The Devil in Ohio – Photo: Ricardo Hubbs/Netflix © 2022
Welcome to your weekly recap of the biggest stories from Netflix’s 10 biggest hourly drops for the week ending September 4, 2022. The Devil in Ohio, I’m a killer, Partner song, A virgin river, Lock & Key, and The sandman everyone is in the spotlight this week.
Netflix updates its top 10 statistics page every week with 40 new figures per hour for the top movies and shows from the past 7 days. If you want to easily view the top 10 hourly data, visit our tool.
Note: In this report on Netflix hours watched from August 29th to September 4th, we will use “Full Equivalent Views” or CVE expressed in millions. This means that we divide the viewing hours announced by Netflix by the duration of the movies or series. It allows better comparisons between films and series, but is not an indicator of audience. This is the minimum number of views if all were completed from the first second to the last of the movie or season.
1. A tale of two series: Partner song and The sandman
Photo: Netflix
Two new English-language shows released in the past few weeks are up for renewal: The sandman and Partner song.
They couldn’t be more different in terms of genres, budget, target demographics and viewership. The numbers for the second week of partner song, while they’re better than Week 1’s numbers, they’re still pretty dismal. In contrast, The sandman continues to grow in its fifth week.
Even if viewership isn’t the only metric to consider when making a renewal decision, it’s still better to have The Sandman numbers from Partner song. If they continue to sink next week, it could be the end of the runway Partner song.
Partner Track’s CVE viewership compared to other English-language Netflix shows
2. The Devil in Ohio starts off slow.
The Devil in Ohio – Photo: Netflix
Some series don’t have to worry about renewals and cancellations; they make up the bulk of Netflix’s US series offerings lately. The Devil in Ohio is the latest and its opening weekend was quite slow as it registered 6.1 million CVEs. This is a better start than Echo but we are still far from the nearly 12 million CVE accumulated The Woman in the House... in January.
A chart of how Devil in Ohio debuted in its opening weekend
3. I’m a killer doesn’t kill it in the Top 10
Every week a true crime documentary or true crime docu-series manages to make its way into the Top 10, and last week was the third season of I’m a killer. With only 4.1 million CVEs in the first six days, it’s a pretty weak opening week, lagging far behind Worst roommate ever and its 13.3 million CVEs.
I Am A Killer S3 debut compared to other docuseries
4. A virgin river and Locke & Key terminate their (apparent) run.
This week we said goodbye to the visible broadcast of the 4th season of A virgin river and the 3rd season of Locke & Key after a few weeks in the charts.
Both seasons are interesting because the previous ones were released around the time the first Top 10s came out, so we can compare them in their first weeks of release and the results are quite interesting.
Let’s start with A virgin river and look at these parallel lines in the first 40 days.
Virgin River Season 4 vs Season 3 in ratings
Both seasons stayed 6 weeks on the charts, highlighting the stability of the viewership and how the series’ fanbase grows when a new season comes out, even gaining some new fans along the way. That’s no doubt why it’s been renewed for season 5, and it’s teased that there’s more to come.
Locke & Key tells a different story for its third season.
It came out with slightly higher ratings than the previous season (perhaps because it was announced as the final season, so fans were there bright and early to watch), resulting in a bigger drop off after 10-12 days than in a season 2 . It could also suggest that season 2 viewers didn’t come back for season 3 (yet) or stopped after a few episodes. We’ll never know for sure.
Locke and Key Season 2 vs Season 3 Ratings