Image: Umbrella Academy, Netflix
This week’s most in-demand series in the United States is once again Nickelodeon’s Spongebob Squarepants. The beloved cartoon has now spent 8 weeks in a row at the top of the US demand chart. This week, Spongebob Squarepants has 111.6 times as much demand as the average series, putting it in our ‘Exceptional’ bracket which only 0.2% of series ever reach.
US demand for Rick And Morty is up by 25.3% week-on-week compared to the market. This comes after a Season 5 teaser and an 8-minute spin-off short were released on July 27th. The short, created by anime director Takashi Sano, is the third Rick And Morty spin-off produced in a different animation style to the main series. As the demand increase demonstrates, these shorts are an effective way keep the Rick And Morty audience engaged in between season airings.
Demand for the Nickelodeon/TVOKids co-production Paw Patrol is up after the show was embroiled in the US political narrative. Conversation about the children’s cartoon spiked dramatically after a White House press briefing on July 24th stated the US President was “appalled” by the show’s cancellation. Nickelodeon confirmed the next day that Paw Patrol had not and was not being cancelled.
The same White House briefing also referenced Paramount Network’s Cops and A&E’s Live P.D., both of which were in fact cancelled amid the ongoing protests against police brutality. We performed an analysis of the demand for crime reality series around these events at that time, which can be found on our DEMAND360LITE platform.
The top digital original series remains Netflix’s Stranger Things, which this week has 55.3 times the demand of the average series in the USA. The sci-fi drama has now had the highest US audience OTT demand for seven weeks in a row.
The fastest rising series in the US digital original top ten this week is Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. Compared to last week’s market-relative demand, the superhero series gained 64.7% more audience OTT demand and now ranks second after Stranger Things. This strong increase is due to the release of The Umbrella Academy Season 2 this week on July 31st.
There are no completely new titles to the digital original chart this week. Chart perennial Narcos from Netflix enters the top ten up from last week’s 11th. The crime drama has 29.9 times the demand of the average US series this week. However, last week’s speculation that Netflix’s Cursed may appear was off the mark; the show appears to have peaked at last week’s 14th.
