| Thanks for opening the Inside Streaming news brief! We've got a great example today of how slippery reporting can be around streaming viewership and data. Warner Bros. Discovery touted the news that this weekend's Season 2 "House of the Dragon" premiere set a new single-night viewership record on Max. That certainly sounds like a positive response! But you have to remember that Max, as a platform, is still pretty new; it was HBO Max back when "House of the Dragon" Season 1 premiered in 2022. In fact, if you look at the fine print, "House of the Dragon" Season 2's premiere audience was around 20% smaller than that of Season 1 two years ago. It's not a terrible performance at all, and it still beats out a lot of other recent HBO premieres like "The Last of Us" and "True Detective: Night Country" that were still considered relative successes. But it nonetheless indicates that interest in the "Game of Thrones" franchise has started dipping rather significantly season-to-season, which is a very different story indeed than the "breaking Max records" headlines would indicate. Lon
p/lon-harris | |
| 1 | | According to Nielsen's most recent "The Gauge" report, streaming hit an all-time high in terms of total TV consumption in the US in May. Streaming services accounted for 38.8% of all TV viewing last month, topping the previous record, set in July 2023. More: - YouTube grabbed the largest share of viewership among streaming platforms, with roughly 9.7% of the total; it was followed by Netflix, Tubi, and The Roku Channel.
- The month's most-viewed title was Netflix's "Bridgerton," with more than 5.5 billion minutes viewed in total; the most-watched TV broadcast was the Kentucky Derby, which aired May 16 on NBC to more than 16 million viewers.
- Cable viewing dipped 0.9% in May, to 28.2% of the overall total.
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| 2 | | Netflix unveiled plans for two new immersive venues -- dubbed "Netflix Houses" -- opening next year in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and Dallas, Texas. According to the streamer's news site Tudum, the "experiential entertainment venue(s)" will feature immersive experiences along with themed dining and shopping options. More: - The streamer has previously hosted live events, pop-ups and immersive experiences themed around shows like "Money Heist," "Bridgerton," "Stranger Things," and "Squid Game"; the new installations will build on these concepts.
- The eateries take inspiration from Netflix's pop-up restaurants, Netflix Bites, featuring food from chefs who have been featured on the platform.
- Both the Texas and Pennsylvania sites will take over locations formerly occupied by department stores, chosen due to their proximity to major urban markets.
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| 3 | | DAILY CALENDAR TUESDAY, JUNE 18 CLOTILDA: THE RETURN HOME: National Geographic documentary in which descendants of Cudjoe Lewis and Gumpa Lee -- among the final survivors of the Atlantic slave trade between the US and Africa in 1860 -- make the return voyage and explore their ancestors' homeland. [Hulu and Disney+] OUTSTANDING: A COMEDY REVOLUTION: Feature documentary looking at the history of LGBTQ stand-up comedy and its contribution to wider social change, which debuted at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Page Hurwitz ("Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration") directed. [Netflix] AGENTS OF MYSTERY: Debut unscripted series from Korea in which six celebrity "agents" join forces to investigate mysteries and complete complicated missions. The cast includes Lee Yong-jin, John Park, Lee Eun-ji, Lee Hye-ri, Kim Do-hoon, and Karina. [Netflix] POWER OF THE DREAM: Political documentary about the efforts by WNBA players to support Georgia Democrat Raphael Warnock's run for Senate against Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler, co-owner of the league's Atlanta Dream. The race was key in shifting control of the Senate to Democrats. Dawn Porter ("John Lewis: Good Trouble") directs; Tracee Ellis Ross executive produced. [Prime Video] OPPENHEIMER: 2023 biographical drama from writer/director Christopher Nolan, starring Cillian Murphy as theoretical physicist and Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer, and based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "American Prometheus" by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. It was the third highest-grossing film of 2023, and won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. [Prime Video] HERE TO CLIMB: Sports documentary from HBO profiling Sasha DiGiulian, a child prodigy turned champion rock climber who has taken on some of the challenging and treacherous summits on the planet. Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg ("Marathon: The Patriots Day Bombing") co-directed; Red Bull Media House produced. [Max] FARMHOUSE FIXER: CAMP REVAMP: Four-episode "Farmhouse Fixer" spinoff from HGTV in which restoration expert (and former New Kid on the Block) Jonathan Knight converts an abandoned 12-acre campground into a luxurious vacation spot. [Max] HOW IT REALLY HAPPENED: True crime docuseries from HLN, providing overviews of infamous crimes, mysteries, scandals, trials, and disasters. Season 8, premiering this week, features looks at the Titanic, the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, the downfall of runner Oscar Pistorius, and more. [Max] | | | |
| 4 | | According to Nielsen, Season 2 of HBO's fantasy drama "House of the Dragon" debuted to 7.8 million viewers across both cable and Max on Sunday night. That set a new single-day viewership record for any title on Max. More: - Season 1 of "House of the Dragon" also got a viewership boost this week, with around 1 million viewers leading up to the Season 2 premiere.
