Image: Altered Carbon, Netflix
This week, our television audience measurement for the United States shows that NBC’s Saturday Night Live is the most in-demand series. Saturday Night Live’s average of 98.8 million Demand Expressions is a 47.3% increase from last week. A likely reason for the increase is because the episode that aired this week had Senator Elizabeth Warren as a guest. She is a very topical guest for the comedy show, as Warren ending her presidential run was one of the week’s top news stories.
SNL’s surge pushes last week’s No. 1, Nickelodeon’s Spongebob Squarepants, to second most in-demand series. Ranking third by television audience measurement is MBS’s My Hero Academia, which airs on Adult Swim in the USA. The anime has been ranking 2nd or 3rd consistently for five weeks now. Two weeks ago, we said it was likely that demand would stay high once the Japanese airing of My Hero Academia finished last week. That prediction seems to be accurate, as US demand as actually increased by 3.1% in the week after that event.
Cartoon series Steven Universe returns to the United States top 10 after dropping to 11th place last week. The show’s last season, subtitled Steven Universe: Future, is currently airing on Cartoon Network. The series finale will air on March 27th.
Turning to the digital original chart, Netflix’s Altered Carbon returns to the top ten for the first time since March 2018. Demand for the sci-fi drama shot up by 40.2% compared to last week. This increase was driven by the full release of the show’s Season 2 on February 27th. Notably, Altered Carbon took full advantage of its futuristic premise and cast a completely new lead actor for Season 2. US demand for the Season 2 release is so far is almost double that of the Season 1 release in February 2018, indicating that the bold recasting has intrigued rather than alienated American audiences.
At the top of the chart, Netflix’s Stranger Things remains the USA’s most demanded digital original series. This marks the fourth week in a row that the sci-fi show has held this honor.
However, our television audience measurement of digital originals reveals Stranger Things has Disney nipping at its heels. This week’s 2nd and 3rd most in-demand digital originals are both from Disney+, in the form of The Mandalorian and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Respectively, the Star Wars titles have only 10% and 15% less demand than the Stranger Things.
