Perennial favorite “Stranger Things” regained the No. 1 spot on the digital originals chart the week ended March 23, even though season 3 won’t be released on Netflix until July 4.
But the first trailer for the third season of the acclaimed supernatural horror series did break during the week, and that was enough to more than double demand for the show, according to Parrot Analytics data.
The number of average daily Demand Expressions rose by a whopping 107% to 51.5 million from 24.9 million the prior week, vaulting the series to No. 1 from No. 4 the prior week.
The ascension of “Stranger Things” ended a four-week run at No. 1 for “The Umbrella Academy,” which slipped to No. 2 with a 15.5% decline in average daily Demand Expressions, to 45 million from 53.3 million the previous week.
Demand Expressions is a proprietary metric used by Parrot Analytics to measure global demand for TV content. The metric draws from a wide variety of data sources, including video streaming, social media activity, photo sharing, blogging, commenting on fan and critic rating platforms, and downloading and streaming via peer-to-peer protocols and file sharing sites.
A “digital original” is a multi-episode series in which the most recent season was first made available on a streaming platform such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Hulu.
Demand for DC Universe programs remains strong, with third-ranked “Titans” posting a 14% spike in demand, likely on the back of a casting announcement. Demand for “Doom Patrol” was down a modest 3.7%, but the show still finished the week at No. 6, down a notch from the prior week. Both shows are expected to return in 2020 with new episodes.
The week’s biggest gainer was Netflix’s “Queer Eye,” with a 191% increase in average daily Demand Expressions due to the March 15 debut of season 3. This led the Netflix reboot of the Bravo reality series to shoot to No. 4 on the digital originals chart the week ended March 23, up from No. 35 the previous week.
Also back in the top 10 are Netflix’s “Arrested Development,” which shot to No. 8 from No. 26 with a 51% spike in demand thanks to the debut of the final eight episodes of season five, and YouTube Premium’s “Coachella” at No. 9 (up from No. 18 the prior week).
YouTube Premium will once again serve as the exclusive live streaming partner for the 2019 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, taking place on two weekends in April in Indio, Calif. Demand for Coachella jumped 29% week-to-week as major acts were announced, with YouTube Music as the exclusive playlist partner. Tickets are also available for purchase directly as part of the comprehensive partnership.
Media Play News has teamed with Parrot Analytics to provide readers with a weekly top 10 of the most popular digital original TV series in the United States, based on the firm’s proprietary metric called Demand Expressions, which measures global demand for TV content through a wide variety of data sources, including video streaming, social media activity, photo sharing, blogging, commenting on fan and critic rating platforms, and downloading and streaming via peer-to-peer protocols and file sharing sites.
