‘Umbrella Academy’ Netflix’s Top August Title, Audience Data Reveals
Netflix’s superhero TV show “The Umbrella Academy” was its biggest home run throughout the month of August, 7Park Data stats provided exclusively to Variety Intelligence Platform suggest.
About 20% of 7Park panel viewers in the U.S. watched “Umbrella Academy” last month, nearly two times the amount that tuned into Netflix’s Jamie Foxx starrer “Project Power,” which was Netflix’s second widest reaching title, according to the data.
The 7Park data implies “Umbrella Academy” in August was also a major hit compared with programming on other SVOD platforms — and not just for Netflix titles. Among 7Park’s data panel, which tracks viewing of Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu and Apple TV+ (with HBO Max and Peacock not included), “Umbrella Academy” reached the largest share of viewers across all measured titles, such as Disney+’s “The One and Only Ivan,” featuring Bryan Cranston and S5 of Netflix’s “Lucifer,” both of which debuted on August 21.
However, keep in mind that the success of “Umbrella” is far from unprecedented. It didn’t come close to matching the cross-platform reach of “Hamilton” in July.
7Park measures the number of unique users who tune into titles on a daily basis and how long those users spend with titles via audio content recognition. The research firm utilizes a census-balanced panel in the range of 15,000-25,000 U.S. households watching via connected TV (either smart TVs or devices connecting TVs to the Internet — e.g., Roku).
Watching at least two minutes of a program is counted toward share of viewership. Mobile viewing is not measured by the 7Park panel.
What’s also telling from 7Park’s data is that “Umbrella Academy” attracted more viewing than “Lucifer,” which was Netflix’s second-biggest August title by time spent and the second-biggest title by time spent among 7Park Data panel viewers overall.
While the total runtime of S2 of “Umbrella Academy” (10 episodes, roughly 548 minutes total) is longer than that of S5 of “Lucifer” (8 episodes, about 446 minutes), there are five seasons of the latter show on Netflix, compared with the former’s two available seasons.
“Umbrella” besting “Lucifer” in terms of August time spent, even with a smaller total catalog, could be taken as one indication that the back catalog of the former show attracted more viewership than the back catalog of the latter. But “Umbrella” attracting more viewership is also probably a reflection of the show’s more recent initial release date (Feb. 2019 S1 debut) as opposed to Lucifer’s (Jan. 2016 S1 debut).
Regardless of which won August’s streaming title crown, 7Park’s data makes it clear that a significant chunk of August streaming viewing was thanks to Netflix, which accounted for 8 of the top 10 shows last month by time spent among measured SVODs.
That helps explain why Netflix continued to account for the highest number of average minutes spent per U.S. household on SVODs when compared with Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu and Apple TV+.
These minutes spent video streaming came in part from titles you may not expect to still be draws.
While Netflix surely attracted viewers thanks in part to “Umbrella Academy,” licensed titles like the CW’s “In the Dark” and NBC hit “The Office” were also among its strongest titles last month and accounted for meaningful portions of time spent on the streaming platform, 7Park Data suggests. Meanwhile, Prime Video continued to count “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” as one of its most popular titles in August, even though it debuted the latest season in December 2019.
Subscribe to VIP for a more detailed breakdown of 7Park Data’s findings on the top 10 most streamed shows in August on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, and Apple TV+.