In December, Apple announced that Pluribus had become the most-watched TV show in the history of the Apple TV streaming service, without disclosing specific viewership numbers, of course.
The show was also featured in industry analysis firm Nielsen’s U.S. Streaming Report. For the week starting December 8th, Pluribus was #9 out of the top 10 streaming originals.
Even though Apple says Pluribus has become the company’s most popular series ever, it didn’t appear on Nielsen’s charts at all until November.
It first appeared on the original-only chart from December 8th to December 14th. Here’s the complete top 10 list of original shows airing that week:
- Stranger Things (Netflix)
- Season Combs: The Reckoning (Netflix)
- Landman (Paramount+)
- The Abundance (Netflix)
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Disney+)
- Mayor of Kingstown (Paramount+, Pluto TV)
- The Beast Inside Me (Netflix)
- Absentia (Netflix)
- See more (Apple TV)
- Ripple (Netflix)
Pluribus has logged 360 million total minutes of viewing, according to Nielsen. Apple TV wasn’t featured at all in the overall streaming chart (which combines acquired and original shows into one list), with IT: Welcome to Derry at the bottom with 660 million minutes watched.
By comparison, the top-ranked movie, “Stranger Things,” was watched for over 3 billion minutes during the same period.
Based on Apple’s rhetoric, you might expect Pluribus to be high on the list. However, several factors come into play. First, the streaming industry in general is incredibly secretive about streaming viewer numbers, and no one knows who’s telling the truth or how they measure the numbers to support their PR claims. Also, Apple doesn’t directly tell us how many people watch Pluribus or how many paid members there are.
Second, Nielsen’s chart only covers U.S. streaming, whereas Apple will cite viewership records based on global demand (Apple TV service is available in more than 100 countries).
And third, Apple TV as a service is still very small. For example, the most popular shows dwarf most semi-popular Netflix originals. What’s a little strange is that we’ve seen Apple TV shows chart above No. 9 several times before, with Season 2 of Severance hitting No. 1. Debuting last year at No. 5, Ted Lasso has often been near the top of the charts during that time.
One factor is that Nielsen counts streaming time based on all available episodes of a series. So in the case of Severance or Ted Lasso, there were many more episodes that could have counted for viewing time. For example, when Severance gained momentum with the release of Season 2 in January 2025, nine episodes of Season 1 were already available for streaming, allowing new viewers to catch up.
Being a brand new show, Pluribus has no back catalogue, and as of the week of December 8th, it has a total of seven episodes available, accounting for its 360 million minutes figure.
Nevertheless, Pluribus is a hit for Apple. A second season has already been greenlit and is expected to begin filming next year, with a potential air date in 2027.
