Weekly time spent watching movies and TV
series on the leading SVOD services rose 7 percent last year

PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, January 21, 2020 – In 2019, consumers watched about 20 minutes more streamed TV content per week on Netflix than they did in 2018. Weekly time spent watching the top two subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services rose 7 percent, growing from 3 hours 45 minutes in 2018 to 4 hours 6 minutes in 2019, according to The NPD Group.

Even with new subscription video services launching, audiences are still finding the content they want to watch on the major SVOD services they already have. In fact, 99.5 percent of consumers with subscriptions to Netflix and Hulu viewed at least one title in a given month in 2019. “When people try new services, like Disney Plus or Apple TV Plus, very few are cutting back on the existing major platforms,” said Kathi Chandler-Payatt, media entertainment industry analyst for NPD. 

While action and adventure, family, animation, and superhero movies are some of the top SVOD movie genres every year, in 2019 viewers added science fiction dramas, courtroom dramas, and cyberpunk among other subgenres to the mix. Examples include “Annihilation” (sci-fi drama), “Primal Fear” (courtroom drama), and “The Matrix” trilogy (cyberpunk). The amount of time watched for all three of these subgenres has increased each year since 2017.

Original TV shows on Netflix made up over 40 percent of all content watched by either kids or adults, compared to just 10 percent for Hulu Originals. “This year will likely be the tipping point when more than half of Netflix content will be original,” Chandler-Payatt said.

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