Laughing Through the Drought: Sitcoms Lead Most Rewatched TV Shows During Strike Slowdowns | Charts
They don’t call it the era of “Peak TV” for nothing. Save for 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic briefly put a kink in the content pipeline, the amount of new scripted television shows being produced has grown larger every year since 2015. The era of streaming has produced so much new TV that viewers often struggle to sift through it all.
But overwhelmed viewers should be careful what they wish for. Though both the writers’ strike and the SAG-AFTRA strike are now in the rearview mirror, the content drought that comes in their wake has just begun. Episodes of new and returning shows will be increasingly rare as the backlog of series written and produced before May 2, when the writers strike began, runs out.
Streamers of course anticipated this problem, betting on international or unscripted content to support their increasingly sparse release schedules. But the most important factor in determining who will fare best during the content drought is rewatchability. Whose TV shows will viewers be watching again and again as Hollywood works to return to business as usual?
We used Ranker insights to figure out which shows people are rewatching the most as “Peak TV” comes to a halt. Ranker Insights pulls data not just from the millions of votes cast on Ranker.com every day, but through our app Watchworthy, where users “Love” shows they enjoy the most to get TV recommendations personalized to their tastes. Thousands of our users don’t just “Love” particular shows, but add them to their Watchlists, indicating that they’re planning to watch series that they’ve already seen and adore — in other words, they’re rewatching them.
These are the 10 shows that these viewers were rewatching the most from August through all of October:
Top 10 Most Rewatchable TV Shows
The Office – Peacock
Lost – Hulu/Amazon
The Big Bang Theory – Max
Friends – Max
Seinfeld – Netflix
Parks and Recreation – Peacock
How I Met Your Mother – Hulu
The Sopranos – Max
The Good Place – Netflix
Avatar: The Last Airbender – Netflix/Amazon/Paramount+
Comedies Lead Most Rewatched Series
What do these results tell us? First, sitcoms in particular are valuable assets in a content drought. TV streamers are always fighting each other for the rights to blockbuster IP, hoping to produce the next “Game of Thrones” or “Stranger Things,” but the value of an enduringly popular sitcom can’t be overstated.
What makes a rewatchable TV show? Audiences can watch situational comedies like “The Office,” “Friends,” and “Seinfeld” from any point in the series, meaning that you can skip episodes you’re not fond of without losing track of the overall plot. The relatively low stakes of these shows also means they can usually be watched in the background while doing other tasks.
That said, there are also a few serial dramas on the list that demand more of the viewers’ attention. “Lost” places surprisingly high on the list. The sci-fi series is second only to the famously popular rewatch “The Office,” despite a complex plot that’s easy to lose if you miss an episode or even a scene. Another drama on the list, prestige progenitor “The Sopranos,” ranks even though the story unfolds at a relatively slow pace compared to successors like “Game of Thrones.” And while “The Good Place” is a comedy, its four-season run is shaped by some pretty big plot twists that make it a slightly surprising entry on the list.
But the takeaway here is clear: If you’ve got a popular sitcom, a near-constant stream of users rely on your platform for their comfort watch. That’s why Max (then still called HBO Max) spent so much money in its early days to acquire streaming rights to shows like “Friends” and “South Park,” and why Netflix shelled out more than $500 million for “Seinfeld.” It’s also a big reason why Peacock is so well positioned for growth in the coming months, with “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation” helping to offset lagging interest in its original series compared to its competitors.
Despite the fact that popular sitcoms are relatively cheap to produce and offer a lot of long-term value for streamers, the genre has fallen out of style in the “Peak TV” era, which favors serialized narratives and subtler humor. With the strikes resolved, though, insiders suggest that the studios will likely be less willing to spend big on producing new shows. Could that lead to a new boom in the production of sitcoms (rather than just the rebooting of old ones)? For now, it’s anyone’s guess. All we can do is wait and watch — and rewatch.
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