Topline
Viewers have watched nearly 8.3 billion minutes of the long-running reality-show Big Brother since July, CBS announced Wednesday, a number that puts the network series on par with major streaming hits.
TV Personality Julie Chen attends The CBS EyeSpeak Summit at the Pacific Design Center on March 14, … [+]
Key Facts
Audiences split their viewing of season 24 of Big Brother across the three weekly airings of the show on CBS (which aired 22 episodes from July 6 – Aug. 28), streaming, and the show’s 24/7 live feed on Paramount+.
During that same time frame, audiences watched 8.05 billion minutes of Stranger Things season 4 on Netflix, CBS said, citing Nielsen—though new episodes of the sci-fi show had premiered on May 27 and July 1.
Netflix reported earlier this year that season 4 of Stranger Things received 1.35 billion hours, or over 81 billion minutes, of viewership in its first 28 days, a record for an English-language series on the streaming services.
The second season of Bridgerton, one of the other biggest shows of the year, garnered 656.2 million hours, or 39.3 billion minutes, of viewership in its first 28 days on Netflix this spring.
HBO reported last month that the premiere of its Game Of Thrones spin-off House Of The Dragon had the largest premiere in the network’s history, getting nearly 10 million same day viewers.
Key Background
Nielsen only recently started tracking streaming audiences, in addition to its decades in counting viewers of standard TV. TV viewership is monitored by viewer count, while streaming is measured by the amount of time spent doing so. Big Brother is a competition show in which a group of housemates live together, isolated from the outside world, and are monitored by cameras and microphones. They vote each other out, until one remains and wins a cash prize. It started airing in the U.S. on CBS in 2000. The numbers announced by CBS are for the U.S. franchise.
Further Reading
Summer’s Cross-Platform TV Hit Is … ‘Big Brother’ (The Hollywood Reporter)
‘House Of The Dragon’ Earns Largest Premiere In HBO History (Forbes)
‘Stranger Things 4’ Officially Tops ‘Bridgerton’ As Most-Watched English Netflix Series (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2022/09/07/big-brother-and-its-24-hour-live-feed-net-massive-audience-on-par-with-prestige-tv/