Insight

2022 has been a momentous year for the British monarchy. Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June were followed three months later by the death of Queen Elizabeth II. As you might expect, there’s been a huge amount of royal-focused programming as a result. We’ll never be royals, but our fascination with watching them seems undiminished.

We‘ve covered the Jubilee and State Funeral in previous editions. More recently, attention has turned to two offerings from Netflix: one a dramatisation based on real events; the other a documentary from some of the participants themselves.

The Crown’s eagerly-awaited series 5 landed on November 9th. When we look at a new series of an existing title, we often see an increase in viewing to the previous series. People want to remind themselves what happened in earlier episodes, and the uninitiated succumb to the pressure to get up to speed before a new series is all their friendship group wants to discuss.

In the two weeks before the latest series of Stranger Things dropped, viewing to previous episodes jumped by more than 3.5 times: an average of 241k per day compared to 66k for the two weeks prior. To varying degrees, we see a similar pattern for After Life, Bridgerton, Cobra Kai and Ozark. So, the impending release of a new series is a good predictor of increased viewing for a show’s previous series.

Patterns, though, are often shifted by significant events. The two weeks before series 5 of The Crown was released saw viewing to the previous series drop by 43%, from a daily average of 278k to 159k. The significant event was, of course, the death of the Queen. In the two weeks following Her Majesty’s death on September 8th 2022, viewing to old series of The Crown jumped almost 16-fold. Having caught up, or joined in, there was no need for people to (re)watch previous seasons immediately prior to the release of the latest series in early November.

Our day-by-day audience analysis shows the second-highest peak occurred on the day of the state funeral – September 19th. And the highest peak – Sunday September 25th – occurred two days after the disastrous mini-budget from the short-lived government of Liz Truss. A case of television providing a welcome escape from reality, perhaps.

Chart: Daily audience to any episode of The Crown (series 1-4)
Source: Barb. The Crown series 1-4 (Netflix). August 1st – November 8th 2022

When we consider the audience for series 5 itself, episode 1 achieved a healthy figure of just over 2.8m over its first 7 days. In the context of other notable SVOD releases across the year, this makes it one of the most popular shows on the streaming service.

The table below shows overnight and 7-day viewing figures for some of the most popular SVOD titles in 2022 – noting that this is not a comprehensive list and so not an overall top 15.

Table: Selected SVOD programme audiences overnight and 7-day
Source: Barb. Selected SVOD programmes. Ranked by 7-day audience. Highest episode audience per series over 7 days.

Perhaps viewers feel burnt out by the heavy diet of royal-focused content, but the series sitting conspicuously at the top of the table suggests this isn’t the case.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex released their eponymous series – Harry and Meghan – on December 8th. Their insider view has set the media alight with rolling coverage in many UK news outlets. In context against other SVOD programming, Harry and Meghan has achieved large audiences: ahead of the popular third series of After Life from Ricky Gervais over 7 days and with an overnight audience more than double any other programme in the table.

However, context is certainly key, and we can’t ignore the sizeable audiences watching the most popular shows on linear channels. Masterchef: The Professionals appeared on BBC 1 in the same week that Harry & Megan dropped and delivered an equivalent seven-day audience of just under 5m. And this is far behind audiences for Strictly Come Dancing and the recent men’s football world cup.

Audiences for episodes 4-6 of Harry and Meghan are considerably lower than those for episodes 1-3. While this is unlikely to reduce the media attention the series is receiving, perhaps even the British public have their limits when it comes to programming focused on one family. At Barb, we crave a different kind of buzz – one that will be satisfied with ratings, context, and no tripping over data.

Doug Whelpdale, Head of Insight at Barb