With the help of a legendary aged and revived Jedi, Disney Plus’ “The Mandalorian” has finally triumphed over favorite visual comfort food, “The Office”.
For the week of December 14th – in which the end of the 2nd season of the “Star Wars” spin-off series delivered a healthy amount of fanservice in its surprise and twisting appearance – “The Mandalorian” took off to the top of the Top Nielsen’s list of 10 programs, surpassing the mid-laugh work sitcom led by Steve Carell. This victory marks the first time that a non-Netflix show has reached first place in Nielsen’s streaming ranking. “The Mandalorian” also set a weekly record for the Disney Slus series, scoring about 1.34 billion minutes of viewing.
“The Office” continued its steady audience growth before its final week on the platform before switching to NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock, earning 1.31 billion minutes of watch time in its nine seasons.
As in the previous week, Nielsen’s Top 10 from December 14 to 20 was, with the exception of “The Mandalorian”, entirely dominated by programs on Netflix. In addition to some changes in the ratings – “The Crown” rose from 3rd to 4th place, “Virgin River” fell from 3rd to 7th, “Grey’s Anatomy” went from 7th to 4th – the places in the viewer count remained practically the same same. The only newcomer in this week’s mix is a holiday rom-com written and starring Lauren Swickard (“The Pact”, “Safe Haven”), “A California Christmas”, which was released on December 14 on Netflix. On December 22, the streamer announced that the unexpected success was taking place.
Nielsen ratings are based on the number of minutes consumers who have access to streaming platforms watch during the week. Streamers like Netflix, Amazon and Disney Plus do not release their own detailed statistics and these streaming measurements are based on Nielsen estimates. Nielsen also includes Hulu in its top 10 ratings.
Here are the top 10 this week in full:
“The Mandalorian” (Disney Plus) (16 episodes) – 1,336 minutes (million)
“The Office” (Netflix) (192 episodes) – 1,311 (million)
“The Crown” (Netflix) (40 episodes) – 772 minutes (million)
“Grey’s Anatomy” (Netflix) (366 episodes) – 762 minutes (million)
“Manhunt: Deadly Games” (Netflix) (10 episodes) – 712 minutes (million)
“Supernatural” (Netflix) (327 episodes) – 684 minutes (million)
“Virgin River” (Netflix) (20 episodes) – 948 minutes (million)
“Criminal Minds” (Netflix) (277 episodes) – 651 minutes (million)
“Schitt’s Creek” (Netflix) (80 episodes) – 597 minutes (million)
“A California Christmas” (Netflix) (film) – 581 minutes (millions)