In his latest study about SVOD demand in Canada, Parrot Analytics revealed which were the most outstanding series in the country during September using “demand expressions”, the global standard metric created by the company to represent the total demand expressed by the audience of a series within a market.
The demand reflects the desire, engagement, and viewership of television content and is weighted by importance; so a stream/download is a higher expression of demand than a “like” or a comment.
Like almost every market, the most demanded digital original series in Canada in September 2019 was Netflix's “Stranger Things”. The global hit has been the top series in Canada since the July 4th release of season 3. However, such incredible levels of demand are hard to maintain, especially with most of a year to go until new episodes will be released. Demand for the sci-fi drama dropped from 9.1 million demand expressions at the start of the month to around 5 million at the end. This is still enough demand each day that no other original was close to challenging “Stranger Things” for the top spot during the month.
The original series that came closest to “Stranger Things” in Canada this month is fellow Netflix drama “13 Reasons Why”. Season 3 of the teen drama premiered on August 23rd and so the show entered September with just under 8 million demand expressions. “13 Reasons Why” stayed as the second most demanded original for almost two weeks, dropping to third on September 12th.
Another late August premiere is the Netflix fantasy puppet series “Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance”, which was released on August 30th. The series is a prequel to the 1982 Jim Henson film “Dark Crystal” and has strong appeal in Canada due to a famous voice cast, including the likes of Mark Hamill.
Amazon Prime Video's “The Boys” also has high Canadian demand in September. Since the first season of the superhero show was premiered on July 26th, it kept the interest of Canadian audiences and so maintained demand well over August. Demand for “The Boys” slightly declined over September, losing about 20% compared to the level it started to month with.
Another superhero series, “Titans”, also ranks highly in this market. Demand for the DC Universe’s show rose over the month as season 2 began airing weekly on September 6th. From 1.6 million demand expressions on Sept 1st, the show grew to 2.9 million at the end of the month.
“Beyond individual shows, we note that Canada has a fairly diversity set of platforms in its top ten list compared to other markets. While Netflix is still the top digital original platform, fully half of the top ten are from other services. Chief among these is Amazon Prime Video, which has three of Canada's most demanded digital originals in September 2019. As well as ‘The Boys,’ ‘Good Omens,’ and ‘Carnival Row’ were highly demanded by Canadians,” Parrot said.
