NEW YORK—Amid all the doom and gloom in the streaming industry regarding slumping stock prices and hefty losses, streaming audiences continue to grow at a significant pace, with Americans streaming more than 19 million years worth of content last year, according to new data from Nielsen. 

In total, Americans streamed more than 19.4 million years of content last year, up 27% about 15 million years in 2021. The increase was driven by the breadth of new and expanded services, coupled by the depth of content—particularly streaming originals, Nielsen reported.  

The Nielsen data highlighted the importance of streaming originals at a time when money losing streaming services have been under extreme pressure from Wall Street to cut costs, particularly expensive originals. 

Nielsen noted that before the debut of Netflix’s "House of Cards", which was the first TV series to appear exclusively on a streaming service, virtually all other streaming content had been licensed from other sources. 

Since that time, original content has grown to become a competitive advantage for streaming services, as many original titles attracted viewers to the platforms, and in some cases, they outperformed acquired content, Nielsen said. 

Nielsen researchers noted that the 2022 data showed viewing minutes for top-performing original content dramatically outpaced top-performing acquired content, with Netflix’s "Stranger Things" taking the top slot among all series.

In total, audiences watched 52 billion minutes of "Stranger Things" in 2022, the highest total since COVID-driven lockdowns drove audiences to watch 57.1. billion minutes of the Office back in 2020. The dominance of original content is underscored even more by the fact that there are only 34 episodes of "Stranger Things", while there are 192 episodes of "The Office", Nielsen said. 

In terms of streaming movies, audiences watched 27.4 million minutes of "Encanto", a full-length animated feature that premiered on Disney+ in late December 2021. That equates to it being watched 269 million times. While Encanto had 12 full months to accumulate so much viewing and land on the top streaming list, Netflix’s "Wednesday", which debuted in late November 2022, made the cut with just 36 days of availability on Netflix. 

While original content came of age with audiences in 2022, Nielsen also highlighted the importance of library and acquired content. In the list of the most popular streaming content–original, acquired and movies–only four titles were originals. 

This highlights the immense attraction that library content holds for viewers who spent billions of minutes throughout the year watching popular titles like "NCIS", "Grey’s Anatomy", "Bluey", "Seinfeld", "Criminal Minds" and "The Simpsons".

NEW YORK—NBC is known as the peacock network thanks to its classic logo, and it is keeping that identity with its upcoming streaming service, which will simply be known as Peacock. NBCUniversal also announced that it will launch the service in April 2020.

The Peacock streaming service will offer both original series, reboots and serve as the exclusive streaming home for many NBC classic series, while also offering film content, news, sports, late-night and reality programming. As part of its announcement it unveiled its initial content lineup.

As previously announced, the service will be the exclusive streaming home for series like “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation.” In addition, Peacock will host popular series including “30 Rock,” “Bates Motel,” the original “Battlestar Galactica,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Cheers,” “Chrisley Knows Best,” “Covert Affairs,” “Downton Abbey,” “Everyone Loves Raymond,” “Fraiser,” “Friday Night Lights,” “House,” “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” “King of Queens,” “Married … With Children,” “Monk,” “Parenthood,” “Psych,” “Royal Pains,” “Saturday Night Live,” “Superstore,” “The Real Housewives,” “Top Chef” and “Will & Grace.”

New dramas set to premiere on the streaming service include “Dr. Death” with Alec Baldwin based on the popular podcast; “Brave New World” starring Demi Moore; original Spanish-language dramedy “Armas de Mujer”; a reboot of “Battlestar Galactica”; “Angelyne” with Emmy Rossum; and “One of Us Is Lying” based on the best-selling young-adult mystery thriller.

On the comedy side, new programs will include “Rutherford Falls” starring Ed Helms; “Straight Talk” from Rashida Jones and Jada Pinkett Smith; a new season of “A.P. Bio”; a second movie spin-off of “Psych”; and a pair of reboots of “Punky Brewster” with original star Soleil Moon Frye and “Saved by the Bell” with Elizabeth Berkley and Mario Lopez.

There will also be a handful of new unscripted programs. Lorne Michael’s has created an “SNL” docuseries called “Who Wrote That”; Jimmy Fallon will launch a new original talk show series; there will be a weekly late night show from Seth Myers starring Amber Ruffin; and a spinoff of “The Real Housewives” series.

Launching in 2020, Peacock is also set to be part of NBC’s coverage of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

In addition, Peacock’s slate of film content will feature popular titles from Universal Pictures and Focus Features. Universal Pictures is also developing original films and animated series for the streaming service, while DreamWorks Animation is working on original animated content for kids.

When it launches in April, NBC says that Peacock will feature more than 15,000 hours of content.

The streaming service will be supported both by advertising and subscription services. Pricing and distribution details are expected to be announced closer to launch.