Nielsen Streaming Charts: Andor Drops Out Of Top 10

It’s time for the weekly Nielsen Streaming Charts update! Andor has dropped out of the top 10 original series charts. In 10th place is The Handmaid’s Tale with 441 million minutes, and last week Andor had a little less than 400 million minutes. Previous episodes never really reached the numbers The Handmaid’s Tale has, which explains why Andor’s numbers are not good enough for the top 10 this week. With that Andor is the first Star Wars live action series to disappear from the original series streaming charts. Read more after the jump!

Bix was tortured in episode 9

Chances are Andor is still very close to the top 10, and it’s certainly the most popular original series on Disney+ at the moment, but this week the competition simply was more popular. And when we look at all series, including acquired shows, then The Simpsons and Bluey are the two most popular series on Disney+, but Bluey has 100+ episodes and The Simpsons more than 660. Still, I am pretty confident Disney won’t be too happy that a very expensive all new series based on a very popular franchise cannot beat a 2018 pre-school cartoon series (Bluey with 566 million minutes) or ancient things like The Simpsons, which has an astounding 34 seasons and first premiered in 1989. Which is good enough for 384 million minutes streamed. About the same number Andor has. But of course Andor only has 9 episodes in the recent charts. So on a per episode basis Andor has a lot more viewers than either The Simpsons or Bluey.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law also disappeared from the charts around the mid-season point, only to return with later episodes, Ms. Marvel was also almost entirely absent from the top 10 after the pilot with (on average) less than 300 million minutes streamed, so Andor is not the first Disney+ original live action series not to make it into the top 10.

And animated series like The Bad Batch also dropped out of the charts after the first two episodes, mini-series like Tales of the Jedi never even made it into the charts to begin with, still, it’s a first for a big budget Star Wars live action show to drop out of the charts.

This has no impact on Andor, season 2 (the final season) is greenlit and in production, but the question remains if Disney considers the numbers good enough (and it’s more complex than just pure ratings, other factors like number of new subscribers added, the demographic of the viewership etc are also important) to greenlight similar projects like Andor in the future, when shows like The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, while less loved by critics, were much bigger hits with audiences that easily made twice the numbers of Andor – and that doesn’t even include The Mandalorian.

My guess is that Disney won’t be too pleased that some rather expensive original series aren’t that popular with the masses, but as mentioned we also have to factor in the demographics and only Disney will know the exact details here. If, for example, a series like Ms. Marvel or Andor was meant to target specific people and said people DID watch the series, even lower numbers may still be considered a success.
We also have to see how Willow will fare (a series that allegedly had a budget of $150 million), the user reviews for that series are savage after the first two episodes and the series has an abysmal 5.3 user rating on IMDB.

Let’s see if Andor can return to the charts with its final episodes, similar to She-Hulk. Next week the finale of the Narkina 5 prison arc will be added, maybe that episode brought in more viewers again, since some people may want to binge arcs (which is certainly a better experience than watching the arcs stretched over several weeks). But as usual it also depends on the competition. For example, the Boba Fett pilot would not have made it into the top 10 this week with just 389 million minutes, but when it was released it easily made it into the top 10.
This week’s charts are once more entirely dominated by Netflix, in all categories, Netflix original shows are in the first nine places, only The Handmaid’s Tale in 10th place is on Hulu (owned by Disney). And when we look at the top 10 overall content, including movies, original and acquired series, then Netflix sweeps the competition entirely. But of course Netflix also has the most subscribers in the US.

The Nielsen Streaming Charts

• Review: The Bad Batch Into The Breach (S03E13) (Disney+ Animated Series)
• Review: The Bad Batch Juggernaut (S03E12) (Disney+ Animated Series)
• Review: The Bad Batch Identity Crisis / Point Of No Return (S03E10 & E11) (Disney+ Animated Series)
• Tales of the Empire Coming To Disney+ On May 4th
• Review: The Bad Batch The Harbinger (S03E09) (Disney+ Animated Series)
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