Disney Star Wars Declared A “Dead Brand” After ‘Andor’ Premiere Ratings Revealed By Nielsen
YouTuber Valiant Renegade declared “Disney Star Wars a dead brand” following the release of the premiere ratings for their latest Star Wars series Andor.
Nielsen released their ratings for the week of September 19-25 and Netflix took the top two spots with the newly released Dahmer series raking in over 3.658 billion minutes. Cobra Kai took second with 1.110 billion minutes.
Andor does not even show up in the Top 10 for Nielsen’s overall ratings.
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In order to find Andor, one has to look at the Nielsen Original ratings. The series, which debuted three episodes when it was released on September 21st, clocked in at 624 million minutes.
That was good for only sixth on the originals chart behind Dahmer, Cobra Kai, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Fate: The Winx Saga, and El rey, Vincente Fernández.
Valiant Renegade assessed these numbers saying, “That means if we assume that everybody who turned on Andor, watched the available watch time to completion, meaning all three episodes from start to finish then that means that somewhere only little north of 5 million people watched the premiere of Andor on Disney+, which is atrocious.”
He continued, “That is less than half that of Rings of Power. That is about a third of that of House of the Dragon. And that’s just over the first night for those other two shows.”
Later, he says, “A lot of people who watched the premiere of Andor said that the first couple of episodes were very boring and that things didn’t start really picking up ’til the third and even the fourth episode that wasn’t even out this week. So how many of these views, how much of this watch time were people that might have watched one or two episodes and then dropped off?
“Meaning how much of that 645 million minutes of watch time is heavily front loaded towards the first episode or two? How many people actually watched the third episode? That’s the real question,” he asserted.
Looking forward to next week, Valiant Renegade states, “And next week’s numbers from Nielsen when episode four comes into play is going to be interested because if the trend continues we’re going to see Andor having started out with very weak numbers on the Nielsen charts and it’s only going to get precipitously worse from here.”
Still later, Valiant Renegade then asserts, “And with three episodes totaling just about two hours of content, a little over two hours of available watch time for that content as a matter of fact, there’s no reason whatsoever that Andor should not have been at or above the 1 billion minutes watch mark.
“That is something that is easily done by Netflix almost every Friday in its sleep with a new movie release that’s also around 90 to 120 minutes,” he added.
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As for why these numbers for Andor are so low, Valiant Renegade posits, “Take a look again at these terrible numbers for Andor, 624 million watch minutes, and soak it in Disney because you did this. Disney’s animosity towards fans is exactly what they’ve received back and even worse they’re received back a wealth of apathy from the Star Wars fandom. They just don’t care anymore.
“You see, it doesn’t matter how good Andor is,” he explains. “And again I understand a lot of people like the show and it’s wonderful and one of the best Star Wars shows that they have made to this point. And that’s great and I’m happy that those fans are enjoying it. I’m not here to take that away from you. I’m strictly here looking at the business side of things. I’m looking at the numbers and I’m reading the tea leaves and they are just flat bad for Star Wars right now.”
“When they can’t even get a big show like this that they probably spent well north of $100 million to create to barely move the needle; it is one of the worst premieres ever,” Valiant Renegade declares.
“Especially when you factor in how much watch they released. Obi-Wan Kenobi released with two episodes totaling 90 minutes,” he says. “This was 120 minutes with three episodes. Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian typically released with one episode. And those episodes were often somewhere around 45 minutes. And they ran up better numbers than three episodes of Andor.”
The Book of Boba Fett released on Friday, December 29, 2021. The Nielsen premiere numbers for the show clocked in at 389 million minutes. In its second week it brought in 563 million minutes.
As for The Mandalorian, the second season premiered on October 30, 2020. The Nielsen premiere numbers came in at 1.030 billion minutes. The second week brought in 955 million minutes.
Obi-Wan Kenobi debuted on May 27, 2022. The series brought in 958 million minutes in its first week of Nielsen ratings. By its second week, the show only had 682 million minutes.
Valiant Renegade finished his video stating, “You’re dead Star Wars. Go home.”
What do you make of Valiant Renegade’s analysis regarding Andor’s premiere ratings from Nielsen?
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