‘Ahsoka’ Viewership Falls Off Nielsen’s Overall Top 10 Chart, Second Week Nearly Identical To ‘Andor’ That Was “Chasing The Audience”
John F. Trent
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Lucasfilm’s latest Star Wars Disney+, Ahsoka, show fell off Nielsen’s Overall top 10 chart in its second week.
(L-R): Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) and Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
In its first week of release, the first two episodes of Ahsoka racked up 829 million minutes, which was good for fifth on Nielsen’s Top 10 Overall chart.
Nielsen “Overall” Streaming Ratings for Week of August 21 to August 27, 2023
With the release of the show’s third episode “Time to Fly,” the series has fallen off Nielsen’s Overall Top 10 chart, with Suits remaining at the top and Netflix’s One Piece claiming the second spot from Who is Erin Carter?.
Other newcomers to the Top 10 included Netflix’s You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitvah, S.W.A.T., and The Big Bang Theory.
Nielsen “Overall” Streaming Ratings for Week of August 28 to September 3, 2023
In order to find Ahsoka, one has to look at Nielsen’s Top 10 Originals list, where the series took the fifth spot with 487 million minutes viewed.
It was best by One Piece, Who is Erin Carter?, The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On, and The Wheel of Time.
Nielsen “Original” Streaming Ratings for Week of August 28 to September 3, 2023
RELATED: ‘Ahsoka’ Episode 7 Makes You Constantly Say “This Is Stupid”
Interestingly, if one does a simple minutes viewed divided by the run time, one would think that Ahsoka’s viewership might have increased by nearly 5 million people.
In the first week, the first two episodes were released with a total run time of 101. If you plug in 829 million minutes viewed to the equation, that comes to 8.2 million. Using the same equation for the third episode, you would divide 487 million minutes by 37 minutes, the run time of the third episode, and get 13.1 million.
(L-R): Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno), Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) and Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
However, YouTuber and financial analyst Valliant Renegade points out that Nielsen’s reporting is not just tracking watch time for the third episode, but includes the previous two episodes as well.
He states, “And then there’s the question of how many times were those first two episodes rewatched in this second measurement week to get up to episode three, or how many new people came in this week having never seen episode one and two in the first week of release and catching it now. All of that factors into that 487 million minutes watched.”
“Meaning that number is not strictly the third episode,” Renegade explains. “That’s the cumulative total of every bit of consumption of Ahsoka from Monday morning at midnight through the end of the second week.”
(L-R): Lieutenant Beyta (Dawn Dininger), Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and First Officer Vic Hawkins (Nican Robinson) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
He then provided an example, “To give you an example, let’s say 15% of that watch time, that 487 million minutes, were people who either watched the first two episodes for the first time, or people who went back and reconsumed those first two episodes a second time in anticipation of watching the third.”
Renegade asserts, “That brings the actual watch time for this third episode way down. And that’s at only 15%. Let’s say that number was 25%.”
(L-R): Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson), Myn Weaver (Peter Jacobson) and C1-D1 [Shelby Young (voice); Chris Bartlett (performance artist)] in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
Interestingly, the Nielsen numbers covering the week of Ahsoka’s third episode are similar to what we saw from Andor. Back in September of last year, Andor’s premiere week, which saw the release of the show’s first three episodes, saw the show bring in 624 million minutes.
It placed sixth on Nielsen’s Original chart failing to break into the Top 10 on the Overall chart.
Nielsen Original Streaming Ratings for September 19-25, 2022
In Andor’s second week, the series only brought in 485 million minutes according to Nielsen. That’s nearly identical to Ahsoka’s 489 million minutes.
Despite tepid viewing figures for #Andor‘s 3 episode premier.
The show remained among Nielsen Top 10 Streaming Originals in its 2nd week.
Perhaps positive word of mouth is helping the series.@doomcock @wdwpro1 @ValliantRenegad @KinelRyan #DisneyPlus #StarWars pic.twitter.com/8olywNLL3V— MAC (@NowItsKnown) October 27, 2022
How did Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy react to the viewership numbers? He told Variety, “I think I was surprised. I thought the show would go the other way, that we would have this gigantic, instantaneous audience that would just be everywhere, but that it would take forever for non-‘Star Wars’ people or critics or my cohort of friends to get involved in the show.”
“The opposite happened. We ended up with all this critical praise, all this deep appreciation and understanding from really surprising number of sources, and we’re chasing the audience,” he admitted.
(L-R): Huyang (David Tennant) and Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
Given Gilroy claimed Andor was chasing the audience and it had a nearly identical performance to Ahsoka in its second week on the Nielsen charts, it calls into question Lucasfilm’s praise of the series’ viewership in reaction to Samba TV’s report that Ahsoka was indeed performing at Andor levels.
If you recall, Samba TV reported, “The latest new Star Wars series, Ahsoka finally hit screens with 1.2M US households watching over its first six days. This is similar to viewership of Andor’s premiere season and slightly lower than The Mandalorian‘s third season premiere over its first six days.”
Ahsoka premiere viewership via Samba TV on X
In response to this, Lucasfilm declared, “Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company are thrilled and humbled to announce that Part One of Ahsoka, “Master and Apprentice,” was the most-watched title on Disney+ this past week. The debut episode garnered 14 million views, making the series number one globally on the streaming platform.”
Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy added, “Ahsoka has become a fan favorite with people of all ages and it’s wonderful to see her continue to resonate with viewers in her very own headlining series.”
She concluded, “I want to recognize the fantastic work done by our creative team, led by Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, the incredible cast led by Rosario Dawson, and our talented crew — and on behalf of the team and all of Lucasfilm, we give our thanks to all the fans who have been with Ahsoka on every step of her journey and to all those who are just learning about her now in Ahsoka on Disney+.”
(L-R): Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson), Chopper and Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
YouTuber WDW Pro reacted to this in a recent video uploaded and called The Walt Disney Company out saying, “Perhaps this will catch the ire of investors now. Disney has done something more severe. And that is that at the same time that we’ve had all this arguing over ratings and how writers and actors are going to know the ratings for shows and be benefited based on that and how advertisers are going to know the ratings for shows so they can pay the right amounts and not be deceived and not be paying incorrect values for shows that are popular or unpopular.”
“Disney is out there giving us information that does not line up with anything else we’re hearing. Samba TV, I give you a gold star on this. You got it right. And unfortunately, Disney probably knew that as they were maligning what you said. And that is a bad, bad mouse,” he declared.
What do you make of these week two ratings for Ahsoka?
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