Netflix Canceled ‘One Day at a Time’ At The Peak of Its Popularity, Nielsen Report Reveals

Ever since Netflix made the controversial decision to cancel One Day at a Time, fans of the show–as well as One Day at a Time creator Norman Lear and star Rita Moreno– have been calling on the streaming service to release the viewership data that informed the decision to not renew the acclaimed sitcom. While Netflix continues to hold their internal viewership data close, new information revealed by audience measurement company Nielsen during their 2019 upfronts presentation gives us new insight into how One Day at a Time fared on the platform.

According to Nielsen’s numbers, One Day at a Time was only getting more viewers with each new season. The show was actually up in all metrics for Season 3, which had the best opening weekend of the series’ entire run. The Season 3 premiere weekend reached an estimated 1.63 million viewers, which is an increase of 82% from Season 2 a year earlier. Season 2 reached 893K viewers in its first 3 days of release, and Season 1 debuted to an audience of 721K back in 2017.

On average, Netflix subscribers spent an average of 135 minutes with the Alvarez family during Season 3’s premiere weekend and watched an average of 6.3 episodes. Both of those numbers are up from the same Season 2 stats: an average of 130 minutes and 5.8 episodes. Of the 1.63 million viewers that tuned in, an estimated 427K watched the entire 13-episode season opening weekend. And in total, viewers spent a total of 3.7 million hours watching One Day at a Time Season 3 during its premiere weekend.

When you expand the scope to the entire series and open the window up to include a month before the new season’s release, you also capture the number of people that caught up on old episodes. Netflix subscribers spent 5.6 million total hours watching ODAAT in the month leading up to and during Season 3’s premiere weekend. That’s up from the 3.8 million that rewatched Season 1 and watched Season 2’s premiere a year earlier.

While all those numbers seem impressive, especially considering the fact that One Day at a Time’s audience was growing significantly, you have to look at the show’s numbers when compared to other Netflix Originals. Here’s the estimated number of people (aged 2+) that streamed these Netflix shows on the day of a new season’s release:

• Stranger Things Season 2: 8,971,000
• 13 Reasons Why Season 2: 4,066,000
• Orange is the New Black Season 6: 3,404,000
• Lost in Space Season 1: 3,159,000
• Marvel’s The Defenders: 2,796,000
• Disenchantment Season 1: 2,284,000
• Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Part 2: 2,226,000
• Black Mirror Season 4: 2,135,000
• Fuller House Season 3: 1,695,000
• Altered Carbon Season 1: 1,614,000
• The Crown Season 2: 1,605,000
• Ozark Season 2: 1,585,000
• House of Cards Season 6: 738,000
• One Day at a Time Season 3: 559,000

So while One Day at a Time Season 3 was watched by a total of 1.63 million people during it’s opening weekend, only 559,000 tuned in on that Friday. That makes it the lowest of the shows also included in the study, with Stranger Things at the top of the list.

Again, these numbers don’t come from Netflix, but from Nielsen (who have been in the audience measuring business for decades). Netflix has disputed Nielsen numbers in the past but, again, it’s hard to know where the disconnect lies between reports like these and Netflix’s measurements when Netflix keeps most of those measurements secret. What is clear is that One Day at a Time was growing an audience, but apparently not fast enough.

Stream One Day at a Time on Netflix