👉 🔥 CLICK HERE! 🔥 👈

The two buzziest genre projects on TV right now are finally having their first viewership battle. HBOs Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon and Amazon Prime Videos The Lord of the Rings expansion The Rings of Power both appeared on Nielsens streaming rankings for the week of Aug. 29-Sept. 4, with The Rings of Power coming out on top — taking the No. 1 position with 1.3 billion minutes viewed. House of the Dragon was behind it, ranking as No. 5 and being watched for 781 million minutes, 61% less than its rival. (Note: Nielsen measures only U.S. viewing on television screens, excluding other countries and devices.) This isnt an apples-to-apples comparison, as the availability of the two series doesnt match up exactly. The Rings of Power debuted with two episodes at 9 p.m. ET on Sept. 1, meaning they were streamable for the last three days plus a few hours of Nielsens viewing window. By contrast, House of the Dragon premiered its first episode at 9 p.m. ET on Aug. 21, its second on Aug. 28 and its third on Sept. 4 — with Episode 3 arriving just a few hours before Nielsen concluded its count for the week. Additionally, its important to note that The Rings of Power is a streaming exclusive, while House of the Dragon has cable viewership that Nielsens streaming chart doesnt account for. As such, the Aug. 29-Sept. 4 viewing window does primarily match up both series first two episodes against each other, and both series have roughly hour-long episodes, but the fact of streaming exclusivity for The Rings of Power is a solid advantage. The contingent of House of the Dragon viewers watching the show on cable is sizable; for example, per Nielsen, 3.2 million of the 9.9 million viewers on premiere night for House of the Dragon were watching on the HBO channel. Thats roughly one-third of viewers. But still, House of the Dragon had the advantage of its first two episodes being available to watch throughout the entire week. Plus, the small window of availability for Episode 3 shouldnt be ignored. For example, when Episode 1 of the series premiered at the tail end of Nielsens Aug. 15-21 window, it didnt make the chart, but it still clocked 327 million minutes of streaming viewing in its first few hours on HBO Max. Charting higher than House of the Dragon this week was its predecessor. Game of Thrones took the No. 3 position for the second week in a row with 792 million minutes of streaming viewing thanks to fans rewatching the series as it returns to the zeitgeist. Therefore, combined with the 781 million viewing minutes of the prequel, as a franchise, Game of Thrones does have The Lord of the Rings beat — though of course, the latter doesnt have the benefit of a long-running series preceding it. This weeks Nielsen Streaming Top 10 is the first third-party viewership data to be released about The Rings of Power. Previously, the only information available about its audience was Amazons self-reporting that the series reached 25 million global viewers in its first day, so this is a big win for the streamer, which until now never had a series debut as No. 1 in its opening weekend (though one movie had a chart-topping debut: Coming 2 America). The billion-dollar budget Amazon invested in The Rings of Power — making it the most expensive TV project ever — has certainly begun to pay off. In the No. 2 chart position for the second week in a row was the Netflix movie Me Time with 927 million minutes in its first full week of availability, down just slightly from last weeks 971 million minutes. Following at No. 3 was NCIS, which makes the Top 10 most weeks thanks to constant Netflix viewing, but charted higher during this viewing window perhaps as viewers rewatched the series ahead of CBS Sept. 19 premiere of Season 20. Limited series Devil in Ohio debuted as the No. 6 streaming program, racking up 716 million minutes viewed in its first three days of availability on Netflix. In seventh and eighth place were usual suspects Cocomelon and Greys Anatomy with 693 million and 674 million minutes viewed, respectively. Stranger Things dropped from No. 4 to No. 9 in the ninth week of full availability for Season 4, being viewed for 667 million minutes compared to last weeks 890 million. And in last place was Netflixs Echoes, a far fall as it was last weeks No. 1 streaming program. From Aug. 29 to Sept. 4, its second full week of availability, the limited series was watched for 627 million minutes, compared to 1.1 billion minutes the week before. See Nielsens newest Top 10 streaming rankings below, with overall streaming titles for Aug. 29-Sept. 4 first, followed by original streaming titles, acquired titles and then films. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has scored a victory in the Nielsen SVOD charts over genre rival House of the Dragon. As per The Hollywood Reporter, Prime Videos new mega-budget fantasy epic managed to capture a staggering 1.25 billion watch minutes in the wake of its premiere on Sep. 1. HBOs Game of Thrones prequel continued to score reasonably well, however, with a total of 781 million minutes watched on its Max streaming service. One caveat to this metric is that it does not include audience figures for those watching the series on HBOs traditional television service, a sizable portion of the overall viewership. A Tolkien Adaptations JourneyTranslated into raw numbers of viewers, the figures also stack up well for Prime Video. Averaging at around 9.5 million viewers for the first two episodes, it beat out the likes of fellow Prime fantasy epic The Wheel of Time, which managed 6.6 million viewers across its initial three episodes. Another of Prime Videos most successful original series, Reacher, was only able to accumulate around half of the initial appeal of The Rings of Power, with 4.7 million people tuning in to watch the show on release. Its not all good news for the streaming giant, though, as audience feedback on the latest outing for the works of Tolkien are decidedly mixed. Although critics scores remain high at 84% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing, the shows overall audience score sits at a mere 38%. Concerns over the perceived lack of connection to the original lore laid out by the author became so pronounced that showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne were forced to respond publicly. After a journalist at a Television Critic Association press event suggested as much, McKay responded, We dont feel vaguely connected. We feel deeply, deeply connected to those folks and work every day to be even closer connected. Thats really how we think about it. Additionally, extensive reports of racist trolling directed at some cast members led to an additional rebuttal from the show via a statement on Twitter. In it, many of those who worked on the show came out to defend cast members of color against the online abuse they were receiving upon the shows release. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is now streaming on Prime Video. New episodes premiere every Thursday. Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Items