“Cobra Kai” made it to the No. 2 slot on Nielsen’s Top 10 SVOD rankings for the week of Aug. 24, with 1.4 billion minutes of the former YouTube series watched in its first three days after becoming available on Netflix.
The “Karate Kid” sequel series, which launched Seasons 1 and 2 on Netflix Aug. 28, was runner-up to “Lucifer,” the Tom Ellis-led drama that debuted the first half of its fifth season on the streaming service Aug. 21, in the ratings currency company’s rankings, maintaining its first-place position for the second consecutive week.
Netflix picked up the first two seasons of “Cobra Kai” from YouTube in July and plans to launch the unaired Season 3 next year.
Nielsen launched its weekly Top 10 streaming shows list earlier this month, beginning with results for the week of Aug. 3. Both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video series have been counted for the rankings, though Amazon shows have yet to rise up enough to make it onto the most-watched series chart. As of Thursday’s report for the week of Aug. 24, Nielsen has added Disney+ and Hulu platforms to its count, though shows from neither streaming service made the Top 10 cut.
Below are Nielsen’s Top 10 series for Aug. 24, 2020-Aug. 30, 2020.
“Lucifer” (75 episodes): 2.007 billion minutes
“Cobra Kai” (20 episodes): 1.432 billion minutes
“The Office” (192 episodes): 919 million minutes
“The Legend of Korra” (52 episodes): 808 million minutes
“The Umbrella Academy” (20 episodes): 758 million minutes
“Grey’s Anatomy” (361 episodes): 703 million minutes
“Criminal Minds” (277 episodes): 671 million minutes
“Shameless” (121 episodes): 637 million minutes
“NCIS” (353 episodes): 527 million minutes
“Cocomelon” (3 episodes): 336 million minutes
Nielsen hopes to add additional streaming platforms to this metric in the near future. Another goal would be cutting down the lag time from viewing to reporting.
As of June 30, 2020, Netflix had 72.9 million U.S. and Canadian subscribers. (That’s how Netflix reports.) Amazon at last count reported 150 million Prime subscribers in January, though a Prime subscription includes retail perks like free two-day shipping, and doesn’t break out U.S. subs from its global count. Netflix has more than 190 million members around the world.