As certain as falling leaves, streaming viewership sees spikes in the fall after the lull of the warmer months. But it’s not just sports that should get the credit for the season’s ratings rise.
Of course, football is the biggest part of it: the NFL was the top signup-driving title on both Prime Video and Netflix from September through December 2025, according to insights from analytics firm Antenna. These and more findings from the company’s “The New, New Fall Season” study were presented Wednesday by president and co-founder Rameez Tase at TheGrill, TheWrap’s annual entertainment business conference.
Because of those growing signups, however — Antenna reports the 2025 football season contributed to a 60% rise in daily signups above the preceding offseason — streamers have embraced the third quarter as an optimal time to launch new shows, echoing network TV’s traditional fall season.
“Whereas the new fall season was all about driving viewership on linear TV, we think the new new fall season is all about subscriber growth in the world of streaming,” Tase said on Wednesday. “It may not be all about driving viewership, but the fall has become the time to drive new subscriber additions to each of these streaming services.”
In an increasingly fractured streaming ecosystem, where viewers can cobble together their own TV viewing package with whichever streamers they’re subscribed to, debuting a new series when subscribers are higher could make the difference in whether or not a show succeeds, simply because there’s a higher chance for audiences to discover it as they scroll in between games.
Just as the fall streaming surge mirrors the bustling fall season on broadcast — which notably, will see some high-profile new shows like Fox’s “Baywatch” and NBC’s “Rockford Files” reboot and returning favorites like CBS’ “Matlock” and ABC’s “High Potential” move to a midseason — the streamers positioning tentpole offerings anchored by football mimics the impact of an NFL lead-in on linear, and that trend will grow as more games migrate to those platforms.
It’s like nothing really ever changed.
But drafting off of a big sporting event is a year-round strategy. Take CBS’ “Tracker,” which easily launched as the season’s most-watched entertainment program following the 2024 Super Bowl. This winter, NBCUniversal directed its Super Bowl crowd to Peacock’s “The Burbs,” which reached nearly 1 billion viewing minutes in 11 days.
Beyond football, Antenna pointed to Apple TV’s “Pluribus,” Peacock’s “The Paper,” Netflix’s “The Beast in Me” and HBO Max’s “It: Welcome to Derry” as new shows debuting in fall 2025 that were top performers with new subscribers. Notably, all of the above series scored Season 2 renewals, even “The Beast in Me,” which was initially conceived as a limited series.
Another aspect of the fall viewing surge is summer blockbusters that make their way to their respective streamers just several months later, thanks to shorter theatrical windows. Last fall that meant hits like “Superman” and “Weapons” landed on HBO Max, and this fall has already seen the streaming successes for movies like “Toy Story 5,” which scored 20 million views within its first five days on Disney+.
“The programming teams are bringing that summer box office into the fall streaming window,” Tase said. “They’re driving new subscriptions with it, and the new subscriptions are watching those titles immediately upon subscribing.”
Overall, Antenna reported that seven of eight premium SVOD services — including Hulu, Disney+ and Peacock — recorded their heaviest acquisition during fall 2025. But, as Apple TV launches new and returning series like “Ted Lasso,” “Nocturne” and “Dark Matter,” there’s a chance it could flip from seven to eight.
So as much as streaming continues to take a bigger piece of the TV pie over linear, the fall TV season isn’t going anywhere.
Taylor Frankie Paul drama boosts “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives”
Ever since the controversy surrounding “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star Taylor Frankie Paul resulted in her season of “The Bachelorette” getting pulled from ABC’s lineup, fans have been waiting to get the behind-the-scenes look at the drama from the new season of “Mormon Wives.”
That anticipation worked in the show’s favor, with Season 5 debuting on Sept. 10 on Hulu as the No. 7 most-watched original series of the week with 561 million viewing minutes, per Nielsen’s streaming charts. The unscripted series had the highest concentration of adults 18-34 among streaming originals, and ranked second to “Family Guy” across all 10 overall titles.
Kimmel viewership milestone
“Jimmy Kimmel Live” wrapped up its 2025-26 season with average viewership of 2 million, ranking as the late night show’s most-watched season in eight years. In the 18-49 demo, “Kimmel” averaged a 0.18 rating across the season, ranking as the No. 1 show across late night.
The show also kicked off the 2026-27 season as the No. 1 show across late night, bringing in 2.29 million total viewers and a 0.21 rating during the week of Sept. 21.
Spooky Season begins
As “Practical Magic 2” debuted in theaters on Sept. 10, the original “Practical Magic” movie made its Nielsen top 10 debut with 236 million minutes viewed, ranking as the No. 8 movie.
Likewise as spooky season fully kicks off, 2009 animated film “Coraline,” which debuted on Hulu on Sept. 1, made its first top 10 appearance with 208 million minutes, landing just behind “Practical Magic 2.”
ICYMI:
- “The Traitors: New Blood” notches NBC’s top unscripted premiere in six years
- The “South Park” Season 29 premiere soared over the Season 28 opener among both key categories in the 18-49 demo
- MTV’s Video Music Awards returned to Los Angeles with a bang, bringing in its biggest audience since 2015
- Viewership for Lizzie Borden’s “Monster” jumped 20% from premiere week
