Schitt's Creek Leads Nielsen's Streaming Top 10

Netflix's Schitt's Creek was the runaway title on Nielsen's latest weekly list of top 10 streaming shows in terms of minutes watched. Because the reporting and analysis takes some time, these charts are relatively staggered. The newest numbers are for the week between October 19 and October 25, though it still offers an insight that streaming services themselves typically don't into who's watching what, and how much of it.

Nielsen--the information, data, and measurement firm synonymous with TV ratings--clocked Canadian sitcom Schitt's Creek as being watched by at least two people for 1,058 million minutes across 80 episodes. The ever-popular The Office (which is still on Netflix, though going to Peacock in 2021) netted 869 million minutes across all 192 episodes. The only non-Netflix streaming programming to crack the top 10 is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Borat 2, which came in at number eight with 570 million minutes.

Nielsen's expansion into measuring viewing habits on streaming shows are a new, and very recent development: Back in late August, Fox Sports executive Michael Mulvihill tweeted about the "significance" of the move, also signaling "the first time TV viewing outside the home will be fully integrated into Nielsen's national TV ratings."

Despite whatever perceptions there might be about however long behind the times Nielsen might be lagging, the list is still catching up with the landscape--even though ratings take a while to be released. When the list first premiered in early September, Nielsen was only measuring programs on Netflix and Amazon, with other streaming providers to be added in the future. This reported list was pulled together across Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix.