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House of the Dragon Renewed for a 2nd Season


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On 8/26/2022 at 9:49 PM, EggBlue said:

I agree that Blackfyre rebellions (the first one specifically) had more interesting  characters and more intriguing relationship dynamics.

Yo...

When I tell you that I cannot wait for Fire and Blood, Volume 2 to come out....

On 8/27/2022 at 11:03 AM, butterweedstrover said:

How big is that number? I was under the impression the mainstream audience hates fantasy stuff.

More like mainstream adult audiences.

The reason why a lot of mainstream adult audiences (pre-LOTR) hated fantasy is because all of those garbage sword-and-sorcery/dungeons-and-dragons movies from the 80s and the predictably stale science fiction pieces from the 50s. It was just a (forgive me) shitty genre because it was so difficult to make back then without completely jumping the shark or violating suspension of belief. And most adults are too busy to immerse themselves in fiction books, much less fantasy. Culturally, people used to look down on people who had their heads in the clouds. The mid-20th century was all about reality and work.

Adults, particularly men, who were into that stuff were seen as lazy weirdos. Fantasy was a genre for kids that they were expected to grow out of. Sci-fi got a bit more leeway but it was always grounded, low fantasy sci-fi than anything with aliens or superpowers.

Star Wars (and by extension, the Superman and Wonder Woman TV shows) were the exception of course. And even then, Star Wars -- believe it or not -- was a kids' movie that had enormous crossover appeal. It wasn't supposed to be that successful. And only the movies were global events...the only people who cared about the books and toys and whatever were children.

 

Ultimately, given the success of Star Wars, I think it was ultimately a case of how fantasy films and TV shows were just so terribly made and haphazardly written that no one wanted to watch them. Everyone was a kid once and kids are known for their imagination and joy and adventure. It just takes something different for all of us to awaken that inner life and spark our imagination.

The Star Wars kids became productive members of society who had a deep love for fantasy and/or sci-fi and they started multiplying, influencing their kids and grandkids and thus society.

Which brings us to the big gamechanger with LOTR (and to a lesser extent, the very first X-Men movie). Mainstream audiences never thought that fantastical elements could coexist with adult drama....cue sparked imaginations and inner child awakenings.

By the time Game of Thrones came out, to be a lover of science-fiction and fantasy (and even horror) became cool.

On 8/27/2022 at 5:45 PM, C.T. Phipps said:

Yeah, these numbers are "Game of Thrones/House of The Dragon is a cultural phenomenon."

 

I think House of the Dragon will be bigger than Game of Thrones ever was.

 

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8 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

There was nothing wrong with the direction or cinematography of "Beyond the Wall." The problem with that episode was the writing and the acting. There were many, many things wrong with the direction, editing and cinematography of "The Long Night.

all of that was due to direct orders from the showrunners, over the direct complaints of the cinematographer, director, and VFX team (shrug)

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News has been kind of slow past few days, but I think that's due to 1 - Lord of the Rings dropped a day early on September 1 (Thursday), 2 - last week's episode was good character building but a bit slow, not as buzz-worthy as "Aegon prophecy revealed!" etc. Not even a weak episode - I've seen A LOT of people online say they even preferred it to the first episode, due to all the character building on the main cast. 

(shrug)

Well...will the Stepstones battle this Sunday spark a lot of new discussion? That is the question...

sorry to ramble; it's just the episode 1 was a tough act to follow: a surprisingly good premiere to a prequel of a franchise people had written off...which also included major prophecy revelations. 

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6 hours ago, butterweedstrover said:

I think the numbers are roughly comparable but it doesn't really matter either way as the shows aren't necessarily competing since they're on different days.

I have no doubt a huge chunk of both audiences watched both.

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7 hours ago, butterweedstrover said:

They’re probably fairly equal. HBO only released the US figures, whereas this is global. However, the 25 million US views was over the course of a week, and this was just one day. 

There’s also the matter of whether or not any of these companies are telling the truth when they release their stats. It’s not like there’s any way to check. 

It’s hard to gauge how popular something is by internet stats (for instance, HOTD is googled a lot, but not talked about as much on Twitter). Amazon has a farther reach than HBO though, and LOTR is probably a bigger deal around the globe because it’s older, more family-friendly and, well, finished. The only way the show would have failed is if it was absurdly bad and, as someone who has not read most of the books, I didn’t think it was that at all (a little clunky, but nothing too detrimental). 
 

 

Edited by The Bard of Banefort
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30 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

It’s not like there’s any way to check. 

They're both publicly traded companies. Making false representations would have deleterious effects in terms of securities laws.

That said, as Variety has noted, what Amazon considers "a view" or "a viewer" is unclear:

Quote

 Amazon did not specify how it measures a view, nor how much of an episode a user needs to watch to count as a viewer.

So, I think we can trust the number, but we don't exactly know what the number really means as of yet.

 

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1 minute ago, Ran said:

They're both publicly traded companies. Making false representations would have deleterious effects in terms of securities laws.

That said, as Variety has noted, what Amazon considers "a view" or "a viewer" is unclear:

So, I think we can trust the number, but we don't exactly know what the number really means as of yet.

 

I thought they only had to disclose the number of subscribers, since they don’t run ads? As far as I know, Netflix doesn’t disclose their viewing numbers.

But anyway, I’m not saying that either company is lying, only that we wouldn’t know if they were.

