Nielsen: Prison Break reruns continue to top weekly TV streaming rates through August 18

Erik Gruenwedel

12 September 2024

With the Olympics ending on August 11 and football season still a few weeks away, television viewers are more likely to turn to streaming entertainment during the week of August 12-18.

Four titles crossed the billion-minute mark (up from three the previous week), including repeats of No. 1 (“Prison Break” on Netflix/Hulu) and No. 2 (“The Umbrella Academy” from Netflix), according to new streaming video data from Nielsen.

The Fox network's early 2000s drama “Prison Break” — boosted by its return to Netflix on July 29 — remained flat with the previous week, with 1.61 billion minutes of viewing (up from 1.6 billion the previous week). With 90 episodes available, there's likely a lot of binge-watching at play, according to Nielsen. From an audience perspective, Hispanic viewers continued to be a major driver of the series' viewership, accounting for nearly a third of the audience.

“The Umbrella Academy” grossed 1.3 billion minutes across 36 episodes (slightly less than the previous week's 1.46 billion). The fourth and final season began in the previous period on August 8.

The Netflix original film The Union came in third with 1.32 billion minutes of viewing. The spy thriller, which premiered on Netflix on August 16, seemed to resonate with Generation X and baby boomers, as 57% of viewers were 50 and older – which is above the average age for streaming, according to Nielsen.

After first appearing on the charts last week, the CBS drama “Fire Country” jumped from No. 7 to No. 4 with 1.2 billion viewing minutes for 32 episodes. Season 1 (22 episodes) has been available on Netflix since August 1, and the first two seasons are available on Paramount+. Season 3 is scheduled to premiere on CBS in October. Streamers ages 18-49 make up 56% of the streaming audience, compared to just 12% of the series' linear TV viewers.

Prime Video returned to the film rankings with its original production Jackpot!which, after its release on August 15, landed at number 3 in the cinema charts with 531 million viewing minutes. It was followed by Kevin Hart's Night School on Netflix and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga on Max and reached 408 million and 405 million viewing minutes respectively.

Netflix timed the release of Season 4, Part 1 (5 episodes) of its original series “Emily In Paris” to coincide with the end of the Paris Olympics. Viewers responded with 792 million minutes of viewing, 68% of which were for the newly released episodes.

Finally, the Paramount+ original series “Seal Team” made its first appearance on the original charts, reaching number 9 on the charts with 309 million minutes of viewing time. This came after the seventh season premiered with two new episodes on August 11 and a third (season seven, episode three) was added on August 18. The show's audience was predominantly male, and nearly two-thirds of the week's viewers were over the age of 50.

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