Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios
New viewership data from Nielsen reflects other data points that show that Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power lost a significant amount of its viewers between the first and second season.
Morfydd Clark as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios
Nielsen reported back in 2022 following the show’s two-episode premiere that it brought in 1.253 billion minutes watched. Now the data tracking firm is reporting that the Season 2 three-episode premiere only brought in 1.015 billion minutes watched as noted by X user NowItsKnown.
#Reacher S2 (3Eps) premiere puts a BEATDOWN on #RingsOfPower S2 (3Eps). #PrimeVideo #RingsOfPowerS2 @jftrent @wdwpro1 @ValliantRenegad @KinelRyan @Nerdrotics @derekbwriting @MrRomyRome @CultureCasino @JonasJCampbell pic.twitter.com/jEXV70cDqb
— MAC (@NowItsKnown) September 26, 2024
If you do a simple straight up comparison between the numbers the Season 2 numbers are 18.9% lower than Season 1.
However, if you factor in the run time of the episodes, the first season had a total runtime of 132 minutes for its two-episode premiere while the second season three-episode premiere had a run time of 204 minutes. If you divide the total minutes watched by the run time for the first season it comes to around 9.4 million views. If you do the same calculation for the second season it comes to 4.9 million views. That’s a 47% decline.
Tanya Moodie as Gundabel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios
And that decline closely matches up with what fellow analytics firm Samba TV reported following the three-episode premiere. It reported that the show’s debut episode was watched by 1.8 million US households over four days.
At the beginning of this month, Samba TV revealed the Season 2 premiere was only watched by 902,000 households over five days. That’s a decline of 49.8%.
The new season of Rings of Power is out with 902k US households tuning in over the last five days to watch the first ep.
What do you think of the new season?#SambaTVInsights #RingsofPower #RingsofPowerS2 #Ringsofpowerseason2 #Sauron #LOTR #LOTRonPrime #AmazonPrimeVideo… pic.twitter.com/JNbWvVj5Qp
— Samba TV (@samba_tv) September 3, 2024
None of this is surprising Kim Masters at The Hollywood Reporter revealed in 2023 that only 63% of individuals who watched part of the show’s premiere back in 2022 did not complete the show.
She wrote, “While Amazon, like other streamers, provides only limited data — and internally, it held information even more closely than usual on the series — sources confirm that The Rings of Power had a 37 percent domestic completion rate (customers who watched the entire series).”
For those outside the United States, the completion rate was higher. Masters shared, “Overseas, it reached 45 percent. (A 50 percent completion rate would be a solid but not spectacular result, according to insiders).”
Charlie Vickers as Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios
Not only did the show lose massive numbers of viewers between Season 1 and Season 2, but it’s losing them rather rapidly from episode to episode of Season 2.
Data analytics firm Luminate reported the show only garnered 63.2 million in its first week albeit, it only tracked a single day given Rings of Power’s release time. In its second week, the firm reported it only garnered 764.7 million minutes watched.
By the third week it declined to 372.7 million minutes watched. That is 51% less than the 764.7 million of the second week.
Luminate’s Streaming Originals Data for Television for the week of September 6th through September 12th
It has declined even further with the fourth week only bringing in 346.4 million minutes watched, a decline of 7% from the 372.7 million of the third week.
Luminate’s Streaming Originals Data for Television for the week of September 13th through September 19th
It’s highly like the show’s viewership will continue to decline as the show is anything but The Lord of the Rings and it appears the showrunners have an actual malice against J.R.R. Tolkien and his works. The most recent piece of evidence of this is that it had Galadriel romantically kiss Elrond in the most recent episode.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse. You sweet summer child, it can always get worse. #RingsOfPower pic.twitter.com/XXZuRiR3uK
— Nerd Cookies (@nerd_cookies) September 26, 2024
For those unfamiliar with Tolkien’s legendarium, Elrond is Galadriel’s son-in-law. He marries Galadriel and Celeborn’s daughter Celebrían.
A screenshot of Elrond’s Genealogy via TolkienGateway.com
What do you make of this new Nielsen data showing just how many people stopped watching The Rings of Power after the Season 1 premiere?
