“The Golden Girls,” now in library form on Hulu, cracked Nielsen’s Top 10 acquired streaming shows list in the week following star Betty White’s death. And 41% of those who watched the classic sitcom during the first full week of 2022 were aged 35-49, according to the ratings currency company.
For the week of Jan. 3, 2022 through Jan. 9, 2022, 180 episodes of “The Golden Girls” was streamed for 384 million minutes on Hulu, Nielsen reported on Thursday. That was good for No. 8 on the acquired streaming shows chart.
White died on Dec. 31, 2021, just 17 days shy of her 100th birthday. See what “The Golden Girls” beat the following week — and what beat “The Golden Girls” — below.
“The Golden Girls” didn’t make the overall Top 10, which also includes original programming. See that chart below.
As you can see when comparing the two tables, the original stuff comfortably outperformed the library content. “Cobra Kai,” which released its fourth season the same day White died, scored 2.2 billion minutes streamed in January 2022’s first full week. Disney movie “Encanto” and Netflix series “The Witcher” also broke the billion mark. Netflix’s “Stay Close” came damn close.
“Cocomelon,” which was No. 1 on the acquired chart, ranks just sixth overall.
White has posthumously been bringing a lot of eyeballs to the TV. NBC’s “Celebrating Betty White” drew 4.3 million “live” viewers on Monday night. We do not yet have delayed-viewing statistics for that special.
“Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever,” White’s agent Jeff Witjas said in a statement following her passing. “I will miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much. I don’t think Betty ever feared passing because she always wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again.”
White was best known for playing the dim-witted Rose Nylund on “The Golden Girls” and its spin-off “The Golden Palace.” The “Mary Tyler Moore Show” alum had a career resurgence a decade or so ago with “Hot in Cleveland.”