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Severance ranked eighth among the most-watched original series in a U.S. Nielsen ranking reported on December 29, 2025, with about 7 billion viewing minutes. The list covers viewing only through November 9, 2025—not the complete calendar year—and measures minutes watched, not the number of individual viewers.
The top 10 original series in the 2025 ranking
The following order and figures are from 9to5Mac’s report of Nielsen data for U.S. original shows, with a measurement cutoff of November 9, 2025. The report gives figures for the top and eighth-ranked series, but not for every title.
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| Rank | Series | Viewing minutes reported |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Squid Game | 18.6 billion |
| 2 | Wednesday | Not stated in the 9to5Mac report |
| 3 | Love Island | Not stated in the 9to5Mac report |
| 4 | Reacher | Not stated in the 9to5Mac report |
| 5 | Ginny & Georgia | Not stated in the 9to5Mac report |
| 6 | Love Is Blind | Not stated in the 9to5Mac report |
| 7 | The Night Agent | Not stated in the 9to5Mac report |
| 8 | Severance | About 7 billion |
| 9 | The Summer I Turned Pretty | Not stated in the 9to5Mac report |
| 10 | You | Not stated in the 9to5Mac report |
These are article-reported figures for the partial-year period ending November 9; they should not be read as final full-year totals. 9to5Mac’s December 29, 2025 report identifies the list as a ranking of original shows by minutes watched.
What the ranking says about Severance
Severance, the Apple TV series, placed eighth in this original-series chart. Its reported total of about 7 billion minutes is specific to the ranking’s November 9 cutoff; it is not the series’ final 2025 total.
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A later Nielsen/Gracenote annual chart, published in 2026, lists Severance at 12.5 billion viewing minutes among 2025 original shows. That figure belongs to a different, full-year chart and should not be substituted into the earlier ranking. The same report lists Wednesday at 36.9 billion minutes in the originals category. Nielsen/Gracenote’s 2026 report separates original programming from licensed shows.
Why this is not the final 2025 ranking
Nielsen’s year-end measurement window for 2025 ran from December 30, 2024, through December 28, 2025. Its annual chart covers U.S. viewing on television and draws on Nielsen Streaming Content Ratings and the Nielsen National TV Panel. The December 29 9to5Mac list instead stops on November 9, so the two rankings do not cover the same period.
Nielsen says the distributors displayed in its annual chart are those with program-level data in its systems, while totals also include streaming viewing on other platforms. The accessible text of Nielsen’s annual page does not independently confirm the complete overall chart order; therefore, the November-cutoff list above is presented as the list reported by 9to5Mac, not as Nielsen’s finalized full-year top ten. Nielsen’s 2025 Top 10 page describes its annual measurement scope.
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How to interpret “most-watched”
Here, “most-watched” means total viewing minutes—not unique viewers, households, or the number of people who started a show. A longer series or repeated viewing can contribute more minutes than a shorter title, even if a unique-viewer ranking would produce a different order.
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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11It also matters that this chart is for original shows. Nielsen and Gracenote report original and acquired or licensed programming in separate categories. For context, Nielsen’s 2026 announcement names Bluey at 45.2 billion minutes in the 2025 top-overall and top-acquired categories, and Stranger Things at 40.0 billion minutes as the top original. Those award figures are category-specific and are not additional entries in the November-cutoff top ten. Nielsen’s 2026 announcement gives those named annual totals.
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