Who Won the Streaming Wars in June 2021?

It’s one thing to know how many bodies are sitting in front of how many televisions to watch however many shows at any given time. But on top of every one of those bodies (or beside them if you’re lying down on the couch — no judgment) is a mind bursting with important ideas: ideas about the shows the person is watching, why they’re watching it, and how it’s similar to or different from the dozens of other shows they love. And Watchworthy is the place you can find cold hard data on all those opinions.

In just 30 seconds, our Watchworthy recommendation app gets to know your taste in TV and gives every show a “Worthy Score” specifically for you: the higher a given show’s Worthy Score, the more likely it is you will enjoy that show. Over the month of June, we tracked each time a new show (premiered in 2019 or later) received a Worthy Score of 70% or higher, then organized all those shows according to network. The resulting analysis allowed us to determine which network’s content is being recommended to the most users — in other words, it told us which of the major streaming platforms is currently winning the Streaming Wars. Here are the shows and streaming platforms that were most Watchworthy in June 2021.

singlerow-wwshows-june.png

Watchworthy bases its recommendations from data coming in not just from Watchworthy, but also from the hundreds of TV lists being voted on all the time on Ranker.com. To understand why these shows performed the way they did, we took a look at some popular TV lists to see how these shows’ rankings changed over the course of the month.

Which Streaming Platforms Were Most Watchworthy?

Much like in May, we saw a lot of changes on the Watchworthy Show leaderboards in June that didn’t end up shifting the playing field for streaming services. Netflix and HBO Max have maintained their positions with very little change from month to month by consistently introducing popular flavors of the month that perform well immediately after their release, then fade away, only to be replaced by newer, trendier shows. The result is a tumultuous TV leaderboard that belies these two platforms’ relatively stable holds on first and second place.

streaming wars-coverback.png

That’s not to say nothing changed from May to June, however. Paramount+ was able to mount a surprising advance from last to sixth place, thanks to its buzzworthy reboot of the 2000s Nickelodeon comedy iCarly. The post-cancellation zeal for Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist proved ephemeral for Peacock, as the show’s drop from the Watchworthy Top 20 pushed Peacock into last place. And the release of Loki pushed Disney’s share of recommendations up by 1% — a surprisingly small gain for a show that was the Most Anticipated New TV Show Of 2021 up until its release.

1. Netflix ‘Lockes’ Onto First Place: The Witcher is #1 on the leaderboards for the third month running, as fans of the hit series are anxiously awaiting a Season 2 that so far has no official release date. Meanwhile, Locke & Key has reached its highest point on the leaderboards yet at #2, which likely has something to do with the fact that early in June, Netflix announced an October release date for the horror/fantasy series’ third season.

2. Euphoria Keeps HBO in High Spirits: The Mare of Easttown fell a few spots in June, but stayed in the Top 20, while HBO Max streaming staple Euphoria jumped up seven spots on the leaderboards after the first teaser trailer for Season 2 was released in mid-June. With Avenue 5 and Perry Mason both dropping out of the Top 20 and Mare of Easttown beginning to slip, HBO is likely hoping the July release of its Gossip Girl reboot will help the platform maintain its grasp on the #2 spot.

3. Amazon Makes Itself at Home in Third: No news is good news for Amazon Prime, which pulled itself up into third place last month. Upload has stayed still at #3, and while The Boys fell two spots from its position in May, Invincible, another Amazon original about superheroes, rose 12 spots to join the Top 20 shows two months after Amazon’s announcement that the show would be renewed for a second (and third) season.

4. Disney+ Is Let Down by Loki: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier rose to #4 on the leaderboards in March, a spot higher than it was the month of its release — possibly thanks to controversy surrounding star Anthony Mackie’s comments on the potential for romance between the show’s two lead characters. WandaVision also stayed inside the Watchworthy Top 10, putting together an impressive total of recommendations that ended up boosting the platform’s total share of high recommendations by 1%. But while Loki did crack the Top 20 during the month of its release, its position at #16 is a bit lower than one might expect for such a highly anticipated show. It’s possible that, like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki’s most Watchworthy months are still ahead of it.

5. Apple Puts its Hope in Lasso: June was not a stellar month for Apple TV+: Home Before Dark, currently its most Watchworthy show, dropped a spot down to #13; The Morning Show hasn’t returned to the heights it reached in April; and Mythic Quest failed to break into the Top 20. There’s reason for hope, though: Ted Lasso is returning for a second season in July. The Jason Sudeikis-led show didn’t get nearly the love it deserved when it first came out last year, but now that the show has picked up a devoted fan base, critics are starting to come around. That means there’s likely to be plenty of buzz in the lead-up to the second season’s release.

6. Reboot of iCarly Boosts Paramount+ : iCarly was the fifth most recommended show of June, an impressive feat for a kids’ show from the 2000s. Paramount+ seems to have smartly bet on millennial nostalgia by rebooting the series, and surprised the TV world by producing new episodes that are relevant and smart rather than settling for basic fan service. Since Paramount+ seems to be adopting a catalog-based strategy over one driven by original content, this reboot likely doesn’t indicate continued success on the Watchworthy leaderboards for the streamer. That said, this is the second consecutive month that Paramount+ has increased its share of recommendations by 2%, and for the first time, it’s no longer in last place. Who knows? Maybe this service will continue to surprise us.

7. Despite Little Fires, Hulu Continues to Fizzle: Little Fires Everywhere jumped up 10 spots to join the Top 20 in June, while Dave, The Great, and Freeform shows Fort Salem and Black Summer contributed to Hulu’s total. But Dave, a beloved comedy whose second season premiered this month, underperformed on Watchworthy, failing to deliver the recommendations Hulu needs to pull itself out of seventh place. Hulu can hold out hope that the July release of American Horror Stories, an anthology series that tackles one hourlong story each episode, will earn some recommendations next month.

8. Peacock Plummets: Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist was again Peacock’s only show that picked up recommendations in June, and this month, it was nearly knocked out of the Top 20. Once more, Mr. Mayor, Kenan, Girls5eva, and Rutherford Falls weren’t buzzy enough to be recommended to new viewers by the Watchworthy algorithm, and neither did new release We Are Lady Parts. But the Summer Olympics could be what turns Peacock’s fortunes around: NBC is offering Peacock subscribers the chance to live-stream the Tokyo summer games. That incentive could bring in a crop of new subscribers who will later become fans of Peacock’s original content, creating the signal the algorithm needs to recommend that content to Watchworthy users.

Want to learn more about how we built a TV recommendation engine using Ranker Insights data? We tell the whole story in our Watchworthy white paper, which you can download here for free.

MORE INSIGHTS LIKE THIS:

The Road from Pop Culture Lists to Watchworthy (White Paper)

What Is Watchworthy?