Netflix’s breakout docuseries Tiger King racked up more streaming minutes in its first full week of release than any other show.
Nielsen has already noted the show’s growth over its first 10 days of release.
More data from the ratings service shows that despite only having seven episodes, Tiger King racked up more streaming minutes than any other title in Nielsen’s SVOD Content Ratings (which currently includes Netflix and Amazon) in the week of March 23.
Users watched more than 5.3 billion minutes of the show from March 23-29.
That’s more than 50 percent ahead of the second show on the list, Ozark (3.5 billion minutes). The CW’s All American (1.8 billion minutes) — which now has both of its seasons on Netflix — and The Office (about 1.5 billion minutes) also topped the 1 billion mark for the week.
#TigerKing remains atop of the streaming kingdom. 👑📺
According to our data, users watched more than 5.3 billion minutes of @netflix‘s show between March 23-29.
April 12’s bonus episode hosted by @joelmchale earned 4.6 million viewers on its first day. https://t.co/XN05dzuBtm
— Nielsen (@nielsen) April 17, 2020
Additionally, the Joel McHale-hosted aftershow released April 12 racked up a sizable first-day audience topping the best single-day audience for the rest of the series in its first 10 days of release.
The Tiger King and I had an average viewership of 4.6 million for its first day, ahead of the single-day total for the series as a whole from March 20-29.
The biggest audience for Tiger King in that period was 4.06 million on March 28.
Across its first 10 days, Tiger King averaged 19 million viewers, making it one of Netflix’s biggest shows to date, per the Nielsen SVOD ratings (numbers that Netflix contends don’t give a full picture of its content, as they’re just for viewing on TV sets and only for the United States).
Tiger King’s story, involving an eccentric gay zookeeper who doubled as a self-styled country music star before being arrested for initiating a murder-for-hire plot against the owner of a big cat sanctuary quickly grabbed the public’s attention when it began streaming on March 20.
Joe Maldonado-Passage, the star of the show also known as “Joe Exotic,” has lamented not being able to see himself “being famous” due to living in prison, where he is serving 22 years after being convicted on animal abuse charges and for attempting to hire a hitman to murder series co-star Carole Baskin.
A reporter recently asked President Donald Trump if he would consider pardoning Maldonado-Passage, who is said to have written the president a letter from prison requesting that he be set free. Trump said he would consider the move, although he didn’t appear to be aware of the popular show.
“I know nothing about it. He has 22 years for what, what did he do?” Trump said on April 8. “I’ll look into it.”