The holiday season is here, and with it comes some interesting insights from Luminate’s Streaming Viewership (M).
It has come to be expected that holiday content performance roars to record highs during the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We see it in the music ecosystem, with decades-old songs reaching the top of the Billboard charts. Linear television has also been known to broadcast old classics through this period. Channels like Hallmark and Freeform dedicate a massive chunk of their December programming schedule to original holiday TV movies. As consumer attention shifts to streamers, how has this affected linear content releases and how visible are these holiday spikes in viewership?
The Christmas Chronicles, a 2018 Netflix original led by Kurt Russell, was a hit for the platform upon its release. The cycle of holiday viewership can be seen in Streaming Viewership (M), with a consistent increase in viewership by over 8000% between Halloween and Christmas Day. Even more interestingly, both trend outlines show consistent spikes in viewership around Thanksgiving weekend and the first two weekends of December.
The holiday film takeover can also be seen in Streaming Viewership (M)’s Top 50 Movies chart. In the first week of November 2024, one holiday film was featured in the Top 10 ranking; one month later, that number has risen to five titles. Notably, Our Little Secret, a low-budget Christmas movie led by Lindsay Lohan, demolished Spellbound, a star-filled children’s title with music by Disney legend Alan Menken and produced by former Pixar head John Lasseter. It goes to show that Lohan has positioned herself as an annual Christmas attraction.
With the increased investment in holiday movies on streaming, and with most scripted programming at large migrating that way as well, one would expect the linear output for holiday movies to decline. However, that hasn’t been the case. The total count of these linear titles have remained remarkably resilient through a turbulent time for the industry. While there has been a slight decline since 2022, no comparable increase has been seen in streaming holiday content. This isn’t too surprising, as networks like Hallmark Channel and Great American Family dedicate nearly their entire Q4 programming schedule to holiday content.
