‘Family Matters’ Fans Are Devouring All 215 Episodes Within a Month, and Other Amazing Binge Stats From Hulu
Did I do that? Hulu viewers have a lot of time on their hands — enough time to binge watch the entire libraries of classic ABC “TGIF” shows including “Family Matters,” “Boy Meets World,” and “Full House,” in short amounts of time.
Among key details revealed by Hulu to IndieWire: 60,000 Hulu subscribers have already watched all 60 hours (or 120 episodes) of “Boy Meets World,” the coming-of-age sitcom that aired between 1993 and 2000 on ABC.
Also, the average “Family Matters” fan who watched the entire series in 2017 on Hulu — all nine seasons that aired from 1989 to 1997 — completed their binge within a month. That’s equal to consuming more than two seasons of Urkel and company per week.
And over the past year, among Hulu viewers who watched all eight seasons of the original run of “Full House” (1987-1995), they averaged their entire binge over the course of just one month.
Streaming services like Hulu are generally loathe to release anything resembling data, but it revealed some quirky stats on Thursday during a panel moderated by IndieWire at the ATX Television Festival in Austin.
Beyond those binge stats, Hulu also shared some demo information on the acquisitions: The average “Boy Meets World” viewer on Hulu is 32, which means they were 7 years old when the show first premiered. And “Family Matters” average viewer age on the service is 34.
Hulu announced last summer that it had acquired the exclusive, streaming, subscription video on-demand rights to all episodes of TGIF staples “Full House,” “Family Matters,” “Step by Step,” “Perfect Strangers” and “Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper.” The full libraries launched on Sept. 29 on Hulu, timed to the 30th anniversary of “Full House.” And the acquisition has been deemed a success internally.
Beyond TGIF, Hulu also shared that 35,000 watched all 10 seasons of “Futurama” in just 18 days — equal to more than eight episodes per day.
The service had previously revealed that more than 35,000 people watched every episode of “ER” (all 331 episodes) in the first two months it was available on Hulu. Also, Hulu viewers watched more than 135 million hours of “South Park” and 105 million hours of “Law & Order: SVU” in 2017.
Those are all feats in themselves, but Hulu also noted that its viewers are watching, on average, ten different shows at a time. (Perhaps Hulu viewers prefer TV to human contact, and really, who can blame them?)
“I love those kind of numbers, it’s why we get up in the morning,” said Hulu content acquisitions VP Lisa Holme. “It’s comfort food. I have a friend who has an iPad velcroed to the wall of his bathroom, and every morning and every night he turns it on and watches ‘Seinfeld’ as he brushes his teeth. So we’re looking for shows that people will do that with.”
Holme was among the execs on the ATX panel “Un-Cabled: Repackaging TV for a New Generation” on Thursday. Panelists also included Playstation Vue head Dwayne Benefield, Roku programming head Rob Holmes,YouTube Red scripted drama head Jon Wax, and Blue Ribbon Content executive vice president Peter Girardi.
“Usually it doesn’t help us to share data,” Holme said. “I frankly cringed when the PR team published the information about ‘South Park’ — ‘That’s going to cost us when it comes up for renewal, thank you!’ Being transparent with data that way has the potential to hurt us. There’s absence of upside. But we are trying to be better in sharing things that are interesting and non-threatening.”
Wax, who recently joined the YouTube Red (soon to be renamed YouTube Premium) from WGN America, said he’s learning how to balance data with traditional Hollywood media development.
“There’s a tremendous trove of data and scores of people pouring over it,” he said. “Contrary to what you might expect, I have not had anyone at Google say, ‘You must develop this show for this audience with this star because the data says it will work.’ It’s actually much more holistic than that.”
