The Witcher dominates ratings in record-breaking month for streaming

This December, folks in the U.S. streamed more TV than at any other point in history, with the second season of The Witcher being their show of choice.

The second season of Netflix’s The Witcher came out on December 17 and quickly became one of the most-watched seasons of anything the streaming service has ever put out. Is it any wonder that Netflix already has a couple prequels and spinoffs in the making? This show, based off The Witcher novels by Andrzej Sapkowski and the video games by CD Projekt Red, is huge!

Now, Neilsen has released its U.S. streaming chart for the week of December 13-19, which covers shows on Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video (the biggest absence there is probably HBO Max). There are two takeaways from the latest chart, according to Deadline: one, at 183 billion minutes of content streamed overall, this was the biggest week for streaming in history, handily beating the 160 billion minutes of content streamed during the first week of COVID lockdown in March of 2020. And two: The Witcher was on top of the pile.

Check out the top 10 most streamed shows below (unless indicated in a parenthetical, everything is on Netflix):

1. The Witcher – 16 episodes, 2.2 billion minutes
2. CoComelon – 15 eps., 840 milion minutes
3. Criminal Minds – 317 eps., 631M min.
4. Hawkeye (Disney+) – 5 eps., 580M min.
5. Lost In Space – 28 eps., 569M min.
6. The Unforgivable – film, 566M min.
7. Seinfeld – 166 eps., 511M min.
8. NCIS – 354 eps., 494M min.
9. Back To The Outback – film, 485M min.
10. The Wheel of Time (Amazon Prime Video) – 7 eps, 467M min.

CoComelon, if you’re wondering, if a Netflix series aimed at small children. If you have kids, you know how easy it can be to set them in front of the TV and let it rip, which I imagine accounts for that show’s high placement.

This chart is great news for Netflix, for Henry Cavill, and for streaming services in general. I imagine streaming numbers will only continue to rise as more people embrace streaming platforms over traditional over-the-top TV. Streaming accounted for 28% of total viewing time on TV sets during this period, but it rose to 33% during the holiday break week. I expect it will continue to rise in 2022.

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