What are the most popular shows on ad-supported, video-on-demand (AVOD) platforms? Not just on services such as Tubi, Roku and PlutoTV but also on the digital platforms of traditional broadcast networks such as CBS and ABC?
Reelgood is a San Francisco-based company that provides a complete guide to online streaming content. It has a system of agregating and monitoring viewership over 150 different on-line viewing services.
Here is what they found American viewers to be watching the most during the month of April. The rookie CBS drama Elsbeth, starrjng Carrie Preston, was at the top of their monthly AVOD streaming chart. That was followed by another winter/spring CBS entry, Tracker, and the final season of CBS’s No. 1 broadcast comedy, Young Sheldon. All three shows can be streamed digitally on CBS.com as well as on Paramount+.
The Top-10 list also found many viewers were streaming rather than catching the broadcast window of ABC’s The Equalizer. At No. 10 was Mike Judge’s scarily prescient look into the future with 2006’s “Idiocracy” starring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph. Sadly, the film — which I watched three times back-to-back-to-back at Jimmy’s cottage several years ago — seems more and more like a documentary. See it now on Tubi.
Looking strictly at TV shows rather than movies, the AVOD Top-10 in April in the US included Ghosts, Will Trent, American Rust and Them (seen stateside on Freevee) made the list, as did The Rookie and 9-1-1 (ABC). In movies, Pluto made the list with the 1972 classic “The Godfather” plus 2018’s “Annihilation” and 2007’s “No Country for Old Men.”
