The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power completely fell off Nielsen’s Top 10 charts just two weeks after the show’s season finale premiered.
The eighth and final episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power “Alloyed” released on October 14th.
The show raked in 1.137 billion minutes and placed second on Nielsen’s “Overall” list behind Netflix’s The Watcher.
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The series would completely fall off of Nielsen’s “Overall” list a week after its season finale.
However, it did appear still appear on Nielsen’s “Original” ranking. It placed fifth with a total of 570 million minutes viewed.
Interestingly, it fell behind Netflix’s Dahmer, which released all 10 of its episodes on September 21st in one go. Dahmer racked up 599 million minutes viewed according to Nielsen.
One week later and two weeks following the premiere of the season finale, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power fell off Nielsen’s “Original” chart.
It was beat by the ever-declining Andor series on Disney+, which saw its viewership numbers decline to 385 million. It was also beat by Dahmer again. Dahmer continued to maintain an audience albeit its viewership declined to 354 million minutes viewed.
A Business Insider report back in August from before the release of the first episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power claimed Amazon would “sound the trumpets of victory” around the show “regardless of actual viewership.”
An alleged former senior Amazon Studios executive was cited in the report saying, “The reason why it’s going to succeed is because the executives at Amazon need it to succeed. If it doesn’t succeed, there’s going to be a big question from [Amazon’s Chief Executive Officer] Andy Jassy and the board.”
This alleged executive added, “If we can’t take this piece of IP and make it successful, why is Amazon Studios even here? It has to succeed. There’s no option.”
That report appears to have panned out as Amazon Studios and Prime Video have attempted to tout the success of the show. In a press release announcing The Making of The Rings of Power, Prime Video notes “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been an unprecedented global success, viewed by more than 100 million people worldwide, with more than 24 billion minutes streamed.”
They continue, “The highly anticipated series attracted more than 25 million global viewers on its first day, marking the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video, and also debuted as the #1 show on Nielsen’s overall streaming chart in its opening weekend.”
It might have had large viewership numbers when it first released, but the declining numbers and the complete fall off just two weeks after its finale indicates people were unimpressed with what they saw and never came back to watch anymore.
The fall off also indicates they aren’t bringing in new viewers who might binge the show at once, which would boost total viewing minutes as is seen with Dahmer still clinging onto the Top 10 Original list despite releasing all episodes in September.
What do you make of these Nielsen numbers and the complete fall off for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power just two weeks after its finale premiered?