Rumor: Prime Video’s ‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’ Lost 63% Of It Domestic Audience
John F. Trent
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A new rumor claims that Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power saw much of its initial audience completely tune out of the series and never even finish all of the episodes.
Charlie Vickers as Halbrand, and Morfydd Clark as Galadriel in Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
This new rumor comes from The Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Masters who claims, “sources confirm that The Rings of Power had a 37 percent domestic completion rate (customers who watched the entire series).”
Masters adds, “Overseas, it reached 45 percent. (A 50 percent completion rate would be a solid but not spectacular result, according to insiders).”
Sara Zwangobani (Marigold Brandyfoot), Dylan Smith (Largo Brandyfoot), Beau Cassidy (Dilly), Markella Kavenagh (Elanor ‘Nori’ Brandyfoot)
According to Nielsen, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power raked in over 1.253 billion minutes viewed in North America when the series’ first two episodes were released on September 1, 2022.
Following the release of the show’s third episode, the minutes viewed decreased to 1.203 billion minutes viewed. In its third week, the show’s minutes viewed declined even further to 988 million minutes viewed.
Charles Edwards (Celebrimbor), Robert Aramayo (Elrond)
The downward trend continued in the show’s fourth week when it declined to 977 million minutes. The fifth week fell to 966 million minutes. The show did see a bump following the release of its final episode. The show raked in 1.137 billion minutes.
The week following the show’s season finale its minutes viewed significantly declined to 570 million minutes viewed. The series completely fell off Nielsen’s Top 10 charts in the next week with minutes viewed below 354 million.
Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) has words with Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 1 Episode 5 “Parting” (2022), Amazon Studios
To put the decline that Masters is reporting in perspective, the first season of Batwoman lost 60% of its premiere audience in its first season.
TV Series Finale reports Batwoman had 1.86 million viewers in the show’s premiere. It dropped to 739,000 viewers by the season 1 finale. That’s a decrease of 60.27%. Batwoman would eventually be cancelled after three seasons as it viewership continued to decline.
Javicia Leslie as Batwoman via The CW YouTube
If Masters’ sources are accurate that means The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power had a greater percentage fall off than Batwoman. And while the percentage fall off is slightly higher than Batwoman, the actual falloff is probably much higher given Batwoman’s viewership peaked at 1.86 million viewers.
The first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power as noted above drew in 1.253 billion minutes viewed. The first episode had a runtime of 65 minutes while the second episode had a runtime of 67 minutes. Thus if you divide the total minutes viewed as reported by Nielsen by the total runtime of 132 minutes, the show drew in at most around 9.4 million people.
Thus if the show did indeed lose 63% of its audience that means that just below 6 million people tuned out and only 3.5 million people finished the entire series.
Charlie Vickers as Halbrand in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
However, despite this report Amazon revealed in their Fourth Quarter results for 2022 that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power “attracted more than 100 million viewers worldwide to the first season.”
They added the series was “the most watched Amazon Original series in every region of the world, with more than 24 billion minutes streamed.”
Amazon Studios boss Jennifer Salke also informed Masters, “This desire to paint the show as anything less than a success — it’s not reflective of any conversation I’m having internally.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 15: (L-R) Vernon Sanders, Head of Global TV of Amazon Studios, and Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon Studios attends “The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power” Los Angeles Red Carpet Premiere & Screening on August 15, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Prime Video)
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