Bluey tops American streaming charts for 2024
When it comes to cultural soft power, there is no denying the ubiquity of American output spreading across the world.
For more than a century, we’ve been watching their movies and listening to their music, and for seven decades, gazing at their TV shows. So, it’s nice to get one over on their dominance.
Bluey has, for the first time, topped the American streaming charts for the year, coming first in 2024 ahead of every other series. It was streamed for a total of 55.62 billion minutes, ahead of second place getter Grey’s Anatomy, which clocked in 47.85 billion minutes.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.That’s particularly impressive given Bluey episodes are roughly seven minutes.
The previous year, Bluey was close, ending 2023 in second place behind Suits, while in 2022, the first time it appeared on the end-of-year list, it was eighth.
The Australian animated series, which is on ABC locally and in the US on Disney+, has been a wild success story on the global scale. Bluey is hugely popular among Americans and there have been reports that US kids have picked up an Australian twang due purely to everyone’s favourite cattle dogs.
Bluey’s accomplishment comes at an interesting time for the series, which finished its third season in April with a 28-minute episode, “The Sign”. No fourth season was commissioned at the time with only “minisodes” (one-to-three minute shorts) released since then.
In December, Bluey announced it would move to the big screen with a feature-length film to be written and directed by creator Joe Brumm. It will be released in cinemas in 2027.
However, Brumm also said he would step back from any future episodes of the TV series to concentrate on the production of the movie.
He said at the time, “I’ve always thought Bluey deserved a theatrical movie. I want this to be an experiential event for the whole family to enjoy together.”
The top 10 overall titles on the American Nielsen charts were library/archive/broadcast titles rather than streaming original shows.
Behind Bluey and Grey’s Anatomy were Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, NCIS, Young Sheldon, The Big Bang Theory, Law & Order: SVU, Criminal Minds and SpongeBob SquarePants. None of these shows are on Netflix.
The most watched original streaming series was Bridgerton, which had 21.42 billion minutes streamed compared to Spongebob’s 28.87 billion minutes.
