Nobody Cares That ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Is Streaming On Facebook

In an effort to compete with some of the industry’s top streaming platforms, social media platform Facebook announced last week that it would be streaming the shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly for free to users in the States. As such, every episode of every season began streaming last Friday, November 30th, through a deal with 20th Century Fox Television, but are people really logging on to Facebook to watch TV shows? The quick answer is no, not really.

According to Variety, all 3 shows had attracted only 949,00 views in its first week on the platform (598,000 for Buffy, 205,000 for Angel, and 146,000 for Firefly). In addition, nearly all of Buffy’s views were for the very first episode of the series, which had 433,000 views alone. What this means is that essentially nobody cared to hit up Facebook Watch again to binge the remainder of the series.

There could be a number of potential explanations for this staggering trend. One reason could be that the show debuted nearly 15 years ago, so viewers might just not be that into it anymore. That’s highly unlikely, however, since many shows that debuted 13+ years ago like Friends and The Office have longevity… so nostalgia is clearly still very much alive.

Another more likely reason for the low view count could be that people are really just logging in to Facebook to see what their friends are up to, not to watch television. This user focus makes things a bit more difficult for the social media giant who continues to look for new ways to monetize its many features and compete with the growing streaming market.

Facebook Watch, which also has a “Watch Party” function where users can stream and comment as they watch content together remotely, has received mixed attention. While Buffy is off to a slow start, Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk show has attracted 4.2 million followers, with 234 million views across 17 episodes thus far. LaVar Ball’s Ball in the Family reality show has also been viewed by more than 13 million users.

In fairness to Buffy, it’s only been a week, so we’ll have to see if view count improves over the next few weeks. However, we have a feeling that most television watchers will continue to turn to platforms like Netflix and Hulu to meet their streaming needs, especially when it comes to classic TV shows.

Michael is a music and television junkie keen on most things that are not a complete and total bore. You can follow him on Twitter — @Tweetskoor

STREAM BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER ON FACEBOOK