Amazon Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power caused a stir in the entertainment industry when it was released last year. However, a new rumor hints that a significant portion of its initial audience has disengaged from the series and failed to watch all the episodes.
According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Masters, insiders have confirmed that the show had a domestic completion rate of just 37%. It means that most viewers did not finish watching the whole series.
Was The Series Too Boring For People To Finish
According to Nielson, during the initial release of the two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on September 1, 2022, the series garnered a total of 1.253 billion minutes of viewership in North America. After the third episode, the viewership dropped to 1.203 minutes. The following week saw a further decline, accumulating 988 million minutes viewed.
The downward trend persisted in its fourth and fifth weeks, with the minutes viewed dropping to 977 million and 966 million, respectively. However, the show did experience a temporary surge after the final episode, raking in 1.137 billion minutes of viewership.
The immediate week following the finale, viewership for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power took a significant hit, dropping to 570 million minutes viewed. Not just that! The series also lost its spot in Nielsen’s Top 10 charts in the subsequent week, with the numbers plummeting below 354 million minutes viewed.
How Many People Did Watch The Entire Series
If Masters’ sources are reliable, it would mean that the show experienced a more significant drop in viewership compared to Batwoman. While the declining percentage is a bit high for The Ring of Power, the real decrease in viewership is expected to be higher, as Batwoman’s peak viewership was 1.86 million.
As mentioned above, the first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power got 1.253 billion minutes of viewership. The first episode had a runtime of 65 minutes, while the second ran for 67 minutes. On dividing the total minutes by the runtime of 132 minutes, the series attracted around 9.4 million people at the highest.
Despite the report, Amazon’s Q4 2022 results revealed that the show garnered more than 100 million viewers across the globe. They said the series was “the most watched Amazon Original series in every region of the world, with more than 24 billion minutes streamed.”
Amazon Studios boss Jennifer Salke told Masters, “This desire to paint the show as anything less than a success — it’s not reflective of any conversation I’m having internally.”
If the reported 63% decline in viewership is accurate, it means around 6 million stopped watching the show, while 3.5 million completed the whole series.
Source: Bounding Into Comics
