The launch of the second season of Prodigy made some waves around the world. Also the Nielsen numbers are in for the week of the series finale of Star Trek: Discovery.
Prodigy hits Netflix top 10 around the world
In the days after the July 1 launch of the second season of Star Trek: Prodigy, the animated series hit Netflix’s top 10 Kids show chart in the UK and several other countries around the world. You can see it at number 10 from the Netflix app from the UK below.
In total, Prodigy showed up on the top 10 in eight countries around the world, primarily in Europe but also in India and New Zealand, according to the tracking site Flix Patrol. It performed best in Germany, on that chart for four days reaching a high of #3. Surprisingly, Prodigy also popped into the chart for France, even though the entire season has been available on France TV since March.
Unlike when the first season launched last Christmas, Prodigy didn’t make it into the Netflix Top 10 in the USA. The show that has dominated the Netflix Top 10 Kids shows chart in the US chart for the past week is Unicorn Academy, which also just launched a second season on the streaming service. However, it appears Prodigy is getting more “buzz” as it is outpacing Unicorn Academy when it comes to web searches over the last week, according to Google Trends.
In their recent interview with TrekMovie, series creators Dan and Kevin Hageman said they believed the show needed to do “more than well” to warrant a season 3 pickup, but they were hoping it might do well enough for Netflix to back a streaming movie.
From episode 20 of Prodigy season 2 (CBS Studios)
Discovery ends in Nielsen Top 10
Nielsen has released the top 10 USA streaming charts for the last week of May, which includes the season 5 finale of Star Trek: Discovery (“Life, Itself”). Discovery popped in at the tenth spot, with 269 million minutes viewed. This is the fourth time Discovery showed up on the charts for the season, after appearing for three weeks in a row covering the first five episodes (the first two episodes were released in the same week).
Paramount+ shows tend to be a rarity on the Nielsen originals chart, which is in part due to the streaming service not having the reach of the giants like Netflix and Prime Video. 2023 was the first year Nielsen tracked Paramount+ shows and both Picard and Strange New Worlds also appeared on the top 10 charts, with Strange New Worlds season 2 doing significantly better in terms of ranks and minutes watched. Season 5 of Discovery also somewhat trailed behind season 3 of Picard in terms of the minutes watched metric.
L-R Sonequa Martin Green as Burnham, Tara Rosling as President T’Rina and Doug Jones as Saru in “Life, Itself” (Paramount+)
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I’m so glad it’s doing well internationally. And while it’s unfortunate that it’s not top 10 in the US, I’ve heard it’s 13 which isn’t bad IMO. I really hope that it continues to do well, and that it matches (or even succeeds) Netflix’s expectations to earn a season 3 renewal. This season, and series as a whole, is just so good and this level of talent deserves to be rewarded.
I’ve watched the two-part season opener, and so far am honestly mystified at what the all the shouting is about. I’ll continue watching, of course.
Both of these shows are (were) great and I’m glad that are getting viewers. Disco was wonderful and I will miss Michael Burnham. I really valued the flash-forward that showed her older. Prodigy was a perfect distillation of what Star Trek is and the love for the Trek universe and its values and lore was apparent throughout the show. The orange sweater-wearing time traveler was a delight (not being specific for spoilers) and an unexpected gift.
To be honest, I love season two of Prodigy more than the final season of Discovery. Though I love a few good moments from the latter. What an adventure!
Great to see! Not surprised about either of them actually. I assumed the Discovery finale would bring in more views. I don’t remember how big were the Picard and SNW actual view numbers were in their finales but I do think higher but that’s to be expected as well. All that matters is that Discovery got high enough numbers to.end with a splash at least.
But very very happy to see Prodigy enter the top 10 kids list again. And while I know not everyone was happy the entire season dropped at once it probably helped with the numbers. I’m just super happy it’s really being watched because it really deserves it seeing the reviews everywhere. Hopefully we’ll get another season but it’s probably way to early to say either way. But I absolutely love this show.
The “Picard” finale came in at 400 million minutes viewed, steadily climbing each week to the finale. “Discovery” fell out of the top 10 in the weeks leading up to its finale. Based on the season average, ending with 269 million was a bit of a bump, not a huge leap.
Always missing from Nielsen’s info is the number of unique viewers and demographics. Streamers have all of that information but will never share with the masses.
Thanks for the info Denny C. I was too lazy to look it up myself lol.
Again not very surprised because it was always stated both Picard and SNW did better than Discovery on views in general, now we finally have direct evidence of that. And of course it doesn’t give us a full picture but I’ll take what I can get.
And we have no idea if that’s what Discovery has always averaged or was it a bigger bump due to it being its final season…or is it actually lower than the previous seasons? Well it’s canceled now so it doesn’t really matter anymore but us nerds get off on this stuff lol.
But yeah I wish they share more information in general. It’s sad it took this long just to see some basic numbers to these shows.
I don’t understand. Is it just Netflix the Netherlands that doesn’t have it?
International licensing agreements can be complex.
From startrek.com:
Star Trek: Prodigy will stream on Netflix globally (excluding Canada, Nordics, CEE, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Belarus and Mainland China) and Season 1 is currently available on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe with Season 2 coming soon.
Canada and China seem to be in the trickiest spot for this right now. At least the other countries will have an option, hopefully soon.
Ah thank you. I must’ve missed that.
I would really love to see the Prodigy series go on to spawn more interest in Star Trek Toys. I’m just not sure I want to see Playmates have another go at it. Maybe Spin Master or Jazwares might be a better fit for the license. Hiya Toys looks really promising too, but I think those are going to be more in line with adult collectors. I’m not sure Hiya Toys would even be interested in a line that’s also for kids. Playmates just seems to incapable of thinking outside the shell!
Agree. Speaking of Playmates, I’m glad it will handle toy licensing rights for Hasbro’s Power Rangers.
The lede was somewhat buried, but it’s not the ten top Netflix shows in Europe, but was the top ten *kids’ shows*. That’s a considerably lower bar.
According to FlixPatrol, Prodigy has been hovering around the top 20 of all streaming shows of all networks. Which is still impressive.
Don’t count on a season 3. Be glad we have what we have.
Wise Words.
I’m nit a big DISCO fan, but I am still happy it is doing so well in viewership. ANY Trek show that does well is a win for all Trek fans.
That’s fine, despite Prodigy being my #1 current Star Trek show.
the prod numbers are interesting… trek was soaring when it was on netflix internationally… so many people got cut out or stopped following when paramount pulled the plug on disco right before season 4 premiered. i think this shows the influence netflix had on trek overseas…
And we STILL don´t have it on SkyShowTime. I wish they would have some of the newer Trek shows in Netflix here as well.