- Viewership was still down around 22% from the Season 1 premiere in August 2022, which scored 9.99 million viewers on its first night; that set an all-time record for viewership on the HBO network.
- For comparison, other recent HBO debuts include "The Last of Us," which scored 4.7M viewers, and "True Detective: Night Country," which had around 2 million viewers on its first night.
- Samba TV's data also showed a dip in interest for Season 2 of "House of the Dragon" vs. Season 1 in 2022.
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| 5 | | The next in-season edition of HBO's "Hard Knocks" behind-the-scenes NFL docuseries will feature the AFC North division. This marks the first time the franchise has focused on an entire division, rather than a specific team. More: - Four teams comprise the AFC North: the Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, and Pittsburgh Steelers.
- Last season, all four of these teams finished the season with winning records, a first for any division since 1935.
- "Hard Knocks: In Season with the AFC North" debuts on December 3, and will run through the remainder of the NFL season, including the playoffs.
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| 6 | | A new research project from the London-based nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that YouTube tends to recommend politically right-wing and Christian videos, even to viewers who haven't interacted with those content categories in the past. The Institute is dedicated to investigating "extremism" online. More: - Researchers performing the study created mock YouTube accounts mimicing users interested in four topic areas: gaming, male lifestyle gurus, mommy vloggers, and current events coverage in Spanish.
- After maintaining these personas for five days, researchers then recorded all videos that were recommended to these accounts for a month.
- Accounts viewing male lifestyle content from Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, who searched for terms such as "alpha male," were frequently directed to Fox News programming, whether or not they had expressed an interest in conservative media or politics.
- Additionally, accounts interested in "mommy vloggers" who expressed conservative viewpoints were more frequently recommended Fox News content than their liberal counterparts were offered corresponding videos from left-leaning outlets, such as MSNBC.
- YouTube's recommendation algorithm drives around 70% of total viewership on the platform.
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| 7 | | The seven-part mystery drama series "Lady in the Lake" makes its Apple TV+ debut on July 19. The series is based on a novel by author Laura Lippman, and was created by "Honey Boy" filmmaker Alma Har'el. More: - Natalie Portman stars as a housewife in 1960s Baltimore who reinvents herself as an investigative journalist and begins looking into an unsolved local murder.
- This puts her into unexpected conflict with another local mom (Moses Ingram), who's active in the city's Black progressive political movement.
- Y'lan Noel, Brett Gelman, Byron Bowers, Mikey Madison, and Noah Jupe co-star.
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| 8 | | QUICK HITS - Buster Murdaugh, the son of convicted double murderer Alex Murdaugh, filed lawsuits against both Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, alleging that he was defamed by their true-crime documentaries about his family.
- The animated kids sci-fi adventure series "Star Trek: Prodigy" moves from Paramount+ to Netflix for its second season, which premieres on July 1.
- Netflix's film adaptation of the Richard Osman novel "The Thursday Murder Club" added a number of new cast members, including David Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, and Naomi Ackie; the crime comedy comes from "Home Alone" and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" vet Chris Columbus.
- "Dexter" vet Jennifer Carpenter joined the cast of Paramount+'s "Yellowstone" spinoff "1923" ahead of its second season; she'll portray US Deputy Marshall Mamie Fossett.
- A still-untitled Netflix project from Oscar-winning filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow ("The Hurt Locker") has continued adding to its cast; "Night Agent" star Gabriel Basso and "Chernobyl" vet Jared Harris have joined the cast, which will likely also include Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson.
- HBO's period costume drama "The Gilded Age" added cast members as well ahead of its third season, including Phylicia Rashad, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Jordan Donica, and Victoria Clark.
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 | Writer | | Lon Harris is the writer and editor of Inside Streaming and was the very first person to ever write an Inside newsletter. He lives in Los Angeles, California, and also writes about TV and film for Fandom, Screen Junkies, Rotten Tomatoes, Gamma Ray and others. Plus he has a Game of Thrones podcast called "Casterly Talk" and competes on The Movie Trivia Schmoedown as "The Professor." | | This newsletter was edited by Lon Harris | |
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