The Shows That Captured Attention in December 2021

While December is known for Christmas movies, it was a decidedly Halloween-esque drama that captured viewer engagement best in the month. The Season 2 premiere of The Witcher on Netflix drove increased interest in Season 1 of the show as well. It's notable that The Witcher series took both the first and fifth spot on our list of share of time spent - accounting for an impressive 9% of Share of Time Spent viewing on CTV in December. Disney+ also captured viewing time with its programming, Hawkeye (S1) and The Beatles: Get Back. For more info on the CTV shows that captured attention and were co-viewed and binged, see our complete list.

The final month of 2021 featured a number of reliable performers holding onto their spots on our Top 5 for Attention list across Broadcast and Cable TV. Long-time fan favorites The Goldbergs (ABC) and Young Sheldon (CBS) were joined by newer entrants to our list B Positive (CBS) and Ghosts (CBS). Of course, Amy Schneider's impressive and dominant winning streak (which came to an end on January 26, 2022) drove lots of attention for America's favorite game show - Jeopardy! (ABC). On Cable TV Holmes Family Rescue on HGTV topped the list. The longest-running TV comedy, "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on FXX also made the list. It's notable that prestige dramas from Paramount Networks - 1883 and Yellowstone made the list as well.

Top CTV Programs, by Share of Time Spent

Share Time of Spent ranks shows by the proportion of time viewers spent tuned to the content. For this report, we are specifically looking at time spent with new, original, episodic CTV programming.

Our Share of Time Spent is a good indicator of the overall popularity of a show - The Witcher had a very good month!

See the Full List of CTV Performance

Top Linear TV Shows, by TV Ad Attention

TV Ad Attention measures how effectively an ad or ads held viewers’ Attention while they aired. It is measured as the percentage of all ad impressions in which the viewer was looking at the TV screen for two or more seconds.

Three CBS and two ABC shows top our list for attention on broadcast TV to close out 2021.

It's worth noting that the long-running game show Jeopardy! is capturing high levels of attention. The fast paced answer and question game does require a commitment of viewer attention to play along. It's likely the impressive run of Amy Schneider has helped increase Jeopardy's attention score as viewers tune in to watch her dominate. Her run lasted until January 26, 2022, so it will be interesting to see if Jeopardy tops the charts for attention again in January.

In December, Paramount Networks, which runs content that can able be found on the app Paramount+, secured two programs on our list - Yellowstone and its prequel 1883. Both are buzzed about dramas that are engaging audiences on cable and on the app.