What Netflix's data dump tells us about Power Rangers

Spoiler: People still watch the show.

Netflix dropped a surprise nuclear bomb — at least for anyone who cares about TV viewership — just ahead of the December holiday deluge.

The undisputed leader in streaming on Dec. 12, 2023, published the first edition of its “What We Watched” report. Billed as a bi-annual breakdown of everything¹ watched on the platform, it covers the six-month period of engagement from Jan. 1-June 30 of last year.

I was giddy. As a Power Rangers fan in the midst of writing an 80,000-word book² about the show and its place in TV history, this could not have come at a better time. The last year was an eventful one for “the brand,” and the data reported in Netflix’s engagement report help create a better picture of where it stands among its peers. Toward the end of the book, I’ll aim to contextualize how Power Rangers fits in today’s media landscape and how it might fit going forward, and hard numbers like this can only be helpful in informing that effort.

For now, though, I wanna highlight the data that pertains to Power Rangers and make some off-the-cuff observations. I think it’s interesting, and hope you do too!

What do these numbers mean?

That’s a hard question to answer forcefully without a whole lot of additional data, including but not limited to age and geographic demographics. The easiest takeaway without any of that, though, is that people are watching Power Rangers.

Overall, in the first six months of 2023, Netflix subscribers watched a total of 158,300,000 hours of Power Rangers, in some form, across the 12 available titles somewhere in the world (10 TV seasons, one feature film and one made-for-TV special). Most of that was of the TV variety; people watched 133,100,000 hours worth of episodic Power Rangers content.

The overall total amounts to 9,498,000,000 minutes, a number that’s important to know because it’s related to how Netflix reports viewership for its most popular programs. The company calculates a “viewer” by taking total viewing hours and dividing it by the length of a show. A view doesn’t inherently translate to a viewer, but for now that’s the best Netflix will offer in terms of something that resembles a traditional TV rating, so we’ll roll with it until if/when it provides a more transparent metric.

Most-watched Power Rangers

Season one of Dino Fury, on the platform for more than two years by the end date of this report, was the most watched Power Rangers content over the time period, accounting for more than a fifth of the brand’s viewership (22.7 percent). Runner-up was Dino Fury season two, and together those 44 episodes represented 41 percent of Power Rangers’ viewership.

Both seasons are comprised of 22 episodes that each last 22 minutes, giving each a total 484 minutes of spandex-stuffed fun. By taking the total number of minutes for each season and dividing it by 484, we can get an estimate of how many “viewers” each episode of each season averaged.

Dino Fury S1: 2,160,000,000 minutes/484 minutes = 4,462,809 view(er)s per episode
Dino Fury S2: 1,740,000,000 minutes/484 minutes = 3,595,041 view(er)s per episode

Perhaps the most surprising viewership data was delivered by the two seasons of Ninja Steel³. Together, they represented nearly a quarter of Power Rangers viewership over the time period (24.9 percent). Their season-long runtimes are the same as Dino Fury’s, so the “viewer” calculation is the same.

Ninja Steel: 1,080,000,000 minutes/484 minutes = 2,231,404 view(er)s per episode
Super Ninja Steel: 1,290,000,000 minutes/484 minutes = 2,665,289 view(er)s per episode

Rounding out the top five in terms of total hours viewed? The 2017 movie, which notably isn’t available on Netflix in the U.S. (if you’re curious, MGM+, which I didn’t know was a thing until a couple months ago, currently holds the domestic streaming rights). Its “viewer” breakdown:

2017 movie: 780,000,000 minutes/124 minutes = 6,290,322 view(er)s

That “viewer” count is an interesting number on its own, but I think even more so since it doesn’t have a U.S. audience factored into the math. One imagines it’d be higher if its country of origin was represented.

Once and Always performance

Until December, the only gauge we had of how Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always performed was the weekly Netflix Top 10 report covering the week of April 17-23 in 2023. The 30th anniversary special, a 55-minute made-for-TV special that Netflix categorizes as a film for counting purposes, ranked eighth in hours viewed among all English-language films on the platform that week (it debuted on April 19, a Wednesday). Of the six films on the list spending their first week in the top 10, it ranked fifth — barely in front of F9: The Fast Saga with just 10,000 more hours of watch time (6,550,000 in the first week). By the next week, Once & Always proved to be a one-and-done: it was one of only three titles to drop out of the top 10, joined by F9 and The Snowman (a critically reviled 2017 thriller that ranked ahead of both films the prior week with 7,170,000 hours viewed).

With a total of 12,200,000 hours viewed in the period covered by the report, that means that Once & Always after its first week earned 5,650,000 hours of watch time. Let’s see how that looks in terms of “viewers:”

Once & Always (April 19-April 23): 393,000,000 minutes/55 minutes = 7,145,454 view(er)s
Once & Always (April 24-June 30): 339,000,000 minutes/55 minutes = 6,163,636 view(er)s
Total view(er)s for the period: 13,309,090

It’ll be good to see what kind of legs this special has moving forward. It the piece of Power Rangers TV that I’m most eager to see viewership numbers for when the next report arrives (presumably, not until sometime this summer).

