Bluey leads the list as the most-watched title with 55.62 billion minutes watched on Disney+, while Moana, also on Disney+, leads among movies with 13.03 billion minutes watched.
For nearly 20 years, streaming has transformed the media landscape and revolutionized the way audiences watch television. With more streaming content available to be consumed on more apps and services than ever before, audiences are shifting more of their total TV time to streaming. Consider this: In May 2021, streaming accounted for about 26% of Americans’ total time spent watching TV, and that number has grown to over 43% as of December 2024. During that time, total TV usage has remained relatively steady; meanwhile streaming usage has skyrocketed.
Audiences spent over 12 trillion minutes streaming in 2024, which equates to about 8.4 billion days, or 23 million years’ worth. This is a 10% increase over 2023, which tallied 21 million years of streaming.
To help the media industry better understand the key trends driving streaming’s growth, Nielsen has released its annual “Streaming Unwrapped” report sharing yearly streaming viewership since 2020. This year, they’re expanding the report to include additional viewing categories, and renaming it the ARTEY Awards. Named for Nielsen’s founder, Arthur C. Nielsen, and an acronym for “Audience Rated Television Entertainment of the Year,” it recognizes the year’s most-watched TV shows and movies.
2024 Top Overall Streaming Programs
Bluey became the top overall streaming title in 2024 with 55.62 billion viewing minutes on Disney+, with 43% of its massive viewing total attributable to kids 2-11.
The runner up was Grey’s Anatomy, with nearly 48 billion viewing minutes on both Hulu and Netflix. The medical drama created by Shonda Rhimes has been one of the top six most-watched streaming titles in each of the last five years (2020-2024), with over 185 billion minutes viewed in that time.
The most viewed original series was Netflix’s Bridgerton, with 21.42 billion viewing minutes; followed by Love is Blind, also on Netflix, with 16.45 billion viewing minutes.
In terms of movies, with over 13 billion viewing minutes accumulated on Disney+ in 2024, Moana finished as the most-watched streaming movie for a second consecutive year. The Disney favorite exhibited a bump in viewership towards the end of the year that coincided with the theatrical release of its sequel, Moana 2. This marks Moana’s most-streamed year ever and solidifies it as the most-streamed movie since 2020.
The runner up was The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which notched 11.7 billion minutes viewed on Netflix in 2024, with kids 2-11 accounting for 5.7 billion minutes of its total. Both Moana and Super Mario Bros. drew strong Hispanic audiences as well, with 25% and 29.6% of viewing, respectively, attributable to Hispanic viewers.
