In somewhat of a first, two highly
anticipated major original streaming releases went head to head this past weekend -- Disney+’s "Obi-Wan Kenobi" versus Netflix’s "Stranger Things" -- with both shows claiming top
honors.
The Disney+ show debuted for its first season against the anticipated fourth season of Netflix’s "Stranger Things."On Friday,
for just the first episodes for each respective series, Nielsen says “Obi-Wan Kenobi” posted 6.22 million average minute viewers versus "Stranger Things" at 5.97 million.
But by the time the weekend was finished -- for the three-day period (Friday-Sunday) -- "Stranger Things" posted 12.7 million average minute viewers versus 11.2 million viewers for
"Obi-Wan."
Nielsen says there are other factors to consider -- in terms of total minutes viewed - but cautions that it is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
The first episode of the first season of "Obi-Wan: is 53 minutes long; while the first episode of Season Four of "Stranger Things" is 78 minutes in length, according to Netflix. (Nielsen says
the episode is 76 minutes long)
So, looking over the three-day weekend, Nielsen says that in total, there were 966.6 million total minutes viewed for "Stranger Things" versus
592.3 million for “Kenobi.”
To get a broader view, Nielsen also says consider all episodes that were released for the current respective seasons: Seven episodes for
"Stranger Things" and two episodes for "Obi-Wan" so far.
In that measure, "Stranger Things" came in at 4 billion minutes and "Obi-Wan" with 1 billion minutes. Nielsen says the
most recent season of “Stranger Things” makes it third best for Netflix in weekly viewing behind "Tiger King" and "Ozark."
"Obi-Wan Kenobi," for Disney+ , is the
largest original series premiere weekend ever on streaming platform -- and only the third non-movie title on the streamer to exceed one billion viewing minutes. Nielsen says "Loki" hit this milestone
twice in July 2021.