Netflix’s “The Crown” didn’t draw viewership worthy of a king, despite its reported palatial price tag.
The original series debuted to just 496,000 total viewers over its opening weekend, according to Symphony Advanced Media data that was provided exclusively to TheWrap. That places the premiere 26th out of the 35 originals measured by Symphony AM since the inception of its VideoPulse technology last year. “The Crown” fared better than “Bloodline” Season 2, but was worse than the fifth season of “Longmire” on Netflix.
Due to the recent release of “The Crown,” Symphony’s Live + 3 day data is not completely stable yet and is subject to change slightly.
The Season 1 debut of “Fuller House” (7.33 million) remains atop Symphony’s list, with runner-up “Orange Is the New Black” Season 4 (5.84 million) quite a ways behind it.
In third and fourth are two Marvel shows: “Luke Cage” and “Daredevil.” “Stranger Things” rounds out the top five.
Symphony measures viewership through audio recognition software found in a panelist’s cell phone. The list also includes Hulu and Amazon series. Hulu first appears at No. 9 for the premiere of “11.22.63,” while Amazon’s “The Man in the High Castle” tops that platform at No. 22 overall.
Here are some more unpopular debuts against which “The Crown” did worse: “The Ranch,” “The Path” and “Haters Back Off,” for example. It did, however, top “The Mindy Project” Seasons 4 and 5, and “Marco Polo,” among a handful of others.
Readers are probably wondering which show measured by Symphony AM had the worst debut viewership. That unfortunate distinction belongs to Amazon’s “Catastrophe,” which only attracted 274,000 viewers over its first few days.
Check out the full Symphony rankings below. Netflix does not reveal viewership data. Executives at the streaming giant have denounced Symphony’s data as “remarkably inaccurate” in the past.
“The Crown” reportedly had a $130 million production budget, which would make it the most expensive TV show ever. Clearly, the returns on that investment have not been worthy of such royal treatment.
Without further adieu, here are the streaming originals’ viewership, ranked in descending order…
