The top streamed shows are almost all old. Why? —THE HILL
The Hill(NEXSTAR) – The most streamed show last year wasn’t the latest Netflix reality TV show craze. Nor was it the highly anticipated final season of “Succession” or the debut of “The Last of Us.”
According to Nielsen, the most minutes last year – more than 57 billion – were spent watching “Suits,” a legal drama that premiered 12 years prior.
The show, which is available to stream on Netflix and Peacock, stars the former actress Meghan Markle, now the Duchess of Sussex, and likely has her to thank for its second life. But “Suits” isn’t the exception.
Old shows, which debuted over a decade ago, dominated the top streamed list of 2023. Several of the programs, including “Suits,” “Gilmore Girls,” and “Friends” have been off the air for years.
According to Nielsen, the most streamed acquired shows of 2023 were:
In a year where major strikes by Hollywood actors and writers halted the production of a lot of new content, viewers may have been inspired to revisit old favorites while waiting for new shows to come back.
Many of these shows also have a persistent nostalgia factor. The New York Times recently described “Gilmore Girls” as “an endless buffet of TV comfort food.”
Fans of “Friends” have long found comfort in the show’s familiar jokes and the studio audience’s loud laughs, even before streaming when the show was in reruns. Those same fans may have sought this comfort even more last year in the wake of Matthew Perry’s death.
“Watching something comforting can take away the stress involved in the infinite choices at our disposal and the consequential energy drain,” psychologist Sabrina Romanoff, PhD, told Well+Good.
Old shows also have another advantage over new content when it comes to streaming minutes: Their libraries are so much larger. There is only one season so far of the huge HBO hit “The Last of Us,” but there are 21 seasons of “NCIS” and 19 seasons of “Grey’s Anatomy.” There are just more minutes to binge-watch.
Then there’s the ultra-young audience, who doesn’t care if they’ve seen this episode of “Cocomelon” five times or 500 times. Repeat watches rack up streaming minutes for the program either way.
Nielsen also ranked the top 10 original streaming shows, but none of them reached the same volume of time watched as the acquired programs did. The top 10 original streamed shows last year were:
Rank Show name Minutes viewed (in billions)
1 Ted Lasso 16.9
2 The Night Agent 14.4
3 Ginny & Georgia 13.8
4 Virgin River 13.7
5 Love is Blind 13.1
6 Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan 12.8
7 Gabby’s Dollhouse 12.8
8 The Mandalorian 12.3
9 Outer Banks 12
10 The Lincoln Lawyer 11.8
Data reported by Nielsen
The most streamed movies, meanwhile, were “Moana” and “Encanto,” both animated features on Disney+. They were released in 2016 and 2021, respectively.