Hulu Introduces Top-15 List to Highlight Daily Viewership, General Popularity of TV, Movie Titles on the Service
Grocery list, to-do list, honey-do list, Christmas list; everybody loves a good list. Now, Hulu users are getting a list of their own. On Thursday, the Disney-owned streaming service unveiled its new “Top 15 Today” list across all TV, desktop, and mobile devices. The streamer follows in the footsteps of Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max, which introduced its own top-10 list just two weeks ago. These types of lists have long been a favorite feature on Netflix and other streaming platforms.
First reported by Vulture's Josef Adalian, Hulu’s list will differ slightly from most of its competitors’ as it will factor in both how many people are watching a title that day, as well as its general popularity across the platform, according to a Hulu source.
“The point of top 15 is not to present a historical record of each day’s most-watched title,” the source told Adalian, “but rather to offer users another way of discovering new content beyond relying on the Hulu algorithm or its various themed collections.”
The Top 15 Today list will include both TV and movie titles and will not be constrained solely to new releases. Given the platform’s history as a repository for television series, if any legacy show suddenly becomes as popular on Hulu as “Suits” has become since arriving on Netflix, that will be reflected in the rankings. The list will also not be limited to just Hulu, or even Disney, originals. Currently on the list is the 2018 film adaptation “Ready Player One,” which was produced and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.
Adalian reports that the feature has been in development at Hulu for over a year and was tested on more than 2 million users in February of this year. While the platform joins Netflix, Max, Apple TV+, and Prime Video with some form of viewership list, reportedly Paramount+ has also been testing such a feature, though it does not have concrete plans to roll it out wide at this time.
Unlike with traditional broadcast and cable channels, there is no trusted third-party source for viewership metrics. Recently, Nielsen announced a plan to begin incorporating Prime Video’s internal viewership numbers for the upcoming season of “Thursday Night Football,” but the concern from across the industry was so widespread that the analytics firm has pushed pause on the move.
The new feature is rolling out on Thursday and is available for some users on some devices already. Currently, Hulu original series “Only Murders in the Building” is in the inaugural Top 15 Today spot, with FX docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham,” Hulu originals “The Other Black Girl” and “Reservation Dogs,” and Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” round out the top five.
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