Check out Nielsen’s list of top streaming shows in 2024
Check out Nielsen’s list of top streaming shows in 2024
Shows from Netflix, Max, Prime Video, and other streamers are well-represented in Nielsen’s top Audience Rated TV Entertainment of the Year awards.
Nielsen continues to be one of the most trusted sources in TV data. The company is well-known for its information regarding which TV channels and even TV sources are being watched most, but Nielsen zooms in even further to individual TV shows and movies as well. It has released a list of the top streaming titles of 2024, creating what it calls the Audience Rated TV Entertainment of the Year, or ARETY Awards.
Was your favorite streaming show of last year honored on Nielsen’s list? Take a stroll through the winners below and find out where you can watch each and every one of them.
Which TV shows won Nielsen ARETY Awards?
Top New Original Streaming Series
Best New Original Drama Series: Fallout
The new series “Fallout” debuted on Prime Video in April and was an instant hit among fans. It pulled in 2.9 billion viewing minutes in its first few days and compiled nearly 12 billion total viewing minutes over the course of 2024. That landed it fifth among all streaming originals, an impressive figure considering it has only eight episodes.
Fallout
The story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have. 200 years after the apocalypse, the gentle denizens of luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the irradiated hellscape their ancestors left behind — and are shocked to discover an incredibly complex, gleefully weird, and highly violent universe waiting for them.
Runner Up: “Fool Me Once”
Fool Me Once
When ex-soldier Maya sees her murdered husband on a secret nanny cam, she uncovers a deadly conspiracy that stretches deep into the past.
Best New Original Comedy Series: Nobody Wants This
Netflix’s romantic comedy series “Nobody Wants This” first became available in September, and rose through the ratings quickly. It topped Nielsen’s weekly streaming charts three times and accumulated almost 5 billion viewing minutes by the end of the year. The audience skewed heavily toward women, who comprised 69% of the viewership.
Nobody Wants This
An agnostic sex podcaster and a newly single rabbi fall in love, but can their relationship survive their wildly different lives and meddling families?
Runner Up: “A Man on the Inside”
A Man on the Inside
A retired professor with a knack for snooping gets a new lease on life when a private investigator recruits him to go undercover and crack a case.
Best New Original Unscripted/Documentary Series: American Nightmare
“American Nightmare” was one of the first new shows to debut last year, coming out in mid-January. The Netflix docuseries compiled over 1 billion viewing minutes in its opening week and hit 3.5 billion over the course of the year. Fifty-six percent of the audience was in the 18 to 49 range, and 62% were women.
American Nightmare
After a harrowing home invasion and kidnapping in 2015, a couple is accused of staging the ordeal when the woman reappears, haunting the couple with a new series of tortures.
Runner Up: “Unlocked: A Jail Experiment”
Unlocked: A Jail Experiment
At an Arkansas detention facility, a sheriff implements a radical social experiment to grant men who are incarcerated more agency in this reality series.
Honorable mentions
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The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
September 6, 2024The scandalous world of a group of Mormon mom influencers implodes when they get caught in the midst of a swinging sex scandal that makes international headlines. Now, their sisterhood is shook to its core. Faith, friendship and reputations are all on the line. Will #MomTok be able to survive and continue to give the rulebook a run for its money, or will this group fall from grace?
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Beast Games
December 19, 2024I gathered 1,000 people to fight for $5,000,000, the LARGEST cash prize in TV history! We’re also giving away a private island, Lamborghinis, and millions more in cash throughout the competition! Go watch to see the greatest show ever made!
Top Overall Streaming Programs
Top Overall Streaming Title & Top Acquired Series: Bluey
“Bluey” continues to be an absolute juggernaut for Disney+. It was streamed for 55.62 billion minutes over the course of 2024, and of course, a large swath of this viewing time was devoted to kids 2 to 11. Forty-three percent of “Bluey” watching was done by this cohort.
Bluey
Bluey is an inexhaustible six year-old Blue Heeler dog, who loves to play and turns everyday family life into extraordinary adventures, developing her imagination as well as her mental, physical and emotional resilience.
