Why 2024’s Top Streaming Series Foretell a Radical Strategic Shift for Originals

Flash back to the start of the streaming wars in 2019, as every major media company rushed headlong into launching a service loaded with original content, and consider: Would anyone have predicted the top streaming shows five years later would include “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Family Guy” and “Law & Order: SVU”?

Yet that’s exactly where we are, as for the second year in a row, no SVOD originals ranked among the top 10 most streamed series in the U.S. as measured by Nielsen (though 2023’s fifth-place title, “Cocomelon,” began its life as a YouTube series and is now branded as a Netflix original).

More significantly, 8 of the top 10 shows were broadcast network titles, including Fox’s “Bob’s Burgers” and CBS stalwarts “NCIS,” “Criminal Minds,” “Young Sheldon” and “The Big Bang Theory,” along with the aforementioned “Grey’s” (ABC), “Family Guy” (Fox) and “SVU” (NBC).

Shows like “Grey’s” and “NCIS” have dominated the Nielsen streaming charts for years now, thanks in no small part to their enormous episode counts — both of those series’ catalogs boast well over 400 entries — though it is possible for streaming originals to overcome this handicap. Netflix blockbuster “Stranger Things,” for instance, topped Nielsen’s list in 2022 with a mere 34 episodes.

Even the most popular originals were no match in 2024, however, as top finisher “Bridgerton” trailed the no. 10 overall series (“SpongeBob SquarePants”) by a significant margin. Meanwhile, other marquee titles, including “Fallout” and “Fool Me Once,” ended up behind even dusty library shows such as “Little House on the Prairie,” which somehow racked up 13.3 billion minutes streamed on Peacock last year, according to Nielsen.

(As an aside, it should also be noted that Nielsen made a key change to its streaming ratings methodology last year, which resulted in certain previously excluded linear shows — think “Family Guy” — being added to its streaming viewership tallies.)

Tempting as it may be, though, the success of broadcast titles on streaming should not be dismissed because of their inflated episode counts. It’s clear by now that reruns (if they can still be called that) of popular shows are just as valuable for SVODs as they once were for cable networks, helping to fuel sustained engagement on a platform — now by far the most important metric in the streaming game.

After all, regardless of whether the time is spent with an original series or “Law & Order,” time spent is still time spent, and the fact that long-running shows can generate such enormous tallies of viewing time marks them as valuable properties for SVODs (particularly as ad revenues become more important to streamers’ bottom lines).

There’s another significant implication to this as well: With these consumption patterns in mind, it can only be a matter of time before streamers start attempting to replicate the sensibilities — and episode tallies — of network TV. Indeed, they already are.

Max’s medical drama “The Pitt,” created by “ER” and “NCIS: Los Angeles” veteran R. Scott Gemmill, premiered on the SVOD this month with a weekly rollout of what will ultimately tally 15 episodes — at a time when most marquee streaming originals are shrinking their season orders to around half that. (To name just a few, “Bridgerton,” “The Boys,” “Fallout” and “The Rings of Power” all released only eight episodes last year.)

And “The Pitt” has become, by Max standards, an enormous success, ranking among the top 20 most streamed SVOD originals as measured by Luminate each week since its debut.

For context, the show’s fellow Max original “The Sex Lives of College Girls” failed to chart at all in that time, despite rolling out the final episodes of its season. Furthermore, “The Pitt” accounts for more than a quarter of all viewing time for Max originals so far in 2025, with more than 578 million minutes streamed in total, according to Luminate’s SVM database.

In short, SVOD’s latest attempt to emulate a network TV approach is paying off, and more are likely to follow; Netflix’s own medical procedural, “Pulse,” is on track for a 2025 debut. And not for nothing, the second most streamed original of 2024 was “Love Is Blind,” an unscripted dating show whose premise would not be out of place opposite ABC’s “The Bachelor.”

The implications of this are potentially far-reaching for the content business. As post-peak TV programming strategies continue to take shape, streamers are likely going to be drawn to projects that can be produced on a lower budget while yielding more episodes to keep viewers engaged on their platforms.

In other words, like it or not, streaming platforms may start to look a lot more like network TV in the years ahead.