On to this week’s issue and there’s a lot to go over, including not one, but two (two!) Apple TV+ shows making the charts, "Back in Action’s" big opening, "Squid Game" and "Landman" both continuing their monumental runs, a cartoon miss on streaming, gigantic numbers for college football, the inflation of Rotten Tomatoes scores over time, "Emilia Perez’s" appearance on a viewership chart, and more. 

There’s a narrative out there that old Hollywood/the traditional entertainment companies are “losing” to tech companies because they’re too “stupid/stodgy/old fashioned/out of touch…” and so on. Obviously, that’s a crass and simplistic summary, but I bet a lot of analysts would admit that’s how they actually feel about anything traditional/old media, and I read a lot of commentary that basically says that.

Is “superhero fatigue” real? No one is a bigger superhero fan than I—well, I mean SOME people definitely are—but I haven’t made plans to see Captain America 4, er, Brave New World, yet. And I liked The Falcon and Winter Soldier series! And I have seen nearly every MCU film in theaters. Has superhero fatigue set in for me too? Maybe, maybe not. 

To start the new year, the streamers didn’t put out very many new movies or TV shows. It was light. And I mean light. Is the pace of new shows and films brought on by the content slowdown finally happening? It’s something I’m going to look at later this month.

Today’s newsletter is a bit of a change of pace, a guest article from Kris Longfield of Fanthropology on the romantasy genre, a genre I’ve had my eye on for a while.

In the past few weeks, I’ve read some pretty dour, pessimistic (mostly online) takes on the future of Los Angeles after the wildfires, which extended to grim takes on the future of the entertainment industry in this town. This doesn’t match my experience in the offline world.

To close out the year, the streamers took some big, big swings, so we’re talking "Squid Game," the potential death of the batch release, the NFL Christmas Day games and why sports will increasingly dominate the streaming landscape. All that, plus "Virgin River," Disney+’s "What If…?," "Juror #2", "The Six Triple Eight," Christmas movies, the NBA on Christmas Day, and an intriguing rise in smaller film releases.

Here’s the craziest thing about "Beast Games," the new reality competition show from YouTuber Mr. Beast that premiered on Prime Video in December: Almost no one is talking about it. I mean, seriously. I’ve found some bad reviews online, and some recap articles, but not many. I haven’t seen any pieces analyzing "Beast Games" and what it says about the future of entertainment, Hollywood, and the creator economy. 

Today we’re just looking at the week of 9-Dec, then the next issue of the Streaming Ratings Report will close out 2023, looking at the weeks of 16-Dec and 23-Dec and talking about some big, big topics, like Squid Game’s second season and the NFL on Netflix. But this week ain’t too shabby either.

Like last issue, I’m going to dive right into this week’s Streaming Ratings Report without any wry asides. (I’ve been saving some up…) Honestly, I’d have rather put the SRR on pause for a week due to the wildfires—since I’m based in Los Angeles like many of my readers—but I already had to delay the report over the holiday break (like I do every year) so I don’t really have the space on the calendar to delay them any longer.

On to this week’s issue, which might be one of the busiest of the year. Due to its importance to the future of streaming, I wrote a full article analyzing all the data for the Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson fight (which was on 15-Nov) back in December. Today, we’re covering the weeks of 11-Nov, and 18-Nov. 

I don’t personally dabble in cultural criticism. Sure, everyone has an opinion (and I do too!) but you come here for strategic advice or data analysis, not movie reviews. Occasionally, in the Streaming Ratings Report, I’ll tell you if I really love a specific TV show--more for transparency reasons than anything else--but that’s about it.

Like I did last year, I want to close out this year by sharing a few of the “biggest myths” I debunked in 2024. That will mean re-running last year’s article on the twenty biggest myths in the entertainment industry, adding in four new myths and two new overrated genres. (One of which is probably really, really controversial…)

Today, I’ve got a grab bag of data stories, featuring some items that got cut for space in my Streaming Ratings and “Most Important Story of the Week” columns over the last month or so but that I felt were well worth sharing anyway. The theme? Politics.

Are we still in a streaming bubble? Or are we watching the last over-budgeted TV shows finally pop? I ask because Variety’s Andrew Wallenstein reported that Riot’s animated TV show, Arcane, cost $250 million to make and market, and I immediately wanted to say, “Yup, we’re still in a streaming bubble.”

Wow. There’s a lot to get to this week, since it’s a double issue due to the Thanksgiving holiday. (And I can’t push any material to next issue, since I have to cover eight new scripted shows, two blockbusters, and a boxing match next week.) In fact, there’s so much to chat about that I’ll have a bonus article tomorrow on one TV show flop (which is really just an excuse to talk about merchandising).

Does it count as an “exclusive” if you’re just the first person to write about something? Because my team (basically, my editor/researcher) uncovered a groundbreaking diversity report/academic paper that literally no other news outlet in the country has written anything about it. (I mean literally no one. Go check Google News.)

Luckily, it was a somewhat light week heading into the American Thanksgiving vacation. But as I wrote last issue, things are picking up again in November, as they always do…for the week of 18-Nov, I tracked 46 new films, shows or specials, the third highest since I started tracking new releases in 2022.

