: Netflix’s ‘Clickbait’ Holds Off Surging ‘Lucifer’
August 30 - Sept. 5: Netflix’s 'Clickbait' Steals Audience Traffic From 'Manifest'
August 23-29: Netflix’s 'Manifest' Soars Back to No. 1 with the Debut of Season 3
August 16-22: Netflix’s ’Outer Banks’ Loses 37% of Its Audience, Still Finishes No. 1
August 9-15: Netflix’s Scrappy ‘Outer Banks’ Maintains the No. 1 Spot
August 2-8: Netflix's ‘Outer Banks’ Surpasses 2.1 Billion Viewing Minutes
July 26 - August 1: Netflix's 'All American' Edges 'Outer Banks' for No. 1
July 19-25: Netflix’s ‘Virgin River’ Maintains the No. 1 Spot
July 12-18: Netflix’s ‘Virgin River’ Ends Five-Week ‘Manifest’ Winning Streak
June 28-July 4: Amazon’s $200 Million Bet on Paramount’s ‘The Tomorrow War’ Pays Off
June 21-27: ‘Manifest’ Continues Series Saving Flight Plan on Netflix
June 14-20: Netflix’s ‘Manifest’ Scores the Year’s Biggest SVOD Audience So Far
June 7-13: Netflix’s ‘Sweet Tooth’ Shows Bite for the Week of June 7-13
May 31-June 6: Netflix’s ‘Lucifer’ Bedevils SVOD’s Biggest Audience Since Season 3 of 'Cobra Kai’ Debuted in January
May 24-30: Netflix’s ‘Lucifer’ Has SVOD’s Biggest Week* Since ‘Coming 2 America’ Debuted in Early-March
May 17-23: Zack Snyder’s ‘Army of the Dead’ on Netflix Leads a Rather Lifeless Week for the U.S. Streaming Biz
May 3-9: Netflix’s $100 Million Bet on Sony’s ‘The Mitchells vs. The Machines’ Pays Off
April 26 - May 2: Netflix’s ‘Shadow and Bone’ Edges Hulu’s ‘Handmade’s Tale' in Rebound Week for the Streaming Biz
April 19-25: Netflix’s ‘NCIS’ Off-net Run Wins Another ‘Easttown and Down' Week for the U.S. SVOD Biz
April 12-18: Disney Plus’ ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ Builds to 855 Million Streaming Minutes and a No. 1 Finish
April 5-11: Give Netflix's 'Thunder Force' Five for Winning the Week of April 5-11
March 29 - April 4: Netflix’s ‘The Irregulars’ Tops the Easter Week Charts
March 22-28: - 'Falcon and Winter Soldier' Tops SVOD Originals
March 15-21: - 'Grey's Anatomy' Re-Runs Top SVOD Ranker
March 8-14: - ‘The Crown’ Got Royal Gains from Meghan’s Big Oprah Interview
March 1-7: - Amazon Tops the Charts for the First Time with ‘Coming 2 America’
Feb 22-28: - Netflix’s 'Ginny & Georgia' Leads the SVOD Biz
