Severance is definitely punching above its weight with the debut of Season 2, giving Apple TV+ a rare spot on the Nielsen streaming charts.
With the release of the second episode of Season 2, the series drew 622M minutes viewed across all episodes in the U.S. from January 20 to January 26, placing it at No. 5 on the streaming originals list. That’s one spot lower than the series was on the charts the week before, but it is a higher viewing time than the Season 2 debut week, when the series got 589M minutes viewed.
Nielsen says around 43% of the viewing total went to Season 2’s two new episodes, which indicates there is still a pretty big portion of the audience watching or rewatching Season 1. That could bode well for its future trajectory on the charts as the season progresses.
This is Apple’s first appearance on the Nielsen charts in quite some time, with Severance even outperforming Ted Lasso in Season 3’s debut week.
The overall Top 10 was led by The Night Agent, which is expected given the second season debuted on January 23. Across all episodes, the Netflix series amassed a whopping 3.1B minutes viewed, which Nielsen says is a new weekly record for the series. About 76% of the viewing came from the ten new episodes.
Interestingly, Dexter has been performing quite well since it landed back on Netflix with 783M viewing minutes between Netflix and Paramount+ over this interval. The prequel series Dexter: Original Sin, which was airing during this time period, has yet to make its way on the Nielsen charts, despite what is seemingly a renewed interest in the original series.
However, as Deadline reported, Dexter: Original Sin is performing quite well on Paramount+, which only goes to show the tough landscape for streaming right now. Plenty of titles may be performing well on their respective services, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re able to break through the noise in any Top 10 charts.
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