Well…the pace of news has definitely picked back up. Everyone took a week off for the election, then it took a week for everyone to process it, and then a whole bunch of people and companies got back to making news: settling court cases, spinning off companies, signing deals, and whatnot.

A few years back, I listened to an NPR Planet Money episode on KFC and their relationship with “Colonel Sanders” the real (and now kinda mythical) founder. Some franchisees believe the company does its best when its branding emphasizes the Colonel. Listen, I don’t know if that belief would hold up under strict data scrutiny, but I tend to believe that some companies have specific brands and ethos. When they stray from those, they lose their way. 

The streaming wars just can’t decide: Have we hit peak TV or not Some weeks, it looks like the bubble has definitely burst. One week this summer had the fewest English language titles I’ve ever seen, seven, in the four or so years I’ve been doing this. Two weeks this summer had the third and fifth lowest number of new titles in the last four years. 

A week out from the election, it feels like people are finally ready for different news. As such, I have a big, big, double issue this week. (Partially because Nielsen published late two weeks back.) We’ll talk about the NBA, President Obama, LeBron James and Netflix’s latest big sports docu-series, Tulsa King’s quiet success, a ton of flops and misses begging the question, “Are we still in a streaming bubble?” and more.

Judging by my inbox, there’s an election today? And that will likely be a big news story, so let’s remind everyone of my editorial policy: I write about the strategy of the entertainment industry. Politics, then, is not my bailiwick, unless it directly impacts the entertainment business, like mergers & acquisitions policy, which I’ve written a lot about recently.

Last year, I did something I’ve only ever done once before: I re-posted an article in its entirety. Why? Because I started writing an article about people constantly predicting economic doom and gloom, i.e., recessions, then realized midway through the writing process that I’d already written that article the year before.

Okay, on to this week’s issue, there’s a lot to discuss, including this year’s biggest box office grosser coming to streaming (will it also become this year’s top film on streaming?), Netflix’s Mr. McMahon wrestling doc and what it does and doesn’t tell us about potential WWE success on Netflix, more straight-to-streaming films than we’ve had in a while, all the flops, bombs and misses of the week, and more.

"Inside Out 2" made more money than every horror film that came out this year. Combined. And this holds across the last few years. In fact, the top three animated films of the last three years grossed just $78 million less than the last three years of horror films at the global box office, combined.

Two weeks back, I set off on a fun task for The Ankler , predicting what M&A could happen under a Trump administration, assuming he wins the November election. For many people in Hollywood, especially some studio heads, that’s easily the most desired scenario—and by “desired”, I’m just looking at M&A, not, you know, everything else—as reporters, analysts, investors, and executives love to imagine M&A scenarios.

This week’s Streaming Ratings Report is coming out today (instead of last week) because the Nielsen ratings were delayed by a day last week. Sure, I’d rather have the data sooner, but I appreciate analytics companies who delay their data to get it right, rather than rush to get it out. I’d rather have accuracy than timeliness.

Last week, researching Netflix’s sort-of sports special--so I could write about a streaming-only hot dog-eating contest, Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef--I went to trusty Google and searched for the Netflix Slam’s ratings in the latest Netflix data drop. 

On Twitter (I’ll die before I call it “X”), a new reader pinged me with some questions, asking “What’s with all these cancellations these days?” To me, the question is, “Are there more cancellations than ever before?” to which I would unhelpfully answer, “It’s hard to say!”

On to this week’s double issue. We didn’t have that many shows, but the ones that did come out were big, like Apple TV+’s Slow Horses, Peacock’s Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, and a new Nicole Kidman murder show, The Perfect Couple. For the week of 9-Sep, a new batch of Emily in Paris episodes came out along with another Netflix straight-to-streaming film, Uglies. But the biggest new show was a hot dog eating contest. Kidding! It was the NFL.

I don’t like hyperbole, especially in headlines. And I don’t want to be mired in negativity, cynicism or pessimism. But you read the headline, right? “Four Horsemen of the Hollywood Media-pocalypse” sounds pretty hyperbolic and negative, but as I wrote in last week’s “Most Important Story” column, it’s dark out there for the entertainment industry, especially the LA area. 

When it comes to business stories over the last few weeks, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from Google’s latest antitrust trial. But we haven’t actually gotten a result—closing arguments come at the end of November—so it isn’t quite the “most important” news yet, though the implications of a broken-up Google for media, publishing and, honestly, the entire business community could be profound.

A bunch of theatrically-released films (Kinds of Kindness, The Watchers, A Quiet Place: Day One, and The Fall Guy) came to streaming this week, the week of 26-August. As I wrote a few weeks back, I find myself writing more and more on theatrical films when they come to streaming than I ever have before. First, it just makes sense because theatrical films matter as much to streaming as straight-to-streaming films.

Some of you may have felt like the last edition of the Streaming Ratings Report (which went out just three days ago) felt a pinch short (by a page or two). Lest you feel cheated, today’s report will more than make up for it. It’s almost twice as long as that issue; there’s just way, way, way too much streaming ratings data to go over,.