Bridgerton tops Nielsen streaming ratings for the first week of 2021

The latest runaway hit on Netflix has topped the Nielsen streaming ratings for the week of December 28 through January 3. Bridgerton said goodbye to 2020 and hello to 2021 with the highest ratings in Nielsen’s new streaming ratings system, with Cobra Kai following in a close second.

The new Nielsen streaming ratings divide content into three categories: Original Series, Acquired Series and Movies (which includes both original and acquired). The new system is more cumbersome than the original list of the top 10 streaming programs, but it’s a step in the right direction because it’s hard to count streaming minutes for a series against a single film.

When it comes to the top Original Series, Bridgerton came in with 2.65 billion minutes viewed, followed by Cobra Kai (2.61 billion) and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina with 961 million. The Mandalorian gave Disney+ their only spot on the list at No. 5 with 707 million minutes viewed.

Even with the new category system, Bridgerton was far and away the winner for the week. Disney+ had the top spot in the Movie category with Soul (1.34 billion minutes) while the Office closed out its run on Netflix with 937 million minutes.

Bridgerton tops Nielsen ratings, even with their new category system

As television viewing habits continue to evolve, so too do the systems designed to measure how many people are consuming content. Metrics are everything, of course. The challenge continues to be finding a way to accurately measure…well…just about everything.

It’s impossible to measure how many people subscribe to a streaming service because of so many shared accounts. Old TV ratings only accounted for live views, but now networks use the Live +7 views because those help offset viewers who record programs to watch later. Now Nielsen is trying to measure streaming ratings, but evidently their system is already flawed.

Streaming services are unhappy that Nielsen only measures viewing done on actual televisions, so if you’re streaming shows on your phone or computer then that data isn’t being reflected in the number of streaming minutes being reported. It’s also worth noting that there’s no measurement for the second week of Wonder Woman 1984’s release after the film set a record on Christmas Day because Nielsen does not regularly include HBO Max content in their assessment of ratings.

While the kinks in the new Nielsen streaming ratings are worked out, the fact remains that Bridgerton was a bonafide hit for Netflix in the last week of 2020 and the first few days of 2021. Word of mouth and more people stuck indoors during quarantine likely played a role in Bridgerton’s week to week increase, and it’s proof that people are eager to check out new content just as much as they want to binge perennial favorites like The Office and Grey’s Anatomy.