When The Bear first premiered, it was all in one fell swoop, eight feverish episodes dropped onto Hulu in June 2022. While the show was beloved by critics, it took a while, relatively speaking, to catch on, popping up as the second-most-watched show across all platforms three weeks later and the most-watched program the following week. Season 2, released in the same bingeable fashion at about the same time a year later, came out of the gate hot, quickly becoming the most streamed TV series in the US. During both seasons, The Bear’s audience petered out fairly quickly, making it the equivalent of a darkly comedic shooting star. That’s typical for bingeable shows, which industry watchdogs like Parrot Analytics say typically have a “decay rate” of about eight weeks from their initial release. Shows dropped weekly, like The Acolyte or Severance, tend to stay on audience’s minds much longer, from initial release to about nine weeks after the finale hits. Seventy-five percent of the most popular shows in the US in 2023 were released weekly, and shows that come out in installments typically draw more viewers in the lull between seasons, creating fewer peaks and valleys in their viewership numbers in the long term.
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