Mighty Morphin stragglers

Within the fandom, it’s just accepted as fact that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is the most popular and beloved series in the franchise. It was the first, after all, and it ignited a cultural frenzy that lasted for a couple years — why wouldn’t it be?

That may very well be true, but the data — when broken down using the views metric — don’t exactly suggest a rabid appetite for the seasons that define the franchise. Take a look⁴:

Season 1: 600,000,000 minutes/1,209 minutes = 496,277 view(er)s
Season 2: 174,000,000 minutes/1,020 minutes = 170,588 view(er)s
Season 3: 84,000,000 minutes/660 minutes = 127,272 view(er)s
Reversion: 36,000,000 minutes/640 minutes = 56,250 view(er)s

It again bears repeating that these numbers as presented lack context that would matter for decision-makers behind the franchise. Like, for example, whether the nearly 500,000 people who might have watched season one of MMPR were in their 40’s or in elementary school; or, more precise measurements of which episodes are getting watched the most. In general, though, on the surface it seems like “newer” is better than “older” in terms of raw viewership for Power Rangers.

Look at the Beast Morphers, for example. It’s newer than both seasons of Ninja Steel but lagged behind it (and Dino Fury) considerably. However, its “viewer” numbers are better than those of any Mighty Morphin season.

Beast Morphers season 1: 372,000,000 minutes/484 minutes = 768,595 view(er)s
Beast Morphers season 2: 450,000,000 minutes/484 minutes = 929,752 view(er)s

I’m not naïve enough to argue that any seasons of Power Rangers are actually more “popular” than those that kicked off the franchise — it’s hard to topple 30 years of cultural awareness, and the performance of Once and Always on its own suggests there’s plenty of interest in the past. But it’s good to see that new episodes of the franchise are consistently finding an audience, too.

(A more interesting discussion topic, IMO: Why did Beast Morphers perform so poorly compared to Ninja Steel and Dino Fury? I imagine it simply boils down to the suits and thematic elements. Kids like dinosaurs and ninjas, I reckon!)

So … are these numbers good?

Yea? Maybe? IDK?!

Honestly, that’s another question I can’t fully answer because I’m not, nor ever will be, privy enough to all the other data that informs decision-making and prompts high-fives or hanging heads in c-suites. My hunch, looking at all of the numbers as a whole and knowing what we know (and don’t know) about the current state of Power Rangers within Hasbro, is that a stratospheric number for Once & Always might have been the only thing that could have encouraged the company to change course re: discontinuing its investment in the New Zealand TV production. But given Hasbro’s standing as a company, and the separation of eOne from under its umbrella, I’m not sure even that really would have mattered.

If you correlate Netflix’s view measurement to a “viewer” — which, for better or worse, has sort of become the norm — this six-month report suggests that Power Rangers by-and-large is performing as well as or better than it ever has outside of its heyday on Fox Kids, when it had the benefit of captive broadcast TV audiences. At its peak on Nickelodeon, the show averaged 2.936 million viewers per episode from Feb.-June 2011.⁵ On the same network and over a similar time period 10 years later, season one of Dino Fury averaged 297,000 viewers per episode. That single season, over a six-month window on Netflix, seemingly was watched more than any season of Power Rangers ever was on Nickelodeon. Both seasons of Ninja Steel — each more than five years old — drastically outperformed their premiere averages on cable in 2017 and 2018. Power Rangers might be “dead,” but plenty of people are still watching it.

Power Rangers vs. other Hasbro IP

As far as raw data from the period covered, the totality of Power Rangers is a standout performer among Hasbro titles available on Netflix around the world. Its total viewership is second only to one other show, Peppa Pig, whose six seasons accumulated 276,000,000 hours (or 16,560,000,000 minutes) of viewership in the six-month window⁶. In terms of viewership, among the top 50 films or TV shows clearly intended for children (as determined by me; I’ll expand on this in a later post), Peppa Pig is the only Hasbro property to appear; three of its seasons ranked in that list (Season 1 was 11th, Season 2 was 23rd and Season 6 came in 44th; notably, those first two seasons are not available on U.S. Netflix as of Jan. 2024).

The total Netflix viewership of Power Rangers slightly edges that of Hasbro action-brand bellcow Transformers (152,000,000), though a slight caveat seems appropriate: most of the Transformers films — which make up the lion’s share of that franchise’s viewership — seemingly were not available via U.S. Netflix during the time period. As far as I can tell, only Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Transformers: Dark of the Moon were carried by the platform at some point during the window and that seems to be reflected in their viewership data; they rank No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, by a solid margin. (As of Jan. 2024, no Transformers movies are available via U.S. Netflix).

