Last year, studios continued to pull back how much they spend on new TV shows. A pair of strikes effectively shut down Hollywood for several months, disrupting new releases of television shows and movies.
And yet Americans kept on streaming.
The time that people watched streaming services from their TV sets last year jumped 21 percent from 2022, according to a year-end review on streaming trends by Nielsen, the media research firm. There were nearly a million television shows and movies for Americans to choose from on over 90 streaming services.
What did they watch? A lot of reruns, it turns out.
Here’s a look at some of the trends.
‘Suits’ Bests ‘Stranger Things’
It’s well established that “Suits,” the USA Network’s legal procedural that aired from 2011 to 2019, was an unexpected streaming hit last year. Netflix subscribers began devouring it over the summer. They shattered records in the process.
“Suits,” with 57.7 billion minutes of viewing time in 2023, eclipsed both “The Office” in 2020 and “Stranger Things” in 2022 (when its fourth season was released) as the most-streamed show on television sets in a single year, according to Nielsen. (The research firm began releasing yearly figures in 2020.)
“Suits” was probably new to most viewers who watched it on Netflix, said Brian Fuhrer, a senior vice president of product at Nielsen.
