The Upside Down took the No. 1 position on Nielsen’s 2022 streaming chart: Netflix’s blockbuster “Stranger Things,” led by the release of the fourth season, was the most-streamed TV show — and overall program — in the U.S. last year.
The sci-fi hit series ran up that hill to register a whopping 52 billion minutes streamed in 2022, the highest total since COVID-driven lockdowns drove audiences to watch 57.1 billion minutes of NBC’s “The Office” in 2020. The dominance of original content like “Stranger Things” was underscored by the fact that there are only 34 episodes of the Duffer brothers’ series, compared with 192 episodes of “The Office.”
According to Netflix, “Stranger Things 4” holds the title as the No. 1 most-watched English TV series in the first four weeks of release, with the fourth season having garnered 1.35 billion hours worldwide in the initial 28-day period. That’s followed by “Wednesday,” which scared up 1.24 billion hours watched in the same window (and came in at the No. 3 spot on Nielsen’s original series list, behind “Stranger Things” and “Ozark”).
On the movie front, “Encanto” was the No. 1 most-streamed title of the year. The movie, featuring original songs composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, premiered on Disney+ in December 2021, and over the course of 2022 racked up 27.4 billion minutes of viewing (equivalent to being watched 269 million times).
For complete chart information via Variety, click here.
