Marvel Studios’ latest Disney+ series that was also released to Hulu, Echo, completely fell off Nielsen’s top 10 charts in just one week and lost at least half of its entire viewership.
Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez in Marvel Studios’ Echo, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2023. All Rights Reserved.
The data analytics firm released their viewership data for the week of January 15th through January 21st and Echo is nowhere to be seen on either the overall of the original top 10 charts.
The series’ total viewership declined to less than 374 million minutes, which is what Netflix’s The Crown did. It’s likely viewership for Echo might be far lower than The Crown.
Top 10 Nielsen Original programs for the week of January 15th to January 21st, 2024
Echo originally debuted on Nielsen’s Top 10 chart last week when all five episodes were released to Disney+ and Hulu. Despite all five episodes dropping at the same time, the series only managed to garner 731 million minutes in total viewership, or 146.2 million minutes per episode.
If you take that 146.2 million number and divide it by the total runtime of all five episodes, which is 215 minutes, average viewership for each episode comes in at 680,000 per episode.
However, there are a number of other factors that come in to play. For example, the first episode has the longest runtime of the series at 51 minutes while the finale only has a runtime of 37 minutes. So, it’s quite possible there might have been a larger audience for the first episode that chose to not even complete the series.
Top 10 Nielsen Original programs for the week of January 8th to January 14th
Regardless, the fact that the series immediately dropped off Nielsen’s top 10 chart in its second week means there was no positive word of mouth touting the series. In fact, there appears to be negative word of mouth.
The series has a mediocre 6.0 on IMDb. The first episode of the series has the highest rated score of 7.1 with the finale being the lowest rated episode with a 6.0.
Echo IMDb scores
READ: Ironheart Episodes 1–3 Review: It’s So So So So Bad!
On Rotten Tomatoes, the entire series has a similar score to IMDb. The audience score comes in at 61%.
Echo Rotten Tomatoes scores
Given the massive falloff, it’s likely the show did not generate subscriptions to either Hulu or Disney+ and likely lost Marvel Studios significant sums of money even on its $40 million budget.
The Walt Disney Company might have been better served to have treated the show like Warner Bros. did the Batgirl film or how they treated Willow, by taking a huge tax write off because the show wasn’t worth nearly as much as they spent on it.
Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin in Marvel Studios’ ECHO, releasing on Hulu and Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.
What do you make of the fact that Echo completely fell off the Nielsen charts in just one week?
