Streamed historical and crime dramas are drawing the most interest from video watchers during the pandemic, at least when it comes to Wikipedia perusers.
According to MIDiA Research, whose clients include Disney, Sony, Amazon, and Google, of the top 10 most viewed Wikipedia "TV show" pages April 29 (see chart), were all streamed content, and all on either Netflix of Hulu.
The first, says MIDiA, shows streaming's leading position in the "zeitgeist" content sphere during the pandemic. And given that the shows are all on two services, and that six of the ten are UK productions, MIDiA's second big takeaway is that Disney+ and Apple TV+ "are not yet making the kind of sustained impact required for them to be perceived as originators of compelling new content."
Apple's top Wikipedia'd offering was Defending Jacob at 13th place and Disney's The Mandalorian was 16th.
That domination by history and crime is in contrast to the pre-pandemic December lists' top 10, which included reality, scripted drama, comedy, sci-fi, fantasy and animation.
The research company says the appeal of historical dramas could be the attraction of escapism in a hunkered-down viewership, but says the rise in the appeal of crime dramas is harder to pin down, though it says it might be the complexity of the storylines for folks with the time to to puzzle them out, just as detective novels thrived during the Great Depression of the 1930's.
A Wikipedia view does not necessarily translate into a video view, of course. But the company points out that as a leading indicator, Wikipedia page views "means that the viewer has specifically decided to read a page about a show, denoting their interest in a way that a casual google search does not."
