'Ted Lasso' gains its highest-recorded Nielsen rating

New ratings research says that Apple TV+ hit "Ted Lasso" reached a series high with viewers in April, with season three landing in the Nielsen streaming top ten.

As the comedy's third and final season approaches its end, viewing figures for the end of April 2023 have now been released by the Nielsen ratings company. According to Variety, for the week of April 24, 2023, to April 30, 2023, "Ted Lasso" came sixth with nearly 800 million minutes viewed.

That was the week of season three's "The Strings That Bind Us" episode. However, unlike terrestrial ratings, the viewing figures are for any "Ted Lasso" edition watched during that week.

With other shows, that could be any episode from any season. However, Apple's hit has only been included in the Nielsen research since the start of season three, so it's 795 million minutes in total, spanning every episode, over the seven episodes aired in 2023 up to that week.

Consequently, the figure can't be compared to viewership of previous "Ted Lasso" seasons. It also can't be a very accurate measure of even season three, since Nielsen only measures US viewing and at least the giant majority of Apple TV+ shows are shown worldwide.

Even so, it's a season high for "Ted Lasso," and also means Apple TV+ scored higher viewing than any other streamer — except Netflix. Netflix took all of the top five slots, with the most-watched being "The Diplomat" drama series created by Debora Cahn, and starring Keri Russell.

In the week April 24, 2023, to April 30, 2023, "The Diplomat" was watched for 1.4 billion minutes. The show has now been renewed for a second season.

"Ted Lasso" is said to be concluding with this current third season — although there are rumors of spinoffs. A special event celebrating the show's series finale at the Paley Center has been cancelled because of the Writers' Guild of America (WGA) strike.

While the event was due to feature stars such as Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt, both men are also writers. While the WGA strike continues, members are not allowed to promote series even if they have finished writing duties on them.

4 Comments

Marvin 15335 comments · 18 Years

About 1 year ago

BiC said:

795 million minutes divided by 60 minutes divided by 24 hours = 0.552 hours per day. I don't watch TV but it's 0.552 hours per day of wasted time. Rather go for a run an extra half hour. Or spend 'special' time with the Misses if you know what I mean.

If you are as good with a calculator as you are with your misses, she'd probably rather be watching Ted Lasso.

795m minutes divided by 60 gives the hours watched, dividing it by 24 doesn't give hours per day but the number of days watched, where you somehow managed to lose a factor of a million.

795m minutes / 60 = 13m hours / 24 = 0.55 million days watched.

This is a measure of how large the Apple TV audience is, not how often people watch.

Each episode is only around an hour, once per week. 13m hours = 13m viewings. That seems a bit high but the first episode of The Last of Us managed 40 million:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/the-last-of-us-season-1-finale-ratings-1235351440/

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/nielsen-streaming-top-10-ted-lasso-series-high-viewership-1235625712/

This means Apple is doing something right with some of their TV content, hopefully there will be more shows of this quality.

gatorguy 24608 comments · 13 Years

About 1 year ago

AppleInsider said:

"With other shows, that could be any episode from any season. However, Apple's hit has only been included in the Nielsen research since the start of season three, so it's 795 million minutes in total, spanning every episode, over the seven episodes aired in 2023 up to that week."
Read on AppleInsider
According to the chart Marvin linked, the viewership stats were not just the seven episodes of this season, but 29 of 'em.

Marvin 15335 comments · 18 Years

About 1 year ago

gatorguy said:

AppleInsider said:

"With other shows, that could be any episode from any season. However, Apple's hit has only been included in the Nielsen research since the start of season three, so it's 795 million minutes in total, spanning every episode, over the seven episodes aired in 2023 up to that week."
Read on AppleInsider

According to the chart Marvin linked, the viewership stats were not just the seven episodes of this season, but 29 of 'em.

In the top-right of the chart, it says those are minutes viewed for one week, some people may be watching old episodes but most will be watching the latest episode.

This period of time was when two of the higher-rated episodes were available - Sunflowers and The Strings That Bind Us:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10986410/episodes?season=3

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