Lost in Space Streamed by 6.3 Million Americans in 3 Days: Nielsen

An estimated 6.3 million people saw the premiere of Netflix's Lost in Space within the first three days that the streaming service made it available this month, a promising start that would make it one of the outlet's more popular series after the phenomenon of Stranger Things.

The Nielsen company is starting to draw the curtain back on some of the user numbers for streaming services, which have been reluctant to do so on their own.

"We've had a lot of anxiety among our clients about sharing this data with you," said Brian Fuhrer, senior vice president of product leadership for Nielsen, on Tuesday, "because they're still learning it."

Netflix's Lost in Space Is Like 'Lost', but in Space

Nielsen's data also shows the impact of binging: the average Lost in Space viewer watched the show for two and a half hours on those first few days. Netflix released 10 separate one-hour episodes of the show on April 13 and, within three days, nearly 1.2 million people watched the last episode, a clear indication they'd seen the whole season.

Roughly 10 percent of the total time spent watching television now is spent with streaming services, Nielsen said. The number approaches one-quarter of all viewing among viewers aged 12 to 17. Netflix dominates, with 49 percent of the streaming viewing coming on their service. YouTube's 10 percent is the second-highest individual service, Nielsen said.

For all of the attention that new series put on by the streaming services gets, Nielsen said that 80 percent of the viewing goes to older programs like Friends.

Four years ago, 88 percent of television viewing came on cable or satellite. Now that number is down to 79 percent, an indication of the impact of cord cutting, Nielsen said.

On the broadcast networks last week, ABC's Roseanne was again the week's most-watched show.

CBS easily won the week in prime time, averaging 6.7 million viewers. NBC had 4.8 million viewers, ABC had 4.4 million, Fox had 3 million, Univision had 1.6 million, ION Television had 1.3 million, the CW had 1.2 million and Telemundo had 1.1 million.

TNT was the week's most popular cable network, averaging 3.06 million viewers in prime time. Fox News Channel had 2.37 million, MSNBC had 1.94 million, HGTV had 1.35 million and ESPN had 1.3 million.

ABC's World News Tonight topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.5 million viewers. NBC's Nightly News was second with 7.9 million and the CBS Evening News had 6 million viewers.

For the week of April 16-22, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: Roseanne, ABC, 13.27 million; The Big Bang Theory, CBS, 12.91 million; Young Sheldon, CBS, 11.67 million; NCIS, CBS, 11.44 million; Bull, CBS, 10.83 million; The Voice (Monday, 8pm), NBC, 9.35 million; 60 Minutes, CBS, 9.02 million; Mom, CBS, 8.83 million; NCIS: New Orleans, CBS, 8.46 million; The Voice (Wednesday, 8pm), NBC, 8.39 million.