Hulu Needs Eight Shows to Succeed
Lately, I’ve discussed the oddity of consumer streaming behavior.
For whatever reason, we’ve collectively chosen as a society to watch reruns more than new content.
Photo: Disney
I can’t fully explain or even understand why, but it’s what we do as a people.
Not coincidentally, Disney just canceled the Tiana cartoon before a single episode aired.
Photo: Wikimedia
The whole thing was simply too expensive to justify, given what Disney and we now know about consumer behavior.
I touched on the whole thing in a recent article, but there is an addendum.
Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Dana Walden just explained her content strategy, and it’s a bit more nuanced than what I said.
Basically, Hulu needs eight shows to succeed. Please allow me to explain.
Disney’s Streaming Plan
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Ultimately, Disney makes every decision based on how much money it will make.
So, when someone like Walden appears at the Morgan Stanley Conference Q&A session, her answers justify the investments.
Holywood Reporter PHOTOGRAPHED BY DIANA KING
CEO Bob Iger empowers its content creators by allowing them to control the financial outlay.
Unlike former CEO Bob Chapek, Iger feels strongly that this system provides checks and balances.
Photo: Deadline
Should someone fail, Iger can check the ledger to identify who spent the money foolishly.
To her credit, Walden has demonstrated the Midas Touch with her selection of projects for the body of the 21st century.
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Most recently, Walden struck gold with Shogun, a limited series that proved so popular Disney renewed it for additional seasons.
That’s…not how limited series are supposed to work, but it speaks to the ravenous appetite Hulu viewers have for the program.
ABC/Frank Micelotta)
We want more, and Disney’s gonna give it to us. And we have Walden and her team to thank for that.
More impressively, that’s but one of the several hits on Hulu, the focus of our conversation today.
Photo: Hulu
As of the fiscal first quarter of 2025, Hulu claims 53.6 million subscribers, and, as you know, most of them watch reruns.
We’ll get to the Nielsen Streaming Ratings in just a bit, but longtime readers of this article can probably name them.
Family Guy
Shows like American Dad, Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, and Grey’s Anatomy regularly make the Nielsen charts.
They’re the favorite shows on Hulu. It’s an objective fact. But Hulu needs new content to succeed.
The question is how much, and we’ve finally gotten a general answer.
Programming the Calendar
The focus of today’s topic is Paradise, a series I haven’t had the pleasure of watching yet, despite my love of Sterling K. Brown.
I’m going on vacation in a few weeks. So, my free time is at a minimum while I try to get ahead on my work.
I regret that I’m behind on Paradise because my friends are talking about it all the time, which tracks.
Throughout her career, Walden has had an unerring sense of which programs will be sticky.
Photo: Disney
That’s the term for something people find conversational and memorable.
Sticky programs are, by nature, more viral. And in the context of content programming, virality is key.
Photo: IMDB
Shogun was viral, and now Paradise is viral. Before either show debuted, Hulu already claimed a trio of other such hits.
Those programs are The Bear, Only Murders in the Building, and The Handmaid’s Tale, the last of which was Hulu’s first true hit.
Before The Handmaid’s Tale, the closest thing Hulu had to a successful original program was a sitcom named Casual.
While that program ran for four seasons, it wasn’t the least bit sticky.
So, when The Handmaid’s Tale debuted in 2015, everything changed for Hulu…but only so much.
The “problem” with programming The Handmaid’s Tale in the early days was that the seasons lasted for ten episodes.
That total didn’t even cover 20 percent of the annual calendar.
Even when Hulu bumped them up to 13 episodes for seasons two and three, it still left 75 percent of the year uncovered.
Hulu needed more content, which it desperately tried. You can read the list comprising the Hulu Graveyard here.
It wasn’t for lack of trying, folks. Hulu kept making content, and we kept watching reruns instead.
The Magic Number
(Photo by Phil Faraone/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images)
What Hulu has since realized, thanks in large part to the arrival of Walden, is that less is more.
Rather than slapping everything against the wall to see what sticks, Walden has demonstrated her natural skill.
She has carefully created a content incubator throughout the Disney empire.
That’s why Hulu currently has five original programs that qualify as sticky.
People watch them, and they do well during awards season.
Now, with the ascension of Paradise, Hulu original content covers plenty of the annual calendar.
Photo: Hulu
The Bear is available via bingeing. So, it only lasts a couple of weeks each year.
Meanwhile, Only Murders in the Building and the concluding season of The Handmaid’s Tale cover 18 weeks.
Credit: Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu
I’m allowing for Hulu’s trend of streaming two episodes during the first week of the new season.
Those three programs cover 20 weeks, with future seasons of Shogun and Paradise presumably taking another 12 weeks.
Photo: Also IMDB
Alas, the end of The Handmaid’s Tale will drop the number back to roughly half the annual calendar, though.
At that point, Walden will have programmed four hits on Hulu. With four more, she can blanket the entire calendar.
Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage)
That’s the ultimate goal here. It would give fans of new content something to find each week of the calendar year on the streaming service.
Meanwhile, everyone else can keep watching reruns of Seth MacFarlane shows.
This Week’s Nielsen Ratings
Wall Street Journal
The latest batch of Nielsen Streaming Ratings covers the week of February 3rd-9th. And I’m here to tell you it’s pretty boring.
Once again, Bluey was Disney’s most popular series, earning another 1.04 billion minutes. It’s uncannily consistent.
FOX
Then, we have those Hulu reruns I just mentioned. Here’s how they did during the week in question:
- NCIS – 834 million viewer minutes
- Grey’s Anatomy – 791 million viewer minutes
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – 730 million viewer minutes
- Bob’s Burgers — 725 million viewer minutes
- Family Guy — 711 million viewer minutes
- The Rookie — 689 million viewer minutes
- American Dad – 667 million viewer minutes
Photo: THIERRY CHESNOT/GETTY IMAGES
This was an incredibly strong week for Hulu overall, as it claimed seven spots in the top ten, and Disney+ gained another with Bluey.
The other big story is the aforementioned Paradise, which is humming along with 476 million viewer minutes.
It’s gained over one billion minutes during its first two weeks on Hulu. That’s how I know it’s another anchor piece.
You can expect Paradise to chart for the next month, and Walden has already renewed it for season two.
Photo: Disney
On the Movies chart, it was a comically slow week. Moana charted with a modest 208 million viewer minutes.
That’s not the stunner, though. Frozen somehow made the list a paltry 132 million viewer minutes.
Photo: Disney Lorcana
This may be the other phenomenon we’re tracking. Movies are longer form content, and they appear to be falling out of favor.
I know. I hate the thought of that, too, as I ran movie websites for more than 20 years.
Photo: The Walt Disney Company
Now, a 100-minute film is too boring for many consumers. That’s Dana Walden’s next problem if she does become CEO at Disney.
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