If you take away the flicks? Power Rangers destroyed Transformers on the platform during the first half of last year. A total of 11 seasons of Transformers garnered 26,100,000 hours of viewership. The top performer was season one⁷ of Transformers Earthspark (4,400,000 hours), for which Netflix only has an international license (Paramount+ has domestic distribution). It ranked just in front of Transformers: Prime season one (4,300,000), which was available in the states along with most of the other Transformers shows that made the cut. The four Netflix-exclusive Transformers shows — season one of the the younger-skewing Transformers: BotBots and the three War for Cybertron series — combined for 9,400,000 hours of watch time (led by BotBots’ 3,500,000 hours).

Here are some per-episode “viewer” numbers for select Transformers TV:

Earthspark season one: 264,000,000 minutes/225 minutes = 1,173,333 view(er)s
Prime season one: 258,000,000 minutes/546 minutes = 472,527 view(er)s
BotBots season one: 210,000,000 minutes/250 minutes = 840,000 view(er)s
War for Cybertron: Kingdom: 162,000,000 minutes/148 minutes = 1,094,594 view(er)s
War for Cybertron: Earthrise: 102,000,000 minutes/145 minutes = 703,448 view(er)s
Transformers: War for Cybertron: Siege: 90,000,000 minutes/142 minutes = 633,802 view(er)s

And the Transformers films on Netflix over the same period:

Transformers (2007): 900,000,000 minutes/144 minutes = 6,250,000 view(er)s
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: 1,698,000,000 minutes/150 minutes = 11,320,000 view(er)s
Transformers: Dark of the Moon: 1,686,000,000 minutes/154 minutes = 10,948,051 view(er)s
Transformers: Age of Extinction: 1,074,000,000 minutes/165 minutes = 6,509,090 view(er)s
Transformers: The Last Knight: 1,218,000,000 minutes/149 minutes = 8,174,496 view(er)s
Bumblebee: 978,000,000 minutes/114 minutes = 8,578,947 view(er)s

What’s clear: Optimus Prime and Co. stay killing it in the feature-film realm, but Power Rangers — at least based on this six-month sample — is a far stronger player in the “for kids” space than Transformers on Netflix.

Ranking next for Hasbro was My Little Pony, whose 14 titles totaled 107,200,000 viewing hours. The top — and most surprising? — performer for it was season one of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which premiered in 2014 on The Hub and logged 36,000,000 hours, the same amount as Power Rangers’ top-performer (Dino Fury season one). The ol’ girl’s still got some whinny in her!

PJ Masks is another major player for the toymaker. It only has four seasons on the platform, each with a runtime of 624 minutes. Its fourth season, which first aired in 2021, was the closest Hasbro-affiliated TV series from the non-Peppa Pig division to reaching the top 50 among all kids titles with 36,700,000 hours viewed. Its combined hours viewed (81,200,000) averaged out to 1,951,923 “viewers” per episode.

What’s next?

Over time, future reports will allow fans to gauge the ups and downs of Power Rangers content available on Netflix. It’s unfortunate that so many seasons of the show are no longer consumable on the platform, because that data would be fantastic to see. As it stands, YouTube viewership counts are all we have for everything else.

It’s also, again, worth reiterating that extrapolating anything incredibly meaningful from this data in terms of how the Power Rangers is “doing” is probably a fool’s errand. We don’t know what we don’t know. I look at all these numbers as a fan and think, “Power Rangers seems to be doing pretty well.” But Hasbro isn’t a fan; it’s a corporation looking to balance budgets and sell products to kids and adults who act like kids. It’s possible that all of this data, coupled with their own proprietary information, translates to being in the Power Rangers business as not being a good business; recent decisions certainly lead one to think that is, at least temporarily, the case.

Regardless, this fascinates me, and I’ll be continuing to monitor it as data comes out. I also intend, when time permits, to write up another post on how Power Rangers stacked up in the overall kids TV landscape on Netflix from Jan. 1-June 30, 2023. It shouldn’t be too long from now.

Thanks for reading. Now, back to the book!

1. Well, almost everything: films and TV watched for fewer than 50,000 hours across the globe did not qualify. Per Netflix, this info dump encompasses more than 18,000 titles and accounts 99 percent of all viewing on Netflix.

2. Less than 30,000 to go as of this post!

3. This is a distinction made in Netflix’s report, not editorial. “Super Ninja Steel” is listed as Ninja Steel: Season 2, which is perfectly fine with this old head.

4. Runtimes are based on Shout! Factory DVD sets. Season three does not include the Alien Rangers miniseries.

5. Kudos to Burgundy Ranger for his extensive archive of Nielsen data.

6. I’m not even going to attempt to explain how Peppa Pig seasons work stateside. The TL;DR version is that the U.S. Netflix seasons and original British broadcast series do not correspond with one another, and since availability of episodes in seasons varies widely, it’s hard to pin down a hard “viewer” number.

7. The first 10 episodes of season one debuted on the platform in late June 2023. A 10-episode runtime is used for viewership calculation.