The expensive, highly anticipated The Lord of the Rings series will be available later Thursday on Amazon Prime Video at the premiere. Reviews were mostly positive, while noting that critics only saw two of the season’s eight episodes.
Given the lasting impact of JRR Tolkien’s work on pop culture and the huge marketing campaign behind the show, it’s a safe bet The Lord of the Rings: Ring of Thrones will gather a huge audience over the weekend (in the U.S. and around the world). Answering the “How big?” question, however, may take several weeks.
Amazon will likely issue a press release after the weekend touting the show’s global reach and possibly explaining how it might spark additional demand for Prime Video. Any such release is likely to contain little supporting data — no percentage gain from benchmark comparison points, or tout how widespread its popularity is without actual audience data. Amazon isn’t alone in this game: Streamers provide data for their shows on a need-to-know basis, and for the most part, they’ve decided that the media and the public don’t need to know.
There will eventually be some data on The Rings of Power’ ratings in the US. Nielsen includes Prime Video in its weekly streaming rankings, but those shows are 4 weeks behind their premieres, meaning the firstRings of Power numbers may not be available until the season is complete It won’t come until three quarters later. (It’s possible that Nielsen will release a “special report” in the first week, albeit a slim possibility, as in the Stranger Things return and
as it did after the premiere Obi-Wan Kenobi.)
Once the Nielsen data does come in, at least there will be benchmarks to use Compare Rings of Power.
The biggest Prime Video show on the streaming charts for over two years is Reacher , with 1.24 billion minutes and gained about 5.8 billion minutes watched in six weeks 10. Prime Video released the full eight-episode season of Reacher immediately, while The Rings of Power will launch new installments every week after two seasons – Episode premiere.
Still, it’s not unreasonable to expect the LOTR series to surpass 1 billion viewing minutes at the opening weekend on the Nielsen charts . Prime’s Wheel of Time has 1.20 1 billion minutes watched for the first three episodes in November 2021 ; and Obi-Wan Kenobi aired two episodes on Disney+ in late May.
It is unlikely that, with the weekly release schedule, Ring of Power will reach
Stranger Things-esque(evenflow graph Ozark-esque) height on . Nielsen’s streaming measurements cover the entire programming library, so all previous seasons of Stranger Things and Ozark count towards their early Sometime dizzyingly high totals that year. Even season four accounts for Stranger Things 84% of a week’s viewing time as reported by Nielsen As it was released, the remaining 20 percentage is still an important part.
A flurry of reports from other analytics firms is also likely to follow the premiere of Ring of Power – inevitably with what is currently airing Compare with other large fantasy series from HBO Dragon House . The Game of Thrones prequels drew massive audiences in the first two episodes, with average ratings .1 million first-night viewers across all platforms.
Unless Amazon breaks years of precedent and reports hard data on ) Ring of Power , with Meaningful comparisons for Dragon House will be hard to come by. Since the latter also airs on HBO’s cable channel, its HBO Max ratings won’t be part of Nielsen’s streaming rankings. Since Rings will operate in 200 multiple regions around the world, Amazon will emphasize any particular Country (again, if the company publishes any specific data). Other measurement tools—such as Parrot Analytics’ Demand Score and Samba TV’s Home Snapshot—may help make a rough comparison between the two.
Certain clunky problem solvers, Amazon didn’t spend a billion dollars on The Lord of the Rings: Ring of Power to lure and Reacher the same audience . With the price tag so high, interior expectations should also be set high. We’ll have (some) concrete answers about whether they’ll meet in a few weeks. 1235099122
