Bluey Tops Nielsen’s Overall Streaming List with More Than 25 Billion Minutes Streamed from January through June 2025
Big June Vaults Squid Game into Top Originals Spot, followed by Reacher, The Night Agent, Ginny & Georgia and Severance
Moana 2, Despicable Me 4, Back in Action, Moana and The Wild Robot are Top Movies on Streaming this Year
Through the first half of 2025, streaming is being dominated by the animated import from Australia, Disney+’s Bluey. With over 25 billion minutes viewed so far this year, the 154 episodes continue to be a sensation for kids, parents and Disney alike. Six out of the top 20 most-streamed titles from January through June fell into the animation category (#1 Bluey, #4 Family Guy, #5 Bob’s Burgers, #6 Spongebob Squarepants, #12 American Dad! and #20 South Park). Grey’s Anatomy came in at #2 overall with more than 22 billion minutes streamed on Hulu and Netflix, while NCIS topped 19 billion minutes across Paramount+, Hulu and Netflix and charted at #3.
A number of series with smaller libraries of episodes punched above their weight on the overall list. Squid Game on Netflix accrued over 15 billion viewing minutes across just 22 total episodes, securing the #9 spot overall and #1 among original series. The show added nearly 3 billion minutes in the last three days of the June interval. This surge allowed it to surpass Prime Video’s Reacher, which had previously held a commanding lead among original series up until that point and ultimately finished the first half of the year as the #2 original with 13.3 billion minutes. With only 20 episodes, Netflix’s The Night Agent earned 12.2 billion minutes to chart as the #3 original series and 14th overall. Meanwhile HBO Max’s The White Lotus, with 21 episodes, also made the top 20 overall list with 11.5 billion.
Apple TV+ series Severance took #5 on the originals list with 9.3 billion viewing minutes across 19 episodes. Similar to originals with a lower number of episodes generating viewing levels that rival those with deep libraries, Severance’s performance was particularly impressive as it did so while contending with a smaller footprint than other streaming services.
Paramount+ has also had a notable first half of 2025, as the mountain is peaking with its original series 1923 (8.5 billion minutes, #6 original) and Landman (7.8 billion, #10 original).
While it was originally released 70 years ago, Gunsmoke continues a strong campaign in 2025. Available on Peacock, Paramount+ and the FAST service Pluto, Gunsmoke generated 10.6 billion viewing minutes through the first six months of the year to notch #18 overall.
When it comes to top streaming movies, kids titles continue to lead. Disney’s Moana 2 racked up an impressive 7.2 billion viewing minutes on Disney+ since its March 12 streaming release to take the mid-year crown. Competition among streaming movies is heating up across platforms, too, as Despicable Me 4 on Netflix (6.3 billion), The Wild Robot on Peacock and Netflix (3.8 billion) and Sonic The Hedgehog 2 on Netflix and Paramount+ (3.7 billion) all joined the fray. It’s also important to point out that kids’ movies (along with kids’ content in general) gain momentum over time due to repeat viewing.
For these lists, Nielsen uses minutes viewed as a comparative metric as it’s the great equalizer across dissimilar program categories and ultimately shows how consumers are spending their viewing time. This metric has two very specific impacts, however. First, programs with deep libraries have distinct advantages over those with shorter durations and/or fewer episodes. For that reason Nielsen has separate lists for original series, acquired series and movies. Second, a program’s release date should be taken into account, as titles will not all have an equal amount of time to generate viewing minutes within the measurement interval.
These lists of top streaming programs are based on total viewing that occurred from January 2025 through June 2025 (12/29/24 – 06/28/25) and ranked on total viewing minutes by Persons 2+. Data was sourced through Nielsen Streaming Content Ratings, Nielsen’s streaming program measurement service that provides program and episode level viewing metrics (e.g. ratings, reach, frequency, co-viewing, etc.) across non-linear TV viewing sources with audience breakouts available by persons- and household-level demographics (e.g. age, gender, race, ethnicity), all market breaks, device, platform, etc. Nielsen will release the full-year list of top streaming programs at the end of 2025.
