‘Stranger Things’ Shatters Holiday Streaming Records, Again

The final season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” dominated Christmas week, pulling in a staggering 6.89 billion minutes of watch time, according to new data from Nielsen. The figure marks the third-largest streaming week ever recorded, reinforcing the show’s status as a cultural phenomenon.

• Beyond the Upside Down: The holiday viewing surge lifted other platforms, too. Paramount+’s “Landman” held strong at number two with 1.64 billion minutes, while Prime Video’s weekly release strategy for “Fallout” paid off as the show jumped 16% to over 900 million minutes viewed. Meanwhile, Apple TV+'s "Pluribus" hit a series high of nearly 500 million minutes after its finale.

• What's old is new again: Streamers also found gold in their back catalogs. Netflix dusted off the early 2000s TNT drama “The Closer,” making it the week’s most-watched licensed show with nearly 1 billion minutes viewed. The nostalgia play also worked for Disney+, as the classic film “Home Alone” racked up over a billion minutes of watch time—a first for the holiday movie.

• The streaming playbook: The holiday week proves that the winning formula for streamers remains a powerful combination of must-watch original event programming and a deep library of nostalgic hits that can be strategically surfaced to capture massive audiences.

The success of individual shows was part of a bigger picture, as streaming captured a record 47.5% of all TV usage in December. And for a look at the strategy behind some of the numbers, Deadline offered a deeper look into the nuances of that strategy for "Fallout."