It turns out all the social-media buzz about Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV translated into massive ratings success for the child-star exposé. The four-part Investigation Discovery–produced true-crime doc, which streamed on ID and Max on March 17 and 18, racked up a massive 1.2 billion minutes of streaming viewing time during the week ending March 24, according to advance Nielsen data provided to Vulture. While Nielsen won’t officially release its rankings for that week until next Thursday, when it does, Quiet on Set is expected to rank as the No. 1 show on all of U.S. streaming for that week, according to Max. Given that Netflix claims the No. 1 slot week on Nielsen’s streaming originals chart most weeks, that’s a huge win for Max.
But it’s also a vindication of sorts for the Warner Bros. Discovery suits who’ve taken a bunch of heat for last year’s decision to rebrand “HBO Max†as just “Max†and fill it with a ton of Discovery Networks’ unscripted content. The whole idea behind the move was to expand the appeal of the company’s signature streamer beyond the very upscale HBO brand and bring in programming that might play better in Peoria than the latest critical darling from HBO. While HBO proper has certainly had success in the true-crime space — it’s about to release a follow-up to 2015’s The Jinx — the legacy cable brand simply isn’t set up to produce the sheer volume (and sometimes shamelessness) of what comes out of the Discovery Networks machine. Quiet on Set is vintage ID, and having the show air on cable and stream on Max allowed Warner Bros. Discovery to reach the older Gen-Xers and boomers who still have cable along with younger folks who are only streaming. The result is that, between both platforms, Nielsen estimates more than 20 million people saw at least part of Quiet on Set during its first week of release.
What’s more, Max says Quiet on Set is part of a larger wave of interest in true crime among subscribers: The genre is now the most popular form of unscripted TV on the streamer, outdrawing competition, cooking, and home-makeover shows to drive the most unscripted viewing on Max. In addition to Quiet on Set, another ID title — season two of The Curious Case of Natalia Grace — was the top-rated series on Max when it debuted the first week of January. And Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, a project from HBO Documentary Films, was also a success for Max, ranking as the most-watched non-sports HBO doc in three years, per the streamer.