Hulu’s most watched TV show of 2017 is a huge surprise
By Shawn Lealos
Hulu has some critically acclaimed shows on the network like The Handmaid’s Tale and some popular network shows like This is Us.
While one might assume that one of those shows would be the most-watched show on Hulu, it was not the case in 2017.
As a matter of fact, the most watched show of 2017 wasn’t Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Law & Order: SVU, Seinfeld, Community, This is Us, The Handmaid’s Tale, The X-Files or The Real Housewives.
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Instead, the most-watched show on Hulu in 2017 was South Park.
The Comedy Central show created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone has 21 seasons available for a total of 284 episodes. While the show still constantly plays both new episodes and reruns for free on Comedy Central, Hulu viewers watched it more than any other show on the streaming service.
It wasn’t even close.
Cinema Blend reports that Hulu CEO Randy Freer said that there are 75,000 episodes of TV shows on the streaming service and the combined hours for the 284 episodes of South Park totaled — 135 million hours streamed in 2017.
Every episode checks in at 22 minutes, which means that viewers watched 6.13 million episodes of South Park in 2017 on Hulu. Cinema Blend broke it down and that averages out to be 21,584 viewings of every episode.
That is amazing.
With Amazon Prime breaking the 100 million subscriber mark and Netflix having more subscribers than that, Hulu looks to settle into the number three spot, with over 20 million subscribers (according to Variety).
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While Netflix is releasing a ton of new original material every month and Amazon Prime is spending billions on their own originals, Hulu can at least rest easy knowing their subscribers will pay to watch South Park — despite it showing for free on cable almost every day.