Runner Up: “Grey’s Anatomy”
Grey’s Anatomy
Follows the personal and professional lives of a group of doctors at Seattle’s Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.
Top Original Streaming Series: Bridgerton
The Netflix original series “Bridgerton” racked up 21.42 billion minutes of viewing in 2024, including the eight new episodes released between May and June. Those new arrivals accounted for 56% of the show’s viewing total for the year. It has 11 appearances at No. 1 overall in Nielsen’s Streaming Top 10 list over the course of 2024, tying a record for the most first-place weeks of any streaming original.
Bridgerton
Wealth, lust, and betrayal set in the backdrop of Regency era England, seen through the eyes of the powerful Bridgerton family.
Runner Up: “Love Is Blind”
Love Is Blind
Nick and Vanessa Lachey host this social experiment where single men and women look for love and get engaged, all before meeting in person.
Top Streaming Movie: Moana
The 2016 animated movie “Moana” has some clear staying power, though the release of “Moana 2” in 2024 didn’t hurt it either. With 13.03 billion minutes viewed on Disney+ in 2024, “Moana” is now the most-streamed movie since 2020.
Moana
In Ancient Polynesia, when a terrible curse incurred by Maui reaches an impetuous Chieftain’s daughter’s island, she answers the Ocean’s call to seek out the demigod to set things right.
Runner Up: “The Super Mario Bros. Movie
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
While working underground to fix a water main, Brooklyn plumbers—and brothers—Mario and Luigi are transported down a mysterious pipe and wander into a magical new world. But when the brothers are separated, Mario embarks on an epic quest to find Luigi.
Honorable mentions
The Boys
A group of vigilantes known informally as “The Boys” set out to take down corrupt superheroes with no more than blue-collar grit and a willingness to fight dirty.
This show is NOT for kids, thanks to the profanity, gore, and sexual content. But it is an antidote for adult fans who might be a little bored with the stereotypical superhero fare. It’s funny, dramatic, exciting, and thought-provoking.
Most-Binged Title
The Big Bang Theory
“The Big Bang Theory” hasn’t been on air with new episodes for a few years, but viewers are still flocking to it. Viewers averaged over 265 episodes’ worth of viewing time each in 2024, helping “The Big Bang Theory” compile 29.1 billion minutes viewed overall. Considering that “The Big Bang Theory” has 281 episodes available on Max, it demonstrates a fan base that is fiercely dedicated to the show. Keep in mind that viewers did not watch 265 unique episodes of “TBBT” on average, they spent the equivalent of 265 episodes’ worth of time watching it.
The Big Bang Theory
Physicists Leonard and Sheldon find their nerd-centric social circle with pals Howard and Raj expanding when aspiring actress Penny moves in next door.
Runner Up: “American Dad”
American Dad!
The series focuses on an eccentric motley crew that is the Smith family and their three housemates: Father, husband, and breadwinner Stan Smith; his better half housewife, Francine Smith; their college-aged daughter, Hayley Smith; and their high-school-aged son, Steve Smith. Outside of the Smith family, there are three additional main characters, including Hayley’s boyfriend turned husband, Jeff Fischer; the family’s man-in-a-goldfish-body pet, Klaus; and most notably the family’s zany alien, Roger, who is “full of masquerades, brazenness, and shocking antics.”
Legacy Award
Little House on the Prairie
For a show that turned 50 in 2024, “Little House on the Prairie” has plenty of longevity. It earned 13.3 billion minutes of viewing time last year, with adults 35 to 64 accounting for 63% of its total viewing time. It also over-indexed among Black audiences, which made up 17% of its total viewing.
Little House on the Prairie
When the big woods of Wisconsin becomes a difficult spot for hunting, Charles Ingalls reluctantly decides to move his family, pioneering west. Their life on the farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s is full of adventure, tragedy, and triumph. Based on the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Runner Up: “Gunsmoke”
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West. The central character is lawman Marshal Matt Dillon, played by William Conrad on radio and James Arness on television.