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Well, 25 million "worldwide" seems fundamentally different than the numbers HBO are reporting.  Regardless, I don't see much point in haggling over the numbers.  Both shows thus far have been a success in terms of viewers.  Good for both of them!  I don't think it's particularly surprising at all, let's just see now if they can keep it.

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Yeah. The 9.9 million who watched the HotD premiere did so on the night of its airing, and were US only. The Amazon figure covers the 24 hours from release and is global.

But... you can do something a little interesting. What percentage of subscribers of each watched? Domestically, the combined HBO + HBO Max + Discovery+ has 53 million subscribers, and it's unclear what the number is when you drop Discovery+. But if you suppose 50 million is HBO, then basically you have around 20% of all subscribers watching the show on its premiere. Though looking at their last figure, HBO + HBO Max has 3 times the subscriptions of Discovery+, so maybe it's more like 40 million? In which case almost 25% of all subscribers watched the premiere on the night. 

Amazon last reported that it has  over 200 million subscribers globally. Within 24 hours, 25 million viewers watched, which amounts to 12.5% of the total subscriber base in that 24 hour span.

 

What does it mean? Other than a lot of people watched, not much! More a testament to the fact that a lot of people get Prime for the shopping benefits and not for the streaming, I guess.

Edited by Ran
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If we look at Reddit a few days from releases the main HotD subreddit went from about 30k to 130k (it’s now somewhere around 230) a jump of more than 300% 

Meanwhile the main RoP subreddit over the same period went from around 60k to 90k (a 50% jump. 
 

Might not mean anything though because to find the RoP sub you have to search LOTR_on_Prime while House of the Dragon is just House of the Dragon.

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I was curious what the demographics are for the Thrones-verse. For a show that dominated so much of online discourse for a decade, there are surprisingly few stats. One study that I did find about GOT claims that the 45-54 age demo makes up the largest share of viewers: 

https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/dfb3d6ac-e2ab-446b-9905-69345ea30331/downloads/About the Data - Game of Thrones Survey.pdf?ver=1591766400387

According to a different survey, GOT was even more popular among 55+, followed by people in their 20s.

https://www.numerator.com/resources/blog/insights-are-coming-winning-game-thrones-fan

So, maybe HOTD does have an older audience, all things considered.

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14 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

One study that I did find about GOT claims that the 45-54 age demo makes up the largest share of viewers: 

https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/dfb3d6ac-e2ab-446b-9905-69345ea30331/downloads/About the Data - Game of Thrones Survey.pdf?ver=1591766400387

According to a different survey, GOT was even more popular among 55+, followed by people in their 20s.

https://www.numerator.com/resources/blog/insights-are-coming-winning-game-thrones-fan

I'd take those surveys with a grain of salt - if only because it's only two surveys, both of which appear to have been conducted three years ago right before the final season.  Moreover, the first survey's data does show that GoT's viewers are mostly heavily concentrated among Gen Xers and Millennials, which conforms to expectations (well, at least my expectations) of how a more longitudinal study would report.

On 9/4/2022 at 3:04 AM, Ran said:

More a testament to the fact that a lot of people get Prime for the shopping benefits and not for the streaming, I guess.

Yup.  To be fair to RoP, this should definitely be taken into account.  

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10 hours ago, DMC said:

I'd take those surveys with a grain of salt - if only because it's only two surveys, both of which appear to have been conducted three years ago right before the final season.  Moreover, the first survey's data does show that GoT's viewers are mostly heavily concentrated among Gen Xers and Millennials, which conforms to expectations (well, at least my expectations) of how a more longitudinal study would report.

Yup.  To be fair to RoP, this should definitely be taken into account.  

I don’t find it that implausible. Older people watch more TV. Just consider that study from a little while back that showed how the average CW viewer is over 50.

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2 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I don’t find it that implausible. Older people watch more TV. Just consider that study from a little while back that showed how the average CW viewer is over 50.

Again, the main reason I'd take it with a grain of salt is the timing of those surveys - that was when GoT was a cultural phenomenon and right before the final season.  It's quite possible the makeup of HotD's viewership (and even earlier seasons of GoT, for that matter) looks very different in terms of age distribution.  Particularly considering HBO Max wasn't around 3 years ago.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Nielsen and HBO has come out with data for episode 4, and the numbers are looking rock solid:

Quote

Viewership of “House of the Dragon” increased by 5% between Episodes 3 and 4, Variety has learned exclusively.

Per Nielsen, linear viewing of the series remained mostly steady, with 2.536 million viewers across four cable airings for the week-ago episode compared to 2.474 million this Sunday. But with streaming on HBO Max and other HBO platforms included, Variety has confirmed overall U.S. viewership of the series is up 5% week over week.

....

Additionally, viewership of previous episodes of “House of the Dragon” continues to rise with delayed viewing via streaming. According to WBD’s chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels, the premiere episode — which was already HBO’s most-viewed premiere of all time when it debuted to 10 million viewers — has now been seen by over 30 million.

 

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I've got this entertaiment media analysis guy (per his About, he's worked in the business at production companies, major streamers, studios, etc. at various business development and marketing levels in the past) dropping his newsletter in my inbox, and he has a subscriber's-only post on his Substack about how House of the Dragon performed. From the short preview he has available:

Quote
  • HoTD had the biggest pay cable or streaming series premiere in 2022, and probably going back to at least 2020.
  • But Stranger Things season 4 debut is still the biggest TV series so far this year.
  • There is a chance HoTD season 1 may pass Stranger Things season 4 in total viewership, but we probably won’t know for certain. Some data points say HoTD is bigger; some say Stranger Things.

 

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