In December, without providing specific viewing figures of course, Apple said that Pluribus had become the most watched TV show in the history of the Apple TV streaming service.
The show has now also appeared in industry analytics firm Nielsen’s US streaming report. For the week commencing December 8, Pluribus came in at number 9 out of the top 10 streaming originals …
Despite Apple saying Pluribus has become its most popular series ever, it did not appear on the Nielsen chart at all through November.
Dec 8 – Dec 14 was its first appearance, on the Originals only chart. The full Top 10 list for originals airing in that week is as follows:
- Stranger Things (Netflix)
- Season Combs: The Reckoning (Netflix)
- Landman (Paramount+)
- The Abandons (Netflix)
- Percy Jackson & the Olympians (Disney+)
- Mayor of Kingstown (Paramount+, Pluto TV)
- The Beast in Me (Netflix)
- Absentia (Netflix)
- Pluribus (Apple TV)
- Ripple (Netflix)
In total, Nielsen says Pluribus recorded 360 million minutes viewed. Apple TV does not appear at all in the overall streaming chart (which combines acquired and original programming into one list), as the lowest entry was IT: Welcome to Derry with 660 million minutes viewed.
For a comparison, in the top spot, Stranger Things topped 3 billion minutes viewed in that same period.
Based on Apple’s rhetoric, you might expect Pluribus to be higher up the list. However, there are several factors at play. Firstly, the streaming industry is generally incredibly secretive about streaming viewership and no one really knows who is telling the truth, or how they are measuring the numbers to back up their PR claims. Apple also won’t directly tell us how many people watched Pluribus, or how many paying subscribers they have.
Secondly, the Nielsen chart covers US streaming only, whereas Apple will be citing viewership records based on worldwide demand (with Apple TV service available in over 100 countries).
Top comment by Atlas
Yes but that’s US only. I have heard many people talk about Stranger Things and also Pluribus in Europe, but not a single mention of those other shows.
And thirdly, Apple TV as a service is still quite small. Its most popular shows are dwarfed by most semi-popular Netflix originals, for instance. What is slightly weird is that we have seen Apple TV shows chart higher than ninth several times before, with Severance season 2 hitting no. 5 on its debut last year, and Ted Lasso often being near the top of the charts during its run.
One factor is that Nielsen counts streaming hours based on all available episodes of a series. So, with Severance or Ted Lasso, there were a lot more episodes to potentially count viewing minutes for. For instance, when Severance gained steam in January 2025 with the release of season two, it already had nine episodes of season one also available to stream and for new viewers to catch up on.
As a brand new show, Pluribus did not have any back catalog at all, with seven total episodes available as of the December 8 week to make up that 360 million minutes figure.
Nevertheless, Pluribus is a hit for Apple. A second season was already greenlit, and should start shooting next year, with a likely air date sometime in 2027.
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