'Watcher' keeps Murphy and Netflix on top of streaming ratings
Dominik Bindl/Getty Images Entertainment

Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) scored again with streaming viewers courtesy of its latest hit from producer Ryan Murphy, picking up immediately from his last one.
The Watcher, co-created by Murphy (the creator behind Glee and American Horror Story) and Ian Brennan, took over the top spot from Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story in Nielsen's most recent weekly streaming ratings (for Oct. 10-16).
The Watcher - rolling out on a Thursday rather than Netflix's usual Friday launches - streamed 2.355B minutes for the week, while Dahmer fell to third after three weeks on top with 1.108B minutes streamed, just behind Amazon Prime Video's (NASDAQ:AMZN) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (1.137B minutes). Dahmer in turn was in front of HBO Max's (WBD) fantasy series House of the Dragon, with 960M minutes streamed after putting out its penultimate episode.
Murphy - then broadcast TV's most prolific producer - jumped from Fox to Netflix in a five-year, nine-figure deal in 2018, and now he's delivered two straight dominating streaming programs for the video service.
Also notable this week is Peacock (NASDAQ:CMCSA) joining the fray for the first time, with its release of last month's horror film Halloween Ends entering the overall top 10 at No. 8, with 717M minutes streamed.
Rounding out the rest of the overall top 10: No. 5, The Blacklist (NFLX), 906M minutes; No. 6, The Midnight Club (NFLX), 867M minutes; No. 7, CoComelon (NFLX), 723M minutes; No. 9, Luckiest Girl Alive (NFLX), 696M minutes; and No. 10, NCIS (NFLX), 663M minutes.
The Watcher of course also led the original-series list, ahead of The Rings of Power, Dahmer and The Midnight Club. Disney+ (NYSE:DIS) made that list, though, with She-Hulk: Attorney at Law at No. 5 (526M minutes) and Andor at No. 7 (405M minutes), and Hulu (DIS) (CMCSA) was there at No. 8 with The Handmaid's Tale (403M minutes).
Acquired programs were led by House of the Dragon, ahead of The Blacklist, CoComelon and NCIS. HBO Max (WBD) also placed two others on the list: Friends at No. 8 (450M minutes) and Game of Thrones at No. 10 (421M minutes).
And Peacock (CMCSA) topped the movie chart with its day-and-date release of Halloween Ends, which led a couple of Netflix (NFLX) titles - Luckiest Girl Alive and The Curse of Bridge Hollow (544M minutes) - as well as Disney's Hocus Pocus 2 (522M minutes).
(Nielsen streaming ratings now incorporate viewing from seven major streamers: Amazon Prime Video (AMZN), Apple TV+ (AAPL), Disney+ (DIS), HBO Max (WBD), Hulu (DIS) (CMCSA), Netflix (NFLX) and Peacock (CMCSA).)
Netflix (NFLX) has just announced it's planning its first global live broadcast with a Chris Rock comedy special in 2023.