‘Stranger Things’ Is (Obviously) 2022’s Most Streamed Show

One of Netflix’s biggest shows ever is, not surprisingly, the most streamed series of 2022.

Stranger Things is a runaway No. 1 in Nielsen’s year-end streaming rankings. Fueled by the summer release of its fourth season, the supernatural drama pulled in more than 52 billion minutes of viewing time over the year, the biggest figure since The Office (back when it was on Netflix) racked up 57.1 billion minutes of viewing in the pandemic-lockdown year of 2020.

The great majority of Stranger Things viewing occurred during the 19 weeks from May to September that it appeared in Nielsen’s weekly top 10 rankings. The series (the ratings service tallies viewing of all episodes for its total time metric) had 46.51 billion minutes of viewing over that span, with the remaining 5.5 billion or so minutes spread out over the remainder of the year.

With streaming now the default viewing mode for a plurality of TV users, consumption of streaming content rose by about 27 percent versus 2021 numbers, and viewers in the United States spent the equivalent of 19.4 million years on streaming platforms — that’s a shade under 10.2 trillion minutes.

Stranger Things had a 36 percent margin over the second most-streamed title, NCIS (38.1 billion minutes). The No. 2 original series was Ozark at 31.3 billion minutes of watch time, followed by the late entry Wednesday (18.6 billion minutes), which premiered just before Thanksgiving.

Also of note: The most streamed show on Amazon’s Prime Video wasn’t the huge-budget The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (9.4 billion minutes) but The Boys at 10.6 billion minutes. The latter has 24 episodes in its library versus eight for The Rings of Power, so on a per-episode basis LOTR had more viewing time. (The three seasons of The Boys, however, likely cost less combined than the $450 million-plus price tag for season one of The Rings of Power.)

Acquired series made up 10 of the top 15 overall titles. Among them are a host of long-running network series, including Grey’s Anatomy, Criminal Minds, Supernatural and The Simpsons, which amassed almost 16 billion minutes of viewing despite landing in the Nielsen weekly top 10 just five times during the year.

Disney’s Encanto topped the streaming movie rankings by a huge margin: Its 27.42 billion minutes of viewing on Disney+ — about 269 million complete showings — was more than double that of the second-place finisher, Turning Red (11.43 million).

The most streamed titles of 2022 (or, to be precise, from Dec. 27, 2021 to Dec. 25, 2022) are below. Nielsen’s streaming ratings cover viewing on TV sets only and don’t include minutes watched on computers or mobile devices. The ratings only measure U.S. audiences, not those in other countries.

Overall

1. Stranger Things (Netflix), 52 billion minutes viewed
2. NCIS (Netflix), 38.1 billion
3. Cocomelon (Netflix), 37.8 billion
4. Ozark (Netflix), 31.3 billion
5. Encanto (Disney+), 27.4 billion
6. Grey’s Anatomy (Netflix), 26.8 billion
7. Criminal Minds (Netflix/Hulu/Paramount+), 24.9 billion
8. Bluey (Disney+), 21.1 billion
9. Gilmore Girls (Netflix), 20.8 billion
10. Seinfeld (Netflix), 19.3 billion
11. Supernatural (Netflix), 18.8 billion
12. Wednesday (Netflix), 18.6 billion
13. Heartland (Netflix), 18 billion
14. Cobra Kai (Netflix), 16.7 billion
15. The Simpsons (Disney+), 15.9 billion

Original Series

1. Stranger Things, 52 billion minutes
2. Ozark, 31.3 billion
3. Wednesday, 18.6 billion
4. Cobra Kai, 16.7 billion
5. Bridgerton (Netflix), 14 billion
6. Virgin River (Netflix), 13.6 billion
7. Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (Netflix), 13.4 billion
8. Love Is Blind (Netflix), 13.1 billion
9. Inventing Anna (Netflix), 12.9 billion
10. The Crown (Netflix), 12.7 billion
11. The Boys (Prime Video), 10.6 billion
11 (tie) The Great British Baking Show (Netflix), 10.6 billion
13. The Umbrella Academy (Netflix), 10.5 billion
14. The Last Kingdom (Netflix), 10.4 billion
15. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Prime Video), 9.4 billion

Acquired Series

1. NCIS, 38.1 billion minutes
2. Cocomelon, 37.8 billion
3. Grey’s Anatomy, 26.8 billion
4. Criminal Minds, 24.9 billion
5. Bluey, 21.1 billion
6. Gilmore Girls, 20.8 billion
7. Seinfeld, 19.3 billion
8. Supernatural, 18.8 billion
9. Heartland, 18 billion
10. The Simpsons, 15.9 billion
11. Friends (HBO Max), 14.5 billion
12. The Blacklist (Netflix), 14 billion
12 (tie) New Girl (Netflix), 14 billion
14. SpongeBob SquarePants (Prime Video), 13.9 billion
15. Shameless (Netflix), 13.6 billion

Movies

1. Encanto, 27.4 billion
2. Turning Red (Disney+), 11.4 billion
3. Sing 2 (Netflix), 11.3 billion
4. Moana (Disney+), 8.6 billion
5. The Adam Project (Netflix), 6.1 billion
6. Hocus Pocus 2 (Disney+), 5.7 billion
7. Don’t Look Up (Netflix), 5.1 billion
7 (tie) Frozen (Disney+), 5.1 billion
9. Luca (Disney+), 5 billion
9 (tie) The Gray Man (Netflix), 5 billion
11. Zootopia (Disney+), 4.4 billion
12. Coco (Disney+), 4.3 billion
13. Eternals (Disney+), 4.24 billion
14. Frozen II (Disney+), 4.2 billion
15. Uncharted (Netflix), 4.18 billion