‘Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’ Back On Nielsen Charts In Season 2 Debut Week, Crossing 1B Minutes Viewed

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power returned to the Nielsen streaming charts in the last week of August following the debut of Season 2.

The series drew just over 1B minutes viewed from August 26 to September 1, with three new episodes launching on August 29, putting it at No. 2 on the overall list. Nielsen doesn’t separate titles by season, but the company did say that about 70% of the viewing for this interval came from the new episodes.

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That’s a decline from Season 1’s debut week, when the series racked up more than 1.2B minutes viewed across just two episodes — as opposed to the 11 that became available during this interval. Those two episodes also premiered mid week, meaning that Season 1 had just four days to rack up that total across those two episodes.

While the new episodes of Season 2 also had four days of availability during this interval, the eight episodes from Season 1 were already there for audiences to catch up on, giving the series an advantage this time around.

It’s also worth noting that Prime Video kicked off Season 2 with three new episodes, instead of two, once again giving the second installment a leg up, as Nielsen’s method of measuring viewership rewards titles with longer runtimes.

The biggest caveat here is that Nielsen only measures U.S. viewing, which means any global audience isn’t accounted for. According to Amazon, about 70% of the audience for Rings of Power comes from outside the U.S.

But, even just this snapshot does indicate that the series is struggling with audience retention.

Rings of Power couldn’t quite beat Prison Break, which continued its impressive run atop the charts with 1.2B minutes viewed. AMC’s Dark Winds and A Discovery of Witches also performed well once again, which seems to spell a win for the network, which licensed those titles and others to Netflix over the summer.

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