The Nielsen streaming statistics for the premiere of Fallout’s second season reveal a significant decline compared to its first season, but the analysis offers a broader context that helps explain these numbers. In the week from December 15 to 21, 2024, Fallout garnered 794 million viewing minutes on Prime Video, marking a notable drop from the 2.9 billion minutes during the opening week of its inaugural season in April 2024. The first season’s premiere remains the most successful in terms of viewership on Amazon’s streaming platform.
Several factors contribute to this difference in viewership. Notably, season one was released in its entirety, allowing viewers to binge-watch the series, while season two adopts a weekly release strategy, offering just one episode on December 16. This change means audiences are engaging with the show over a longer period, rather than consuming multiple episodes at once, which likely impacts the immediate viewing figures.
Despite the drop in total minutes viewed, nearly 800 million minutes is still a robust performance. According to Nielsen, about 54 percent of the viewing minutes for the second season premiere—approximately 429 million—came from this new episode, indicating that had Prime Video opted to release additional episodes simultaneously, the viewing figures could have been significantly higher. The remaining viewership was largely attributed to season one, as Nielsen aggregates view counts for all seasons when evaluating streaming rankings.
Other notable streaming performances during this period included “Stranger Things,” which maintained its top spot with 2.38 billion viewing minutes despite a 21 percent decline week over week. This week was also significant for viewers of “Stranger Things,” as it marked the final days of the first half of its final season before the release of part two over the Christmas holiday.
Additional highlights include Paramount+’s “Landman,” which has seen growth for five consecutive weeks, hitting 1.61 billion minutes of viewing. Meanwhile, “Emily in Paris” made a comeback to the rankings with the premiere of its fifth season, accumulating 831 million minutes and showing an increase from its previous season.
On the movie front, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” led the charts for the second week in a row, securing 1.1 billion viewing minutes while experiencing a modest decline of 16 percent from its debut week. In contrast, “K-Pop Demon Hunters” ended its impressive 26-week run in the top 10 due to the influx of holiday movies.
Nielsen’s streaming ratings measure viewing solely on television sets, excluding streams from computers or mobile devices, and focus specifically on U.S. audiences. The top streaming titles for December 15-21, 2024, reflect the evolving landscape of audience engagement as platforms adopt different release strategies to cater to viewer preferences.