Record Viewership for 'Stranger Things 3' Confirms Nielsen Ratings

That's the thing about breakout shows, isn't it? Once a particular show manages to attain the status of being a breakout success, the follow-up seasons are always going to have larger numbers. However, the show still needs to be good right?

So, a similar thing has now happened with Stranger Things 3 and it was always expected to bring in huge numbers. But apart from how good the show continued to be in this third season, it has also raked in record numbers.

According to a report in Forbes, for Stranger Things season 3, Netflix said that it set a record for the service, racking up 40.7 million household account viewers in its first four days. Netflix considers people who watch more than 70% of an episode or a movie a viewer, and Nielsen’s numbers seem on track for that.

Among the data the Nielsen has put out there, we have:

19.7 million viewers for Stranger Things season 3 episode 1 in four days

824,000 viewers who binged the entire season on day one, almost triple season 2 (though it wasn’t released on a holiday)

The “TV equivalent” for ratings here puts Stranger Things at 8.86 million viewers as more watched than everything on “normal” TV last week other than the Women’s World Cup

While the 19.7 million viewers sounds like half of what Netflix was reporting, we have to keep in mind that Nielsen’s numbers are only for TV sets, and yes, it seems perfectly reasonable that with how many people watch Netflix on phones or tablets or computers, that the missing 20 million are probably on those devices.