Image: The Walking Dead, AMC
In this week’s most in-demand US series data, Nickelodeon’s Spongebob Squarepants has now made it three weeks in a row as the top title. Compared to last week, demand for the cartoon is up by 3.3% driven by the currently airing Season 12. The animated sea creature is not just dominating TV this week: a Spongebob videogame was demonstrated to press, highlighting the cross-media appeal of the franchise.
AMC’s The Walking Dead shoots up into 6th place in top ten after ranking 17th last week. The 38.3% demand increase comes as Season 10 of the show returns to air. After taking a seasonal break through December and January, the first new episode arrived on February 23rd. Indications are that The Walking Dead didn’t lose any momentum with fans over the break: the daily peak demand for the newest episode of the zombie series is almost identical to the daily peak demand of Season 10’s premiere episode on October 6th.
Also gaining a bigger share of America’s attention is FOX’s The Simpsons. Compared to last week, The Simpsons has 28.3% more demand and rose from 23rd to 10th. The long-running show is currently airing Season 31. Additionally, Disney is starting to integrate their newly acquired asset into their universe of content: for the first time, a new Pixar film will not be accompanied by a Pixar short film. Instead, a The Simpsons short film will play before theatrical screenings of Onward. This short was shown to press this week, although the general release is not until March 6th.
Disney+’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars enjoys the biggest increase in streaming TV demand on the Digital Original chart. After the premiere last week, Episode 2 of the show’s final season was released on Feb 28th. The revival of the 2008 series has generally been well reviewed by critics and appears to be a hit with fans too. Demand has grown by another 30.1% after last week’s 46.2% increase.
Although the Star Wars series gained the most streaming TV demand and is the second most in-demand digital original, the top series is still Netflix’s Stranger Things. However, it was a slow news week for the off-air show and demand dropped by 20.9% compared to last week.
